Fanchildren, Cease Thy Whining

[bsu legato]

Breaking story!

Star Wars fans find something to complain about.

News at 11:00.

[Apollo Leader]

'Star Wars' Fans Upset About DVD Plans for Original Trilogy

Despite earlier reports that Lucasfilm would be re-releasing the original unedited theatrical versions of the first three Star Wars movies on DVD, it now turns out that they will be copied from the laserdiscs of the films released in the mid'90s, formatted for the conventional TV screen and not wide-screen "letterbox" versions. The revelation has provoked anger among Star Wars fans, expressed on such Internet sites as www.thedigitalbits.com, and www.hometheaterforum.com. VideoBusiness.com quoted Lucasfilm spokesman John Singh as saying. "We hoped that by releasing the original movies as a bonus disc, it would be a way to give the fans something that is fun. We certainly didn't want to be become a source of frustration for fans."

http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2006-05-25/

402257[/snapback]

George Lucas, here's one person that won't be buying these DVD's in September. I knew ever since the original announcement that the footage was basically going to be what was used for the 1995 Laserdisc and VHS release which was cool with me. But making it fullscreen only??? What kind of morons are at Lucasfilm? The huge majority of people wanting theses movies would want this in widescreen.

Guess I'll stick with my 1995 Laserdiscs...

[Apollo Leader]

Breaking story!

Star Wars fans find something to complain about.

News at 11:00.

402269[/snapback]

This is a legitimate gripe, even if you're not a Star Wars fan.

[Nied]

Wait, I had heard rumors it ws going to be a non-animorphic transfer, but are they saying that it's going to be pan'n'scan?! Fart that poo!

Edited May 25, 2006 by Nied

[Apollo Leader]

I'm confused now... are they letterboxed for a regular TV but wouldn't adjust itself for a widescreen TV or is it going to a apear as fullscreen on a regular TV and use pan and scan???

[Nied]

I'm confused now... are they letterboxed for a regular TV but wouldn't adjust itself for a widescreen TV or is it going to a apear as fullscreen on a regular TV and use pan and scan???

402284[/snapback]

Everything I've read so far said a 4:3 letterbox tranfer (non-anamorphic), instead of an anamorphic 16:9 tranfer. Your post made it sound like it was a 4:3 pan'n'scan, and like I said before: fart that poo!

Edited May 25, 2006 by Nied

[JB0]

You pick and choose what physics you like and dislike in SW?

398447[/snapback]

I grant all movies some liberty.

Otherwise I'd be running around bitching about how everything flickers at 24Hz.

398467[/snapback]

You need a better TV that uses reverse 3:2 pulldown to eliminate "judder"

399446[/snapback]

I'm talking the original theatrical release.

[Black Valkyrie]

It shows that LFL never cared for the original OT.

[Mr March]

Breaking story!

Star Wars fans find something to complain about.

News at 11:00.

402269[/snapback]

With all due respect bsu, this is a film issue. For a 16:9 film to be given some half-assed transfer to DVD is a crime, even without taking into account that this is a big blockbuster film that deserves nothing but the royal treatment on home video. I wouldn't buy Gladiator, X-Men, or The Matrix if the transfer on DVD was as lousy as this new SW DVD set is rumored.

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

This thread should be renamed: "Fanchildren, continue thy whining"

Put me on the side of the whiners.

Edited May 26, 2006 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[Loner]

The Wizard DVD is going to be Anamorphic widescreen..... let that sink in a bit. The f'ing Wizard movie is going to be anamorphic. Yet Star Wars get's a shiity video transfer.

Edited May 26, 2006 by Loner

[Apollo Leader]

What's the difference between just plain widescreen and anamorphic widescreen? Does anamorphic mean that it will automatically reconfigure itself for a widescreen TV?

I was looking at starwars.com and there is indeed a separate widescreen and fullscreen disc set. For now my TV is a 25 inch Samsung I got back in 1997. I'll probably have it a few more years, but the next TV I get will probably be HD and widescreen. So if I play a non-anamorphic widescreen DVD on a widescreen television, it won't properly fill it out?

[Southpaw Samurai]

You can do some research if you want all the technical reasons why anamorphic presentations are better, but it comes down to a two simple things:

1) A non-anamorphic widescreen film is still sized and compressed for a 4:3 ratio...just cropped with fixed-sized black bars on the top and the bottom. The result is generally an inferior picture quality. You can play it fine on HD/Widescreen televisions (providing you don't get a wonky model that doesn't allow you to change picture modes), but it usually just doesn't look as good.

2) If they're going to use the same procedure that they did for the definitive Laserdiscs, there's another problem. All the captions for the alien languages (Greedo, Jabba, etc) were placed BENEATH the image on those discs. I loved that when I got the laserdiscs as it allowed for no cluttering of the film image (really nice for screen captures), but on some people's wider-screen televisions, this results in a portion of the captions being lost off the bottom of the screen, or they wind up having to shrink the image more to preserve them. Hopefully Lucasfilm takes at least THAT into account and moves the captions back up.

As has been said, it's not even a Star Wars fan whine at this point as much as a general film enthusiast, classic film appreciation level whine... and something of a valid one at that.

[pfunk]

hmmmm, this kinda sucks

[Uxi]

This is just salt in the wound of the fanchildren.

[JB0]

What's the difference between just plain widescreen and anamorphic widescreen?  Does anamorphic mean that it will automatically reconfigure itself for a widescreen TV?

Anamorphic widescreen means the widescreen image takes up the entire frame on the media. As opposed to letterboxing, where part of the frame is sacrificed for black bars.

Just widescreen could refer to either approach.

The problem with letterboxing is that since the whole frame isn't used, the picture has a lower resolution than an anamorphic one.

The advantage to letterboxing is that on a media without anamorphic support, such as VHS or LaserDisk, a TV would have to be manually adjusted to get an anamorphic image to display properly(if the necessary controls are even available to the end user).

But every DVD player out there supports anamorphic video, so there's no advantage to letterboxing on DVD.

[Sumdumgai]

Screw this, I'll just watch the old VHS tapes at my parents.

Or watch the dvd special edition.

[yellowlightman]

George Lucas doesn't care about fanchildren people.

[JB0]

George Lucas doesn't care about fanchildren people.

402991[/snapback]

[areaseven]

So, did anyone here pick up the DVDs today?

[Mr March]

Read the reviews. It's garbage. It's a transfer from the Laserdisk set, just as the rumors said. It is not, repeat, NOT taken from a film master. It is on a DVD only because DVD is the current consumer medium, but it is not a DVD quality release.

No 5.1 surround, lousy laserdisc video quality, and no anamorphic format. The general consensus seems to be that the set is better than MOST of the bootleg DVDs on the market, but that's about it.

Any hope of a proper, high quality original trilogy set on DVD or even HD is lost. For now at least, this is as good as it gets.

[Macross73]

well i bought the set since, I dont have any other copies so this works out for me. i haven't watched them yet so i cant comment on the quality. I'll check them out tomorrow morning, if i'm not too tired.

Theres 6 disks, thats 2 per movie. ANH includes disk 1 the new rendition and disk 2 origiinal movie.

this also goes for ESB and ROTJ. I got them for about $17 each. I can live with that price.

its a shame that ther not originals but from the Laser Disks.

[Keith]

It "is" better than the HK rips of the LD's, though I haven't seen the fanmade rips of the LD's to compare. There's definately a lack of effort shown in the overall process. The title menu is nice enough, though it has low end CG objects moving into place to become the movie poster. Everything else is Just static menu's though.

And for some inane reason, there's a xbox demo, & trailer, for the lego star wars game on "each disc." And the funniest part of all, when the "original" movie disc's load up, the first screen that shows is the FBI warning. As opposed to the "special edition," disc's, which don't have the FBI warning, & go straight to the fox info version. Apparnetly they were smart enough to know which version people would want to swipe

What this release is still missing, is all of the old LD special features, like the original documenteries & production photo's. And given the space that the lego star wars stuff takes, there's absolutely no reason why that shouldn't have been here instead.

If not for the 4th bonus disc with the first DVD release, I'd feel completely ripped off here, but as it stands, I liked empire of dreams, and at least they included all of the original trailers there. Aside from that, the special edition disc's in the new set seem to be exactly the same, rendering the old ones ocmpletely useless. The silkscreen images on the newer disc's are much better.

For those who will pick this up though, Best Buy has a limited edition tin case. It's got a great design, but both the front & back hinge open, which makes it a bit flimsy.

[Akilae]

I think the email response originaltrilogy.com got from Lucasfilm said that since the OOT wasn't the "definitive version" Mr. Lucas has in mind, they couldn't (or wouldn't) spend more resources on it. Guess that's the end of that.

I'll save my money for the Ultimate Blade Runner set coming out...

[Skull Leader]

I really didn't need another reason to laugh at Lucasfilm, but they're just making it so damn EASY....

[Keith]

Of course, they're not Lucas's "vision," so why should they get the big money treatment. It'll actually be interesting to see what happens in the future after Lucas passes. Hell, I'm still waiting for the episode I special edition that overdubs all of Jake Lloyd's (sp?) dialogue with a kid that can actually act.

Edited September 13, 2006 by Keith

[Skull Leader]

Of course, they're not Lucas's "vision," so why should they get the big money treatment. It'll actually be interesting to see what happens in the future after Lucas passes.

I can imagine a large community of "haves" and "have nots" trying to decide what is best for all of that stuff... I'm sure it would be a long time before any definative resolution was made.

[KingNor]

i see in the far future, a new OT dvd, full screen only, slightly better quality and a promice of "this being the only attempt we're making at improving the OT experience.

Once fans have grudgingly bought this, a few years after the fact, ANOTHER version will show up, now widescreen, no extras bad video quality. "this is the final release of the star wars original trillogy"

Several years after that we'll see wide screen, loaded wtih extras, and nice video quality, unfortunately though, it'll have 1970's audio quality. dispite this short coming it will be the "final release of the original star wars, this is as good as its going to get."

a few years go by... etc.

Lucas is milking you, guys. Please stop buying his filth.

[Sundown]

Hell, I'm still waiting for the episode I special edition that overdubs all of Jake Lloyd's (sp?) dialogue with a kid that can actually act.

A friend said the other day that even Dakota Fanning with a haircut would have made for a better Anakin.

[Keith]

Martin Short from "Clifford" would have made a better Anakin!

[vlenhoff]

Has anyone considered that Blue Ray (HD)DVDs will dominate the planet. I'm sure these will be released eventually in Blue Ray form.

I'm still pissed at the third friggin' prequel. I hate you Anakin!

[Mr March]

Has anyone considered that Blue Ray (HD)DVDs will dominate the planet. I'm sure these will be released eventually in Blue Ray form.

Why bother? The original films as just released in this set don't even take advantage of the video and sound quality DVD offers, so why even bother releasing it on a superior format like Blue Ray? Since the transfers are not taken from film masters, the video quality will always be subpar and will actually look worse over time since each new home video format will constantly improve video and sound quality until a format is made that matches the resolution of film.

If the unaltered original trilogy films are not (or "cannot" as Lucas has implied) be taken from a film master for each subsequent release on a new format, the visual presentation will be frozen at 1992 laserdisc technology, unable to take advantage of the superior quality of DVD, HD-DVD/Blue Ray, or whatever superior formats are released in the future.

[KingNor]

my brother and i watched some shows in HD over the weekend, and to be honest, the extra resolution made some of the women look disgusting, you could actually see how much makeup was packed onto them.. it was disturbing.

HD could possibly be too much of a good thing, it's GREAT for sports, animation and CG though. (like games)

[Chowser]

ok, i resisted today!

i was at walmart, and looked at them and said, nah.

then i was at best buy and was looking at them, and said, nah.

Lucas has enough of my money with Master Replicas.

[JsARCLIGHT]

I was seriously considering getting this set in the tin from Best Buy... but after hearing that the original cuts of the movies (the only reason why I'd buy this set) are non-anamorphic and of quite low quality I'm going to skip it. It's not like I've seen these movies 8 billion times already so it's no real loss...