Ryan McAvoy said:

ITV (One of the older UK TV channels) has been running the PT over the last few weeks and I've dipped in to them when channel hopping. ITV seem to always chop down the films they show to 16:9... because they are philistines clearly. So these were 16:9 versions of the PT.

My gods, if you thought the PT looked bad in scope, then you ain't seen nothing yet. Zoomed like this they look soft to the point of cheesy and cheap daytime soap-opera and being closeup on the actors faces further reveals how horribly, horribly these films are edited together e.g. TPM uses shots of Cpt Paneka quickly glancing off camera at the crew/director/something while speaking (Like he was reading lines off of an idiot board). I hadn't seen how bad these moments are at the distnce that scope provides and the SFX looks considerably worse. So sloppy for films produced on these budgets.

Contrast that, with me repeatedly watching ANH footage (Almost frame-by-frame) for my 'Lost Workprint' cut and it's night and day. I reccomend the next time anybody watches ANH, they just train there eyes on Alec Guinness' face. There is a whole 'nother film going on there while the action is happening and the other actors are talking.

You should see the 4:3 pan and scan DVD's. ;)

IIRC, Lucas was shooting multi camera on AOTC and ROTS, so the soap opera analogy is spot on. I think single camera is more appropriate for movies, the exception being when you need coverage on a one take affair like a stunt or blowing something up.

When I've seen the prequels run on Spike TV, my cable company compresses the signal so much, it makes the CGI look really really flat and really really bad.