Sorry to interrupt your discussion on the various sound formats (please don't stop on my account, I'm actually enjoying it) but I just wanted to bring up something I read about the blu-rays today.
Check out this article:
For those who can't be bothered to read it all, it's a quick report from someone who managed to catch some footage from the actual blu-rays. Now I'm going to admit that I got a little hopeful when I read the following from the 2nd paragraph.
Well, at a private event in New York City last week, our friends at Lucasfilm and Fox pulled back the curtain all too briefly for an exciting peek at the Blu-rays as part of the 2011 Star Wars Media Day. Two clips were played (one from a classic film, one from a prequel) to demonstrate the quality of the brand-new 1080p/DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1 remasters, on a Panasonic plasma and over a Panasonic HTiB system. It was really just enough to whet our appetites (as if we weren't drooling enough already), but I am now very optimistic: the clips that we saw of films both of the original trilogy flavor and the newer prequels were stunning.
Yep, I got my hopes up when I read that the picture quality was stunning. Sadly, that hope evaporated when I read the sentence immediately following the above quote.
Release of the older films in particular on Blu-ray will be a real challenge for Fox, owing to the limits of cinematic technology of the era, but Episodes II and III should have the potential to truly amaze.
Now, I'm still waiting until September to judge for myself but from the above quote I believe that if you think only modern films look good on blu-ray because they where shot digitally and think all pre digital movies look bad because they have film grain then the OT on blu-ray will look "stunning" to you.
If however, you understand the concept that 35mm film stock can produce a much better quality picture than the current home cinema standard of 1080p, then don't expect anything too "stunning."
Oh, and guess who commented on the article as I was writing this?