Your picture appears to be stretched horizontally.
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Exactly. You can "fit" the screen to your screen width, but you'll end up with black bars on top and bottom and the image will end up stretched. Plus, if memory serves, you'll also have a dead zone on top and bottom because the "image" includes the black letterbox bars.
Basically, with the '06 DVDs, your options are different versions of fun-house mirror, black boxes/bars all around, or zoomed and cropped. The image can't display normally.
The chopped & shopped original negatives of the OTs are not the only original film prints of those movies still in existence. Why not source the 2006 DVDs from a decent second-generation print? It would probably have been cheaper than a full-boogie redo of the original negative and still much better quality than the DVD release we got. Just the fullscreen difference alone would have sold me, never mind some dust & scratches.
Yeah, but they didn't care to. Why bother scanning anything when you can basically just transfer an existing image onto different media?
If the negative of Star Wars was indeed butchered from making the 97' special edition, a print would be the best option.
I know of at least one IB technicolor print that is in great shape, and had been offered to Lucas at one point.
I've heard the negative was NOT in fact "butchered" to the point where it no longer exists. That was a "certain point of view" kind of statement from Lucas. My understanding is that it's entirely possible to do a true, archival version of the OOT, at least in a technical sense. Like, the technology and the film exists to do it. But it'd cost money, and there are rights issues at stake. And, more importantly, the current generation of blu-rays is "fine" by the public's standards.
I mean, bear in mind that the general public isn't exactly made up of videophiles. Most people that I know can't really tell the difference between when motion interpolation is turned on or off on their TVs, or if they can, many of them think that having it turned on makes things "look more real." No joke. The public doesn't notice stuff like color palette shifts, crushed blacks, too much DNR, etc., at least not on a conscious level. They might sorta recognize that something seems "off," but they'll generally ignore it unless it's pointed out to them.
Actually, not to derail this, but it makes me wonder if Peter Jackson's HFR version of the Hobbit films might've been better received if he'd simply never mentioned that he was doing it at all, and just...put it out there. Like, I'd bet most people would say "It seems more real" or "I didn't really notice."