doubleofive said:
No one knows. Perhaps they felt that it was good enough for now, or the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that maybe they didn't want the OT to be higher resolution than Ep2 and 3.Alexrd said:
Really? Why would they do that?
doubleofive said:
the 2004 versions were scanned and mastered at 1080p.
It is because a 1080/24p digital presentation is better/superior to a 3rd/4th generation 35mm interpositive release print(which is what all the Star Wars films were/are).
If you saw the original Star wars in the theater in 77' or in any of the other subsequent years up until 1985......all you saw was an image that was roughly equivalent to 700 lines per picture height(lpph).
That is barely above the resolution of standard definition dvd.
These tests confirmed the above:
http://www.etconsult.com/papers/Technical%20Issues%20in%20Cinema%20Resolution.pdf
Film theoretically has very good resolution capabilities. What is delivered to the theatre is another story. If we believe the ITU tests, then images captured at almost 2400 lines per picture height on the camera negative deliver significantly degraded on screen resolution through the projection system – in the range of 500 – 800 lines per picture height. 500 lines corresponds to about 9 line pairs per degree from 2 screen heights.
That is why Lucas said the following:
Lucas revealed that CineAlta is not only more easily manipulated but can also be blown up more than film. “We’ve done tests [where] we are blowing [digital images] up 50-60 percent on top of it already being blown up to be widescreen and getting an absolutely beautiful image. We had to go a long way before the [digital] image starts to fall apart… We were all shocked, even the guys at ILM.”
http://www.sony.co.uk/biz/content/id/1166605183359/section/broadcast-case-studies-hdcam?articlesection=2