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Star Wars Blu Ray Impressions

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Now that people are actually buying these, even though there are few here who will be, I thought it was be interesting and useful to have a singular thread to post reactions and impressions of them. A lot of people don't have BD players, a lot of people are on the fence about purchasing and want feedback, and some who don't care for the release may be curious how people who have finally seen them feel.

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I mentioned it on the main Blu Ray thread but I'll say it again, those of you buying the set just for the deleted scenes, should check them out first on youtube or something. They're kinda underwhelming. 

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Nobody should buy these discs. An underwhelming sales performance might actually get through to Lucas that people won't continue to give him money for crappy products.

Young Anakin and Obi-Wan 

Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker, Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi

If you want the OT deleted scenes, PM me and I'll send them to you! DON'T BUY THE BLU-RAY DISCS!!!

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Promus said:

Nobody should buy these discs. An underwhelming sales performance might actually get through to Lucas that people won't continue to give him money for crappy products.

I think you can leave these kinds of thoughts in the main Blu-ray thread instead.

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"Look at me, I'm a Blu-Ray! Do you like my water colored cover?"

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abomination?

"Changing classic movies at all is just wrong." Puggo

"HA, Ha, you r ghey" was probably a hilariously insulting comment in Elementary and Middle School, but its not cooly insulting anymore and its certainly not funny: it makes people who say it look like, well, an "inbred monkey." TheSessler

"I'm still %20 the wiser. It amused me that after doing a google image search for "The Final Milf" the second picture is Roger Delgado followed by lots and lots of porn." Bingowings

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How do the "No" and Obi-Wan's scream sound in the final blu ray?  Do they sound more integrated in the scene and less amateurish?

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I have only watched The Phantom Menace so far (Yes I know, god I hate myself for starting with episode 1 first, but what can I say, I'm a bit weary of ANH lately and I felt like watching TPM to see how it holds up).

Picture quality on TPM is very inconsistent. Some shots are brilliantly sharp and high-resolution, some other shots are awful, and there's generally too much DNR making faces look waxy.

You can tell the two scenes that George shot with a prototype digital camera because there's an obvious drop in picture quality. It's the scenes where Qui-Gonn is taking a blood sample from Anakin, and when he's telling Anakin about midichlorians, right? Those bits look lower-resolution anyway. Other low-res shots include the extra podrace elements that George added from the deleted scenes back into the DVD. I honestly think some of those shots are standard-def blowups.

So overall, TPM is very patchy and I'd have to give it a low score for picture quality.

CG is also quite obviously poor. Closeups of Jar Jar and any other CG creature don't stand up well at all. But then you've got new Yoda who looks like 2005 quality!

The surprising thing is that I actually kind of enjoyed the film. Sorry. I've always had a strange fondness for TPM -- as long as you mentally edit out Jar Jar and the "Yippee"s while you watch -- and watching it on blu-ray was quite enjoyable.

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haha hey, you don't have to apologize for liking TPM, to each its own.

For actually buiyng the BD on the other hand... ;)

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I just want to ask that the discussion remain focused on the topic, which is opinions on the Blu-ray set by people who have it (the actual discs, not pirated versions). Please don't criticize owners for buying them.

Thanks.

Forum Administrator

MTFBWY…A

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I was kidding! ------------------> ;) <-------------- See?

bah. ok ok

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It's cool, nobody has been nasty so far. I only want to make sure it stays that way.

Forum Administrator

MTFBWY…A

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Cool, ok. Hey, if want to delete my previous 2 posts and this one so the thread keeps on topic go ahead. :)

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I got the bonus discs all by their lonesome, thanks to Ebay.

Will report on them soon as I receive them.

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Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:
I got the bonus discs all by their lonesome, thanks to Ebay.

Will report on them soon as I receive them.


Already?! That was fast.

How many "bonus discs" are there? I'm a little confused about that.
Do the movie discs themselves contain any bonus features?

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I get lucky once in a while. ;)

I think the only bonus features on the movies are the DVD commentaries and the pieced together one using "archival" interviews. Turns out my best offer for ROTS actually was accepted, so I guess I'll find out.

There are three bonus discs. Disc 7 has the Lucas Archives and Prequel deleted scenes. I wasn't going to bother with it, but that's where they put the Boba Fett cartoon from the HS.

Disc 8 is the OT deleted scenes and other stuff.

Disc 9 has the OT making of docs, the spoofs, and the Trooper doc. Plus other stuff.

 

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Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:

 Disc 7 has the Lucas Archives and Prequel deleted scenes. I wasn't going to bother with it, but that's where they put the Boba Fett cartoon from the HS.

The what now? The whole cartoon?

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That's what I've read. Will be interesting if it's been remastered from the original film. Not crazy about the wallpaper on the sides though.

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Where were you in '77?

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Thanks, SiverWook. It looks like it's disc #8 for me then, if I can find one. I may rent first, if Netflix has it. All the Blockbusters near me closed.

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No problem.

If you can rent them first, by all means do so. I'm amazed there are still two Blockbusters left in my town, although there are a couple mom & pop rental places that seem to be doing well even with all those rental machines around.

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Where were you in '77?

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Number one, how are people getting this before the 16th? I work at Blockbuster and we have em, but aren't allowed to rent em out or sell em til Friday. We can rent them ourselves, being employees, but that's all

 

 

Sorry that all your BBV's closed, there's 19 in my area. We only rent out the actual movie discs, (starting on the 16th, of course), in stupid covers with no backs. The rental covers look like this:

 

 

Sorry for the crappy quality. I just had to show how generic the covers are. You have to look by the BB barcode sticker to see which episode is in the case.

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So are all the old docs original or have they messed with them, too?

And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as the Son of the Suns.

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marioxb said:


Number one, how are people getting this before the 16th?

The release date here in the UK was September 12th (Monday), so it's been on shop shelves since then.

By the way, like with all boxsets the UK doesn't get the same kind of packaging as the US version. We get 9 thin blue trays stacked on top of each other and held together with a thin strip of glued plastic. I suppose that's better than a huge gatefold design, which is what we usually get as an alternative to US packaging.

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LexX said:

So are all the old docs original or have they messed with them, too?

They have been messed with over the years already. "The Making of Star Wars" had William Conrad's original narration inexplicably replaced with the voice of Don LaFontaine for the mid 1990's VHS release. (Don also voiced all the '97 SE trailers and commercials.) I'm going to be really annoyed if Conrad's voice isn't on there.

"SPFX: The Empire Strike Back" had some Disney movie clips cut for all known past home video releases. (Presumably they couldn't be cleared for home video.) This also affected some of Mark Hamill's narration. A 1980's U.K. broadcast recording posted to youtube proves I didn't hallucinate them. ;)

"Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi" has never been cut to the best of my knowledge. Hopefully, all the non SW clips have been cleared again.

The Blu Ray specs have these all in standard definition. With Lucasfilm's track record of rehashing really old video masters, that's probably what we're going to get. Classic Creatures may have been edited on broadcast video, but the all the others were done on film.

Why "Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga" was left out of the set is anyone's guess.

 

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Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:

LexX said:

So are all the old docs original or have they messed with them, too?

They have been messed with over the years already. "The Making of Star Wars" had William Conrad's original narration inexplicably replaced with the voice of Don LaFontaine for the mid 1990's VHS release. (Don also voiced all the '97 SE trailers and commercials.) I'm going to be really annoyed if Conrad's voice isn't on there.

"SPFX: The Empire Strike Back" had some Disney movie clips cut for all known past home video releases. (Presumably they couldn't be cleared for home video.) This also affected some of Mark Hamill's narration. A 1980's U.K. broadcast recording posted to youtube proves I didn't hallucinate them. ;)

"Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi" has never been cut to the best of my knowledge. Hopefully, all the non SW clips have been cleared again.

 

I was aware on some of those already but what I really meant was that did they cut something out so it would match George's grand vision 2011. I don't remember what they had in them but if they talked about Luke's trilogy, 9 movie saga or that George doesn't know what's going to happen.

And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as the Son of the Suns.