zombie84 said:
Unfortunately it probably comes down to the fact that Lucas himself supervised the 2004 scan (sad isn't it?), and he can't be bothered to do this for every scene of every film all over again and would rather just have them bring up the brightness levels if it looks sort-of right, at least to a not-very-discerning level. I mean, he thought the 2004 version was great after all, I gather that it is his cronies that are attempting to respond to criticisms. I read some response a few pages back by one of his employees that attempted to lay the cause on the way HD video responds to film; it was so ludicrous it made me laugh sadly and shake my head, fully out loud. Are they fucking kidding me? But probably most people reading that statement don't know any better, and buy it. But the moron saying that knows full well that he's lying to everyone's face and hoping that his audience is too stupid to realise they are being had. That's the sad reality of Lucasfilm these days.
I've heard before that colorspace conversions - 4:4:4 to 4:2:0 can mess up video, the problem with the 2004 masters really reminds me of when Dario Argento's Suspiria was restored a couple of years ago, it was a complete mess just like Star Wars, it was a HD Master processed by Technicolor and supervised by DP Luciano Tovoli, but on reliable and important forums of Italian Cinema it is said that Tovoli himself is not quite satisfied and doesn't appreciate the color of this HD Master. One theory was:
Weird that he supervised it but "didn't like the color". I don't know what Italian Cinema forums this poster was referring to (and since I don't speak Italian I wouldn't be able to read them anyway), but my guess- and this goes back to something I've theorized since you first posted images from the DVD versions of this master- is that something went wrong during a conversion. If SUSPIRIA was an actual 2K scan with full film 4:4:4 color space (essentially, a Digital Intermediate), something could have gone wrong in the conversion to "standard" High-Definition 1080P 4:2:0 color space. We've seen similar issues on some Blu-rays of DI-sourced films already in terms of color values going out of whack. I can't imagine Tovoli sitting in that transfer suite, supervising something he didn't like all along. What I can imagine is Tovoli supervising something that looked right uncompressed with the full 4:4:4 color space, and then something went terribly wrong when it was downconverted to 4:2:0.
And a reply from a guy working in the industry:
It's almost implausible for 4:4:4 to 4:2:0 to go wrong in this way. That stuff is clipped to hell, 4:4:4 to 4:2:0 is a change in chroma resolution, not range.
What is possible is that there's been some sort of bungled colour gamut conversion. Perhaps the master was designed for the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative) colour space for exhibition in that standard, and out-of-gamut values were simply clipped when going to Rec.709 (HDTV standard colour). Whatever's happened, it's a total balls up and it's hard to guess what's happened without knowing the full story.
Source: http://www.landofwhimsy.com/archives/2010/01/suspiria-the-good-the-bad-and-the-downright-ugly/
One of the big differences is that in the SW case I've heard that the 2004 master looked identical when projected in cinemas as on the DVD's and broadcasts. I don't know the exact details behind the SW-remaster but is it not a possibility that something like this happened to the Star Wars trilogy in 2004?
I have a hard time believing the horrible transfer wasn't made by some accidental technical issue after studied it, there's no way a human being can make such deliberate choices when colortiming a film as what was seen in these DVD's, even a child or an amateur would have a really hard time to succeed with some of the things I am seeing.
I'm definitely not trying to defend Lucasfilm's actions here, (I wouldn't touch this ridiculous release even if all the technical issues were addressed) it's just that the problems with the SW-DVD's are much more extensive and complex than different colored lightsabers and crushed blacks/clipped whites for being just a sloppy colortiming, I am still amazed how unstable and inconsistent all the levels are from shot to shot throughout these transfers.
Whatever happened, it's just sad that it took seven years with several DVD re-releases and a promotional article for an upcoming blu-ray to utter such a vague explanation for the problems on those discs.