"There are major legal issues of a Donner Superman 2 cut, because to do it, they would have to remove ALL footage he did not shoot. The DGA does not allow for their to be two directors on a film."
But most of the material in SII was shot by Donner. How, then, was the current version allowed?
"Laserdiscs in the CAV mode literally allowed you to access any frame or segment on the disc within seconds and you could run something like the Death Star explosion backwards and forwards like a movie projector at variable speeds"
And newer players do it with CLV mode, too.
Basically, MPEG is a forward-encoding process: Changes from one frame to the next are encoded, and anything that doesn't change is left as is. Now, in order to watch the film backwards, the DVD player must look at the frame prior to the one you are viewing. Needless to say, this is a tedious process, and it works for fast forward as well. There's a great deal of computation involved, which is why early players sucked at it.
LD, on the other hand, just shows whatever frame it's on, and FF/RR occurs at whatever speed you want with no delay. No muss, no fuss.
"but there's a different tactile experience with the 12" media that you just don't get with DVD. The discs feel simultaneously substantial and delicate, and a gatefold jacket allows plenty of room for nice big artwork."
And LD will always kick DVD's ass when it comes to fast-forward and rewind.
"Why not release it as widely as possible? I mean, they've never seemed to have a problem milking the cash cow before. Why start now?"
I have no problem picturing Lucas wanting to point out how outdated VHS is, just as much as he points out how outdated film is.
Of course, I'm sure he wishes LD was too outdated to use as well...
"Like releasing Phantom Menace on LD in Japan only."
It had a much better market there.
"You know, come to think of it, not only will ROTS not be on VHS to complete the set, Lucas' newest vision of the OT won't be on VHS either."
Exactly.
"Not exactly. Again, there are millions of people who still own millions of VHS tapes, and millions of people who don't own DVD's"
Agreed. My friend has invested a small fortune in all his Disney and various other kids films on VHS, and doesn't feel like repeating this anytime soon. And children's DVDs aren't necessarily more convenient than the VHS equivalents. They both have forced ads, and as far as I can tell, no VHS version had the ability to lock out your fast-forward button like DVD can. Of course, this is why I rip my kids' movies, so that only the feature plays, but this shouldn't be necessary.