Asaki

I would think they'd make Eps II and III a priority, since all they'd have to do is re-render all of the CGI and adjust the depth for all of the green-screened actors accordingly.

The OT, they'd have to do whatever sort of voodoo magick was done to Nightmare Before Christmas (I never saw it).

TV's Frink said:

And lol at Asaki's new avatar. :-)

 Thanks. I think I changed it the day after the reveal? It only seemed fitting.

I would be more than happy with that, even if they didn't send it to Lowry. Just as long as they don't screw up the colors.

georgec said:

Should I buy these discs? I've searched endlessly on the web and can't find screenshots of the non-anamorphic transfers. I would like to know how good/bad the quality really is before making my purchases.

The anamorphic fan-edits don't look that much better than the original GOUT, and there's tons of screenshots of those around.

Here's ton of shots of Episode IV: ***The NEW "official" Screenshots thread ***

Though screenshots don't do it justice, since the DVNR isn't as noticable when it's not in motion.

Here's a few places where it is noticable in stills: DVNR smearing in GOUT not in the master...? Or is the 1995 release a different master altogether...?

Ignorance.

ROFLRICK said:

I'm curious, where does the knowledge of the 'proper color' that everyone seems to hold every release to come from? Memory, a specific source, general consensus?

A little bit of all three, I think. Sources include different releases of the film on home video, film cels, camera captures of the Technicolor print, etc...

Besides that, you don't have to be an expert to notice how messed up the colors are in 2004: lasers and sabers are dull in color, inconsistent, lacking bright cores, or lacking color altogether. Not to mention the crushed blacks throughout all three pictures.

TheBoost said:

That artwork is BAD. I mean like, early 80s Dungeons and Dragons bad.

You take that back! >:(

Moth3r said:
Never compared ROTJ.

 Judging from your transfers, Jedi has hardly any DVNR applied at all (if any). The GOUT doesn't have much applied (or is applied in a different way, more similar to the DVNR on the '97s), but it's enough to notice that something is wrong. If you go frame-by-frame, you can see where a black dirt spot will appear, and still be partly visible in the following frames. Which is funny because the process is supposed to remove those, not make them linger!

I think you guys are spending much more time argueing about Nazi/holocaust/rape/communism allusions than anyone is actually making them...

Maybe we should keep things on topic?

So I watched this preservation again the other day, and it does look a bit like it was cropped to 4:3, but I guess we'll find out (deja vu!).

http://www.wbshop.com/Treasure-Island-1990/1000208970,default,pd.html

Harmy said:

I really hope this is what the whole transfer looks like and the others were just a bad rip.

 Like the Predator BD, some scenes are going to look less terrible than others.

We all know whoever ripped it didn't accidentally add a crapton of DNR to it, even though we wish that were true =/

I thought it looked more like a bad Photoshop.

Uncanny Antman said:

Goddamn...so waxy!  Some shots are beautiful, and others are Predator SE-level terrible.

Somehow it makes me feel better to see the whole saga treated so shabbily.  It's nicer than just the OT being shit on.  :)

Unfortunately, 99% of people are going to have no idea what you're talking about when you try to tell them how awful it looks. It's not like anyone is yelling "Noooooooooo!" when it happens.

So now I'm curious, there has to be something wrong with Episodes II and III as well.

adywan said:

Seeing this shot in HD really makes one appreciate just how truley awful the special effects in the Prequels really are =)

Laserschwert said:

Some of the first leaked screens from TPM looked horrible (extreme denoising causing a wax look), although some other ones looked really good.

HERE'S one of the worst ones (and HERE'S the HDTV-version as a comparison).

That's what I feared when someone posted the Yoda comparison shot, but I thought "Nah, TPM is too modern to join in the Wax Wars. It's gotta be a fluke."

And here I was, thinking the Prequel Blus would be a worthy release =| =| =|

silverwheel said:

The lack of GOUT offerings tells me that LFL really wants these out of existence.

Idunno. Seems to be just another case of...well...whatever it was Disney was trying to achieve when they withheld copies of Tron when Tron 2 was coming out.

I think the official unofficial word was that Tron 2 did much better with test audiences who hadn't seen the original, or hadn't seen it in a very long time. On one hand, I can definitely see this applying to the Star Wars Blus. On the other hand, I don't think this will work in the same way (especially at such short notice).

Seems to me that LucasFilm is panicking, and doing a last-ditch effort so that people can't boycott and buy the old editions instead. I'm not sure how much it'll help, but at least they won't run into issues of "The 04/06 are outselling the BDs!"

Sluggo said:

The box set just had the Bonus Features disc with the Empire of Dreams documentary.

 Mine didn't =(

I always presumed Yoda was supposed to look younger in the trilogy...though at his age, I suppose a lapse of 18 years or so wouldn't be very noticeable.

Yep. We checked Target, not a one could be found. This "rumor" seems pretty legit =|

I always see tons of them at Target; the old Limited Edition ones sold separately, and the black/blue set. I'll have to check if I go there tomorrow, but if this rumor is true, I'm sure they'll be gone.

Harmy said:

I'm afraid there is indeed something wrong with those screens none, they seem to have increased brightness (this is clearly visible on the black bars), which I'm sure isn't the case with the HDTV captures.

It's also not a very good source for discerning video quality vs. BluRay, since they've had JPEG compression added to them.

Marty.McFly said:

Just imagine what it would have been like if Twitter (and overall number of people using the internet) existed back in May 1999 or in 97 - I imagine the backlash against Lucas would have been even worse than it is now.

Weren't all of the CGI changes one of the biggest things hyped for the '97 release? I seem to remember lots of commercials/specials on the new CGI X-wings and stuff like that.

Plus, they were calling them the "Special Editions", as opposed to now, where they've literally replaced the original editions in more ways than one.

dark_jedi said:

LOL, like I said, some here have HUGE boners over these laserdiscs still, and it cracks me up...

 I don't know about "HUGE boners", but the GOUT is a giant mess of motion blur that can never ever be fixed. 35 mm transfers are nice to dream about, but they're going to remain a dream for some time to come. A proper official OT re-release is an even more immense dream. Reconstructions are nice, but come with their own flaws (especially inherited flaws from their sources). Puggo's 16 mm ESB project looks promising, but we'll have to wait and see.

So that kind of leaves the rest of us with very limited options...

dark_jedi said:

these just look like pure SHIT on nowaday systems, and if you don't think so, then YOU don't have a nowaday HDTV setup, unless it is in the 20 inch or smaller range.

 I've watched quite a few LD rips on this TV with friends, and nobody's ever complained about the quality (they definitely complained about VHSes). I don't know the exact size, but I know it's bigger than 40 inches.

After watching these a ton more times, I must say, I like them a lot more than I expected to. It is a bit softer than the JSC, but somehow it feels...different. More of a natural softness whereas the softness in the JSC feels more distorted (maybe due to the color smearing?).

I'm excited for this, though it still leaves us longing for a comparative transfer of Empire and Jedi.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Oh sorry by rudimentary '04 style bootleg; I meant that I would be happy even with a quality similar to the low quality transfers that used to appear on eBay... 

  I figured you meant the 2006 discs.

In some ways it does look better than the V8: the colors don't smear, and there's more of them.

I'm confused, though. I've heard some mention that this "smear free 93" is not just Ep IV, but all three films? Confirm/deny?

ChainsawAsh said:

Except that the JSC has less detail than the 93 (even with its smearing), and the GOUT was made from the original 93 master tape.  I have my doubts that any laserdisc transfer, X0 or no, could improve on the GOUT.

 The GOUT only has more detail when everything is holding still. Which is not very often.

X0-1138 said:

I'd like to obtain accurate colour information about the 'first night' prints of each film and try to match them as closely as possible.

 There isn't any.

Zombie's Save Star Wars site has an article that's about as close as anyone's ever going to get, and even then, he's only making his best educated guesses.

I concur with others, the raw original X0 project files were released, and everyone deemed them mostly not worthwhile. A transfer of the JSC would be more desirable, especially since episodes IV and V only saw release in the impossible-to-find and less-than-stellar-quality Dark-Sega set.

X0-1138 said:
There's a possibility that I may remove 'Episode IV - A NEW HOPE' from the beginning of the crawl but I must stress, there shall be NO alterations other than the above mentioned.

 I don't know why the 80s crawl bothers so many people. I know it's about preservation, but every time I see it without the "New Hope", it always looks so naked to me (and both crawls are proper theatrical crawls, anyway).