Vladimon

A busy person, jumping to the last post and asking sth in a hurry. Sorry 'bout that. Good luck getting a new PC and gettin back to normal life asap. I’m not a fan of what most people do when they try to fix SW movies to their liking as they often fix one problem but make lots of other scenes look worse or introduce new problems to non-problematic scenes by tinkering with the image too much. But I must admit those pics of yours look pretty good.

Is there an estimate on when this could be finished?

Maaga said:

The best version of TPM we’re going to get is probably a theatrically graded version of emanswfan’s regrain for the 4K blu ray, with the missing elements patched in from this scan, the HDTV broadcast and digital special features.

I do not think regrain can compensate for the Wax Wars loss of detail on people’s faces that has been there since BD and even the much higher resolution in 4k BD/DNP versions does not fix that. I would take a good enough 4K scan of the original with its natural flaws over any regrained / heavily stitched up version made using the official 4K releases as primary source.

I guess we are looking at 1-2 years of wait time before this sees the light of day? The new DNP 4K version of TPM is nice to look at, but again changes the mood/ atmosphere of the whole picture even beyond what the terrible colors of the blu-ray did (the DNP4K being the better one to look at as it actually looks good in HDR 4K, but is sooo far from the original photography as seen in theaters back in 1999).

TPM rly calls for a good 4k scan as it really does look like a movie and even as a story I like it the best out of the prequels. The more I watch it, the more I like it and see what GL was trying to achieve with not just this movie but the whole prequel trilogy. It is still a flawed film in terms of acting/directing and some creative choices made, but my gosh does it work well if u can drop the “OT is the real SW” attitude.

Guys why is there a 136 min vs 142min running time difference between DVD/HDTV and blu-ray? FPS, longer end credits?

Guys, an awesome project. BTW, does anyone happen to still have any functioning and accessible dl links to a good-quality FotR 1080p TE HDTV capture or a 1080p Theatrical Edition BDrip? Could anyone help me? PM? I own all of the EE blu-rays and the FotR TE blu-ray, but they are catching dust back home in my country and as I currently reside in Asia, difficult to dl this stuff here. Can’t even buy the TE blu-rays anywhere here. Most ppl don’t even buy blus here btw, they all just stream movies and video and watch EVERYTHING on their phones only. No understanding for physical copy collectors and digital archives keepers.

So there are two different v1.4s out there? Now I wonder what it is I’ve seen. It’s definitely labeled v1.4 but seems to have so many flaws… o.O

I’ve just watched 4K77 v1.4. It corrects some problematic shots but introduces new problems as well. Slightly crushed blacks on the top of the hair of all three people when Luke is trying to announce his departure from the farm (a problem similar to SSE), a rather dark face of uncle Owen when buying droids from the Jawas. As if he had used some charcoal to conceal himself. Still lots of space for improvement in the future releases.

Tomas Stacewicz said:

I recently watched 4K83 version 1.3 and really enjoyed the color timing and grading which was strikinly beatiful. Return of the Jedi has never looked so great before. Also, the minimal DNR makes a good job creating visible but smaller grain as probably would be expected from a camera negative.

Keep up the good work Team Negative 1!

Tomas, compare 4K83 v1.3 with v1.0 in scenes like Han out of carbonite - see the unnaturally pepper-red face of Han Solo? As I said before, most of the color corrections on the 1.0 versions of the 4K projects (1.1, …) tend to fix one scene /shot while making the next one worse. We’re still with no definitive, best version of either 4K77 or 4K83 right now.

Edit: u could also compare that scene with the official blu-ray version. Neither 4K83 v1.0 nor blu-ray make Han look so red.

I’d take a bit less fine detail with much better colors and no excessive DNR over the the amateurish blue-ray version any day. Whose idea was it to create such inconsistency in one film? It’s like it was done by a person who was experimenting with various features of a video-editing software and then at some point left it at what it was and passed on as ready for release. It’s truly unbelievable. The more u think about the DNR decisions and color grading of the blu-ray, the more confused u get how anyone thought that was what the film deserved. I get the point of trying to match it with the other two prequels but if that is the case, it went terribly wrong.

Sry, yes, I meant v1.6.

How about the Silver Screen Edition of SW, v1.3? Unfortunately, unless anyone helps me, I don’t think I’ll be be able to dl it as it is really nowhere to be found, and so I can’t decide yet if that’s my favorite right now.
But just judging by v1.0, it could be.
The overall color consistency seems much better than anything else out there and the blacks are mostly acceptable. It’s 1080p only but I don’t mind since 4k and 1080p in 4K77/83 don’t make much of a difference anyway.

How I wish we could have a 4K99 project going on right now.
I think forum member ZigZig is working on a 4k scan of TPM theatrical cut? But he said he was busy and wouldn’t update us on his progress too often.

I kinda get the hate many people carry for this movie in their hearts, but personally I just like this film. It has great nostalgia factor to me and I honestly think it’s not nearly as bad a film as most would have us believe. And that legendary soundtrack!

It’s long been my wish to own at least a nice 1080p version of the theatrical cut without the terrible DNR and awful colors as seen on the BD release and with no upscaled, ugly and blurry extended scenes/shots like those inserted into the pod race sequence.

Oh well, keep dreaming, I shall.

I have been checking out some of the opinions and technical information posted here across multiple threads and it seems to me that there is really no good way of judging what theatrically accurate actually is/was. The viewing experience was not uniform across cinemas even back then and with the various degeneration factors affecting the projects now, the color inaccuracies of basically all the older home releases as well as their lack of detail due to low resolution, it becomes a bit of a never-ending quest to get the best and most accurate versions of these films. Is it even possible now without a time machine?

As for 4K83, I personally like the flawed v1.0 better than the supposedly superior v1.3. I have checked it out and the pepper-red Han Solo’s face in “Free from Carbonite” scene left me going back to v1.0. Have not seen v1.2 or any others yet. With 4K projects what I have seen so far is that while the many updated versions fix a lot of issues with the image that is available to us now, they mess up on many other scenes/shots at the same time. I do not doubt the guys who do these color corrections have some /a lot of/ experience, fan determination, or are actual professionals in video color grading, editing, etc. But even if the last applies, it seems to me that it comes down to their personal preferences rather than theatrical accuracy when making final decisions on their color corrections.

Then there are a number of problems that can objectively be considered flaws in any video source. Those are also present and apparent in all the current versions.

So, I would say, when choosing the most accurate version from what is out there right now, there is actually still no clear winner. Best to download as many versions as you can and see which one you like best.

A very helpful thread for forum newcomers such as myself who have found it difficult to know what is what in the sea of all these different cuts, versions, preservation projects.
I will add that while the 4K project versions are the most accurate to the originals currently out there, they all have crushed blacks when compared with the blu-rays or Harmy’s Editions. Correct me if I am wrong on this, but that is what I have seen in all the versions so far. So, just consider that u will be losing quite some detail in the dark areas/scenes in the 4K versions. Still, very nice to watch, I love the grain too.

Alright, after some comparisons with the blu-rays, am I right to say that both 4K77 and 4K83 (all the version currently out) have crushed blacks? There is detail lost in black areas that cannot be seen no matter what settings in my video players. I still love the way the films look but the loss of detail in almost all deep-dark areas is disappointing. Hopefully, in the future, someone will use 4K prjects as their main sources for updated versions of the OT films but will combine them with other sources (Blu rays or 4K rips from Disney+, official 4kUHD discs coming in 2020) to fix just those problematic shots/scenes. I do not think Harmy DE v3.0 is coming anytime soon though.

Guys, could anyone help me find the Japanese laserdisc theatrical cut version of TPM? Seems to have vanished from the internet now.

Thx guys, I’ll try to get that v1.3 somehow. It’s just so difficult to download these anywhere. I wish they were more accessible. I don’t really have time to register at a dozen different forums/websites and PM a bunch of people asking for help. I currently reside in China which makes it even more difficult to access certain services. I got the 37-38GB 1080p versions of 4k77 and 4k83 v1.0, but really cannot find the updated ones. Torrents don’t exist for those. 😃 I love the grain and everything, it’s just the colors that need a bit of correcting.

Guys, I wanna ask u here to make sure it’s not just my copy - is the original 4K83, 1080p, no-DNR very bluish (or even pinkish?) throughout most of the film? I mean Endor looks very strange, even for an old film, surely this was not the cinematographer’s vision back then? Or was this the original idea? To make everything look so dark and devoid of natural colors? I mean it’s so very different from anything else I’ve seen. Is that supposed be like that? There’s no warm green present in Endor scenes whatsoever. I understand the thing about reel by reel color grading but still.

I have wanted this for so long now! A nice 1080p or 4K version of the theatrical cut with colors as seen in cinemas back then. The blu-ray has terrible colors even on the best of displays (and properly calibrated!). Really wanna see the dirty, grainy version of this in its original cinematic glory. Enough with the wax wars already. We need the real thing!
Please release a 1080p, no-DNR version too then.

Could anyone please help me get a working download link to an unaltered HDTV version of The Phantom Menace? All the torrents or file sharing services’ links that used to work are now dead 😦 I am interested in all these projects as well, but I would really want to have the HDTV version first. That is the best we got besides these projects, right? Unfortunately, most of these projects, while they fix a lot, they mess up on other stuff at the same time, and so I still prefer the HDTV version. So disappointed by the official blu ray releases 😦 Whose idea was it to make everything look so very very bad. I thought they had sensible professionals doing those color and image quality corrections. Apparently not.