captainsolo

Wow,
I haven’t been around for a while due to life stuff and being in some other forums but it’s certainly a passing of the torch. I’ll definitely donate some and think it shouldn’t be difficult to do a $5 or so monthly donation. 10 or 20 of us would more than do it at that rate and many forums do some kind of yearly fundraising for server costs.

Without OT there is no home for every facet of SW fandom, no place to freely discuss all aspects and our own brand of particular madness. Who and where else would understand the humdinger glitch, Technidisc, JSC, Coily, Four eyed Stormtrooper, and my own rambling?

The Lady Luck
Crashed on Dagobah
Where a renegade
Imperial commander teamed
With Dark Jedi
And Lando sighed
As his luck
Had not helped

Meanwhile Mara continued
Being the Badass
Of the galaxy
While Luke looked
For those darn
Power converters

DJ IG-88 played

SF.

Yes it may have a fantasy feel and edge but it’s still SF. There’s no need to break down everything into multiple genres all the time, and despite Lucas saying it is also a Space Western it isn’t a Western either despite having some identifiable tropes.

There is realistic background in the OT for most everything and if you’re curious you can research the methodology of how things work in universe. I still think the used universe idea in the original helped not only ground it for a audience but also made it possible to bask in an SF landscape.
Reading the novelization feels like pure SF with some fantasy elements.

I finally got to try Battle Pod and I have to say even with the big screen and loud sound and fancy bells and whistles I was extremely unimpressed. Anyone who has played Trilogy Arcade or rogue squadron will best it in five minutes. It’s super easy as you just mash the trigger at the auto lock on and hope you get it done in enough time to pass. Little skill is involved. I got on the top leaderboard in only one play through and every level is virtually the same.

4-Lom’s Droid sales

Led to Daala

Building Sun Crusher 2

I just went through this focusing on any perceived differences.
The mono is the same source as the stereo but it is not a fold down. This is a custom mix with different EQ than the regular mix but I don’t think it was done with the same level of care as SW and ESB.
Here the first thing you notice is that the music levels are elevated higher than the stereo and the dialogue levels are also raised. What suffers are the sound effects which feel dialed down to being almost muted at times. You notice this most in the speederbike chase and how Lapti Nek sounds like a soundtrack mono mix release.

So this is a definite mono track much like hearing a 60’s album you’ve always heard in stereo on the abandoned mono mix that while not different is mixed in a way that is strikingly different at times.

Beautiful job Puggo! I ran this on my hdcrt screen upscaled to 1080i and on my klipsch towers.

Karrde laughed hard.

Is it wrong that I read the title and assumed this would be about a resistance to the Disney materials and trying to made a dedicated adherence to pre-TFA? 😉

Stang! said Han.

The Darksaber returns.

Mara lives again!

Worst by far. The ending is a forgone conclusion, every plot thread must be tied off and is done so in a manner of: “its the last one just get it done”. The film to me has always been a boring and uninvolving experience that is far too long.

At least AOTC has some showmanship, some different things going on and an actual mystery of sorts.

A good writer could convey everything in ROTS in less than a reel of screen time.

That said the novelization obliterates the film with great character insight.

I just saw the news. What a sad moment. I always admired Kurtz and this grew exponentially after digging into the production history and of course the secret history that Zombie expertly detailed in his book.
In many ways I think he defined the films and what they were supposed to be. On Facebook I described him as the keeper of the flame in the original days and I still feel he was probably the main person who defined the spirit of ‘77.

I loved getting to hear his viewpoints in interviews and always wondered what he made of the current state of the SW universe and if he had ever known of the site or the various efforts to at least document if not save the original films.

He will be sorely missed. RIP.

So in essence what we have here is a precursor to the revised ESB prints after the 70mm premiere.
Wow, the stuff you learn here every day…the differing shots were a revelation to me but this flow of events is not surprising at all given how rushed the last weeks of post production were.
It’d be funny to see if anyone today even remembers doing any of these shots last minute…then again very few remember there were three audio mixes.

I’d like to see this some day but all copies are out of print and the Laserdisc is rot city.

I’m scrubbing through the 1080p version very slowly to take it all in. I don’t have a good pro reference monitor or anything but I do have my trusty OT.com credentials. Hopefully I can get a BD burner soon so I can do some deep analysis of HH’s brand new 70mm creation since I’m such a huge fan of matrixing formats.

But so far…wow…wowie…wow…wow…this makes the Tech samples I’ve seen and anything else look puny in comparison. There’s elements of the various video transfers we all have come to know and love and then there’s elements that seem completely different. One moment I 'm reminded of the JSC, one the 97 SE, the next the GOUT/Definitive, the next the SSE and/or non-Tech prints and the next the Technidisc and so on and so on…

And as for grain in spite of the time consuming and nice looking method being used for the DNR version (and DNR in itself is not a bad thing-it is used on a daily basis) put me down in the camp of it being unnecessary for this. I’m a tried and true 100% grain fan; I can’t get enough and what is on here naturally looks beautiful to my eyes even with this being in its raw form.

And that it’s already GOUT ready with lossless 77 stereo and mono…oh geez with the mono as loud as it will go…I’m already too darn emotional.

Okay Hands up, who here got teary eyed seeing the original LFL logo look this amazing? (Ironically I’m somebody who first experienced SW with the 97SE.)

The amount of time, research and proper equipment chains is absolutely staggering and spot on. Personally I’ve been after a 5300 for years ever since Disclord raved about them on the lddb forums as the best matrix decoder he had ever heard. A lot of what you’ve stated makes perfect sense with what he stated and the various forums and manuals I’ve read over the years. I had no idea 4K77 had a brand new edition and now this makes it a must to play on my system since I play matrix LD tracks almost daily.

I’d be very interested to know your thoughts on PLIIx hairyhen and how you think it does with not only providing the correct channel separation but also how well it works with mono surround tracks by using all four surrounds in a 7.1 system. At first I felt it was weird but then I realized that when speakers are properly separated IIx does a great job at preserving the correct feel. Of course it does have some instances of dialogue/effect bleeding at times and has occasionally stereoized/panned the rear a bit on a few tracks but since I thought I’d never get a chance to use a 5300 that it was as good as I could do. The movie mode is supposed to be an even more accurate formulation than regular PLII and far more than the theatrical version which pretty much stopped with SR. Thus I would suggest that movie mode is a better choice if you have to upmix but for this track it should be unnecessary since all the hard work has already been done. Music mode, while it doesn’t seem to pan rears, is more of a gimmicky format designed to wrap two channel music around the listener and not at all accurate like movie mode.

Also I’m glad to see you worked out the digital to analog and back issue. I’ve often wondered about how using one of these older units in my system would work since I always stay in the source format which in this case would be digital and all units are analog only.

So far what interests me most is the ability you had on this new version to more fully separate anything from being lost in the channels by being diverted into the LFE AND prevent centering. IMO this is arguably the biggest issue you can run into with matrix tracks on any decoding unit as there is the tendency to sum everything towards and through the center and send far too much information the the subwoofer which then loses details. For example, in any Jabba dialogue in ROTJ his voice and especially laughs boom right down into your sub and immediately you lose ambiance and even effects detailing etc.

Ultimately in short this should be INCREDIBLE…
And
I sooooooooooooooooo need a 5300! In fact I think I saw that same ebay listing and was put off by the local pickup only. 😉

EDIT: HH, have you ever thought about or tried running through an actual Dolby cinema processor? That would be the only other thing I can think of to try and should provide an interesting result if you could ever figure out how to get a recording run through one.

I remember this opening and playing in virtually all the major screens of the major new Regal flagship theater where I saw so many great openings on their super huge main rear auditoriums. While I can’t remember very much technically since I was only 9 at the time I do remember camping out for tickets and finally managing to get seats for the second day of release and then being blown away by both the quality of the experience and by hearing my first dose of EX with the rear center sound information.
Sadly I saw TFA in that same hall that was turned into an RPX and it was literally as if the original presentation quality never existed.

In short I’m so looking forward to this as there is literally no decent home release (the LD has some definite issues) and the theatrical presentation was so stellar. Heck come to think of it even AOTC had a good presentation and it should have looked like complete garbage due to being such an early digital production. That may be why I saw it at least five times theatrically. Or because I was obsessed with the seismic charge sound effects…😉

I’m going to see it at some point but will readily admit I don’t expect much and am terrified they will rip off elements of the Daley novels which are my absolute favorite SW stories.

WSS had a full modern digital restoration of the original mix that has never been released. You can read great technical articles online about the restoration. So far as I know the LD audio tracks are either matrixed only or based on the original mix.

Essentially when dealing with PD titles it is the new restoration or version that can be copyrighted but anyone else is free to make their own release or version from the non-restored still PD materials or whatever they get a hold of. However if so inclined and it is within a certain time frame there are instances of original holders or studios re-obtaining rights to items that were PD for some time-such as Republic re-aquiring It’s a Wonderful Life before Paramount took it over.

This will complete my favorite trilogy and the one that means most to me. The more time necessary the better it will eventually be.

Chewtobacca said:

CatBus said:
From the Empire Strikes Back novelization:

And to add to his misery, a high-pitched whistle blared into the cubicle, tormenting his keen sense of hearing.

It’s a bit like playing captainsolo a low-bitrate MP3.

Argh! You obviously know me too well…I get bugged horribly by all the lack of fidelity from over loud commercials to bad broadcast audio-but especially the poor recording of many youtube uploads.

FLAC was a godsend when I first discovered it. And even though it’s inaudible and unecessary in my car-I still use FLAC and made sure to get a higher end head unit.

Absolutely!!!
I’d say this essentially confirms that the video sourced HD masters are likely from IPs that weren’t going to match the release prints anyway then compounded by pitiful lackluster regrading by Lowry.

Also of note is that the LD release seems to have more color in the opening but then calms down later. The closest to the HD Master is actually the old pan and scan release oddly.

It also goes for every film we discuss and try to bring back to its former glory whether it be the unavailability of original audio or revisionism by someone preparing the video master which then becomes the defacto standard.

TCM did originally run the non-tampered with version. It was how I first saw the film as a child and I remember vividly having to stay up secretly to watch the absurd late night/early morning on a school night timeslot. I’m pretty sure today that it would have been the LD video master as they used video masters from that era-progressing to DVD era masters until the moment recently when they started airing a few HD masters on their HD broadcasts.

For a few years I watched the fan transfer of the LD that was made. I think its still around someplace. Eventually once I went LD mad I got my own copy and they aren’t that expensive. For LD it’s a decent but not great transfer much like most Warner discs of that time period.

WAC would be the people to do it, but I doubt if anyone would go against GL’s wishes and I’m sure there are rights complications in today’s world-not to mention that perhaps some ownership on the film changed during the 2004 Director’s Cut.

EDIT-the old LD capture is spleened still.