The picture on this DVD is from the THX LD. The sound on this Star Wars disc is from the 1989 widescreen laserdisc. This was a remix done by Ben Burtt in 1985. It's closer to the original mix than the 1993 and 1995 THX LD's and obviously closer than the 1997 and 2004 mixes. You can read all about it here. The dead giveaway that this is the 1989 mix and not the 1977 Dolby Stereo mix is the 3PO line about the tractor beam. It's on this DVD, and not on the 1977 Dolby Stereo mix, which so far as I know, has never been put onto DVD. Not even the recent "split screen" disc.

The isolated score track is very well done, matching the edits in the movie. There are more than you realize, and whoever made this did a wonderful recreation. It's also fun seeing the "Dianoga" scene with the score synched up to it. The Empire isolated track isn't quite as successful. It recreates some tracking at times (the introduction of the Super Star Destroyer for instance) instead of hearing Williams' original composition (the scene was extended, so the original music wouldn't quite fit but a little editing might have fixed that).

The original crawl on this disc is a recreation, but it's very well done. And it even has retained the lower case "r" in the word "rebel". I never saw the point in capitalizing it and always type that way, in honor of the way the movie originally was.

The color on the Star Wars disc is desaturated, and I'm not sure why. It looks alright, but it probably could have looked better. The Greedo scene has sub-titles that are in the black band and sometime overlap the image as well. The side breaks are incredibly well handled, so I'm not sure if this is from the 1993 or 1995 LDs.

When I want to watch Star Wars on DVD, this is the disc that I grab. It's the best version of the movie I've ever seen on home video.

Neil