I just took this 100mpix pano of my Star Wars collection - thought I’d share here 😃
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YEoBMPYM1Q9GeYJ4zDsRDifd7pdO0TWS/view?usp=sharing
Well, I kind of softened up on the issue over the years - erasing history is wrong, sure, but thanks to the frustrated fans here taking matters in their own hands, we’re closer than ever to having those versions in 4K77 and 4K83 and hopefully soon 4K80. These preserve the films the way people saw them in theaters back then, so we, here on this, site got frustrated and angry and that drove us to make sure history won’t be erased for those who care. Honestly, I ,of course, hope the originals do get an official release one day but as long as the fan versions are available and Disney doesn’t push against them being freely available to those who want them, I’m happy.
Sure, the general public won’t get to see fan preservations, but the general public doesn’t really care either way, since to them it’s just a movie - they don’t think about film history and how the films were made and so they will remain ignorant - but the general public is totally ignorant of much more important things in history and elsewhere. And the people who do care can get them and research them for historical reasons very easily, thanks to this site.
So, at this point, to me, it is mostly about “I want the version I like”. The main reason I like Star Wars any more is the technical stuff - marveling at how they were able to achieve those shots with the technology at the time, so the altered version are completely uninteresting to me. So for my personal enjoyment, I want a good looking, clean release of the original versions but it’s not really about preserving history any more, it’s about wanting the version I like.
EDIT: This will all actually only be true once 4K80 is out - right now, the 35mm versions of Empire are kind of lacking, though again, for historical research purposes, they’re kind of ok too.
That it definitely will. My point was simply that there’s little point to 4K when even the 1080p Blu-Ray has more fine detail.
Well, actually, and not surprisingly, the comparison of the print scan and the Blu-Ray posted in the TPM thread clearly shows that the Blu-Ray has more fine detail than the scan.
The quality drops noticeably.
Honestly, I’m not surprised he’s seen it - Simon Pegg is a good friend of his and he tweeted about it a couple of years ago. But I’m surprised he’d mention it in an interview.
Maclunky 😕
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1204960815821946880
In this twitter video JJ Abrams talks about how he wants the original version of Star Wars to be released and mentions Despecialized Editions. Bad news is, he pretty much says the originals just won’t be released officially.
To me, the blu-ray looks by far the best - sure, the waxines is a problem, but since it still has way more detail, adding some grain should solve that. And even the HDTV seems to have more detail - the problem there is the compression, which eats a lot of the detail up. Check out the handlebars on this picture:
http://www.framecompare.com/screenshotcomparison/J1BJCNNU
But is there less image on top and bottom or more on the sides? Or something in between?
Can that be done? And would it yield a 10 or even 12 bit image? That would be awesome!
As for whether this changes anything for Despecialized, yes, the change is that I will now definitely be waiting for the 4K Blu-Ray or at least a full bitrate 4k web-dl as a source.
Mandalorian is “out there” in 4K HDR, so the drm has clearly been broken on day one, so I think for those of us who won’t get D+ until 2021 (and believe me, if I could get it now, I’d be the first in line), someone will put the new masters out as well.
There were definitely some recomps done for 2004 - for example the introduction of the imperial fleet in TESB. Would be curious if they recomped it again for 19SE or kept the original compositing.
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/J1BEFNNU
The Disney+ frame looks the best to me, but I am completely unqualified to properly evaluate.
The Despecialized will continue to be my prefered, because I just can’t stand the special edition changes. I don’t need to see Jedi Rocks any clearer.
Yeah, it looks the best to me too but by a surprisingly small margin considering that both 4K77 and DeEd are scanned from theatrical prints and DeEd is 720p.
But hopefully soon, someone will post some screens of the highest bit rate 4K stream from D+, so we can see properly.
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/J1BEFNNU
Could it be that for both the 4K and the 2004 masters, this reel of ROTJ was scanned from the same non-ONeg source, which already got blurred when being copied? This is only way I can see that would explain the lack of fine detail in both, if they are different scans.
If that’s the case, which honestly, it probably is, then the quality of it seems to be pretty bad. I’ll probably be sticking to the BD for Despecialized because at least there we know what changes were made to it and the quality seems comparable, if not better.
I’d really like someone to post a comparison screenshot of that ROTJ Luke shot from 4K83 and DEED v2.5. Can’t do it myself right now as I’m at work.
Looking at the screenshots posted so far, it does look like a new master but not necessarily a new scan, because the clarity/detail level is comparable to or worse than the 2004 masters.
It might be that they simply found the 2004 digital masters before the color grading and sharpening and upscaled them and gave them a new grade, which would have been necessary for HDR anyway.
Wow, that’s so cool! To me, it looks a lot more like the ESB Yoda than the puppet in TLJ.
Pretty sure the first one is 16mm, which is a very different aesthetic - but they definitely look awesome 😃
I’m looking at their website and they’re offering fairly expensive premium but it doesn’t say what the limits of free uploads/downloads are. I need somewhere, where I can upload large files for free but also where people can download them for free with relative ease. Uloz.to used to be it but no more 😦
Omg, that’s awful 😄
Actually, lots of the links are dead now, I have to reupload the files. The best bet currently is public torrent trackers. I’m still looking for a good alternative to uloz.to.
Yeah, no problem 😊
Blutopia looks like a private torrent tracker - not something you could just provide links to.
GDrive and Mega both have data limits but I guess I could create a new account for each film.