Ripplin said:
Man, their standards for the Czech audio sure were...different, to put it mildly. Old VHS or not, they shouldn't sound like that. I'm trying not to sound negative, but I can't help but feel that it seems unfair to the Czech fans! They don't deserve to get guy-talking-into-a-bucket Vader. :p
But, of course, I find it very interesting, and even though I don't speak it, I'm glad you put it on! :)
Well, I am Czech and I have to say a few words to explain the poor quality of the Czech dubbing Harmy put on his AVCHD.
Actually, there exist three Czech dubbings of Original Trilogy nowadays. The first one was made in 1992 for Guild Home Video for its VHS release and this is the one which Harmy put on his AVCHD. Its quality is really not so good... Only 10 dub-actors for whole movie, bad sound mix only in mono... There were made a lot of dubbings like this in Czech republic in early 90s. Because before 1989 (Velvet Revolution) there were not so many foreign films avalaible on VHS and after 1989 there appeared a lot of companies that profited this situation and wanted to made money at first place. So they had the dubbings made for the lowest price possible (usually with few dub-actors in some non-professional studio which was often located in some small room) and didn't care much abou its quality.
So Guild Home Video had this bad quality dubbing made because their release of SW Trilogy was the first one in Czech republic and they could be sure that people would buy it. So they had no reason to spend the money for a high quality dubbing...
The second Czech dubbing of Original Trilogy was made by Bonton Home Video in 1995 for its VHS release and Harmy put this one only on his ESB AVCHD:
AUDIO:
TRACK 1) hairy_hen's 5.1 purist mix @ 448Kbps AC3
TRACK 2) 1993 2.0 mix @ 320Kbps AC3
TRACK 3) 1980 2.0 mix @ 224Kbps
TRACK 4) 1992 2.0 CZ dub @ 192Kbps
TRACK 5) 1997 2.0 CZ dub @ 192Kbps
The sound is much better, Dolby Surround 2.0, but unfortunately the translation is not so good...
So for the Blu-ray release the third dubbing was made this year with right translation and 5.1 DTS sound mixed in LucasFilm so that all Czech Star Wars fans could be satisfied :-)