Those new Star Wars DVDs are gonna suck
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that the original pre-Special Edition versions of the original Star Wars trilogy were finally going to come out on DVD. That sounded rather exciting to me at the time.But now, TheDigitalBits.com reports (here, here, and here) that the new DVDs will be transferred from outdated letterboxed masters that were originally created for the laserdisc and VHS editions way, way back in 1993.
In fact, this has been public knowledge since as far back as May 3, when Lucasfilm's Jim Ward told USA Today:
The original films' video quality will not match up to that of the restored versions. "It is state of the art, as of 1993, and that's not as good as state of the art 2006," Ward says.In other words, since a lot of Star Wars fans are already copying the laserdiscs to bootleg DVDs anyway, Lucasfilm has figured that it will make the bootlegs for us, without any real improvements, and then charge us about US$30 per official bootleg.
And those who want to see the original movies in their original versions in anamorphic widescreen are still, as ever, SOL.
posted by Peter T Chattaway at 4:43 PM
1 Comments:
I wish I would have read your site yesterday. I went out and bought them all today like the huge fan I am. And, like an idiot, I opened all of them. See, I don't own the Special Editions for the simple reason that they are terrible. But man was I excited about the "original release." Whatever you do, dear reader, DO NOT BUY THEM! They are worse than terrible. The box, the one that says THX remastered for picture and sound quality, is a lie! Either that, or THX isn't worth anything. I don't even buy that they are 1993 quality. In 1993, or 1977 for that matter, didn't they know how to change from one shot to another in separate frames? Let me explain what I mean. First of all, let me just say that I had no idea these were lower quality. I'm watching them (excited) and I'm thinking, the picture is grainy, there's dots, okay whatever at least they are the original and they're on DVD. About 2 or 3 minutes in I start noticing that there are these weird "flashes" (not light but just something out of place) between almost every shot. Like, whenever a shot changes something weird happens that my eye catches. I try to put it out of my mind. I'm making it up. But it persists. By the time Luke is hanging from the ceiling in the ice cave (TESB), I'm perplexed. I pause and advance forward shot by shot. As the shot switches from a wide shot of hanging Luke reaching for his out-of-reach light saber to a shot with his hand in the foreground, I see it. The two scenes are superimposed over each other for a frame as the perspective switches. I move on and pick another random point. There's Han on his taun-taun (I'm a nerd) at the top of a ridge, and as the shot is about to switch, there is a photography artifact that looks like an orange semicircle, like a sunrise on the bottom of the shot (where no sunrise should be) for a frame. It is the same effect you would find in poorly developed photos. I turned it off after that. I put in the Special Edition version that came with it and watched the same scene with Luke. I slowed it down and voila: the shots changed as they should from one frame to another without an artifact, seamlessly. My first order of business tomorrow is to return these pieces of ____ the first chance I get. This is a scam, people, plain and simple. He couldn't get everyone to buy his movie so he tricked us, and lost all credibility with me and hopefully a whole lot of his fans. I am no longer a Lucas fan. The man is a con artist. That's the closest to artist he's ever going to get. The original films aren't even listed as features on the DVD. They are on a "Bonus Disc" to the Special Edition. Why else are you buying it? It's just Lucas's way of abdicating responsibility for his kitschy little bonus feature of a beloved fim. I just hope Lucas has trouble sleeping tonight on his giant bed made out of money.
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