Star Wars blu ray in September

[Timmythekid]

Instead of "raging against the machine", why don't you guys lean on one of these rich guys that have a print to have it scanned, cleaned-up then bootlegged.

You're never going to get GL to do it.

"...you're my only hope."

Ah yes, that would require more work than bitching on the internet and "signing" an ONLINE petition with a few keystrokes.

Already underway, mic, already underway...70mm prints have been being looked at in terms of doing a somewhat affordable scan for at least a year now. Results have been REALLY promising, but the problem is cost and legality, but with any luck they'll be solved somehow.

 

[robn1]

Well I can confirm two things.
1. The Bluray rips are available, I just finished downloading ROTJ.
2. The Nooooo! is there, as are the ewok eye blinks. The noooo! clip we've seen is pretty much accurate.

I like how putting the OT on Blu-ray is somehow restoring it.

You do realize any "Clean-up" is altering the original trilogy too.

You're better off with the Laserdisc transfers.

They are truly un****ed with. But you still get the ANH label. Which is wrong as well.

Unless you own a film print and unless it's an IB TEch print, it's going to change.

Plus of course if you don't watch it on a forty foot screen with 6-channel sound, you're not getting it the way it was intended either.

You're really going out of your way to not get it. I just want to turn on my HDTV, and watch the original cuts of these films in the best presentation modern video can give me. Clean them up, restore them, and put them on Bluray. Without adding CGI crap, or making changes. Any film I could ever want to see is available, or soon will be. But the original Star Wars is the one I want most, and it's being kept from me.

We keep "whining" about it because that's the only way we might get it. Sitting down and keeping quite never got anyone anything. It's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

 

[darth_myeek]

the problem is cost and legality,

I have the fix for that. By this ashtray for $60, and use the BROOTs (Yes Sirs I coined it here first!) for packing.

 

[Jeyl]

You do realize any "Clean-up" is altering the original trilogy too.

Like what? Removing dirt, scratches and real changes? That's not altering the original trilogy, that's altering the print.

 

[Timmythekid]

I have the fix for that. By this ashtray for $60, and use the BROOTs (Yes Sirs I coined it here first!) for packing.

Well, the problem as I understand it is more to do with finding a house with the technology to do a 4k scan which will tackle an IP from an owner who's demonstrated that they can be pretty trigger happy with their legal department. That and the fact that I seem to remember the quotes for one film being around $10k. The alternative being disucssed last I checked was to build a home HD Telecine, which apparently is progressing slowly. Regardless, the test results so far from ESB have been astounding - even at this early stage they blow the DVDs out of the water for colour, detail, and dynamic range. Fingers crossed, and then, yes, the bitching will stop.



and..."DON'T TAZE ME, BROOT!"

 

[robn1]

Like what? Removing dirt, scratches and real changes? That's not altering the original trilogy, that's altering the print.

Exactly. Returning the print to it's original condition.

 

[cayman shen]

So... It's 'dumb' because you said so? I don't read your justification of it other than "just cause."

I'm not defending the changes, but you're certainly not rationalizing your hate for them. Besides, can't you come up with something better than 'dumb'? Is this second grade?

You used the term "whiny crybabies" in the boycott thread and you're accusing me of acting like a second grader? ***** ****ing ******, I can't even handle it...

 

[Treadwell]

they STILL look like crap; they STILL have a distractingly narrow contrast ratio, and they are STILL an utterly half-assed product.

You know this how?

 

[Qui-Gonzalez]

Is this the "Boycott" thread or the discussion about the Blu-Ray thread? I am sooooo lost.

 

[cayman shen]

Is this the "Boycott" thread or the discussion about the Blu-Ray thread? I am sooooo lost.

I know...I'm gonna stick to the boycott thread. If anyone has any vitriol to spew my way, hit me on that side, por favor.

 

[Qui-Gonzalez]

Nah man, you spend your money how you see fit. I will enjoy these, so...Lucas once again gets my money!

 

[Mara Jade's Father]

It seems that the Walmarts having the midnight release sale will be giving away 50 Fett Art posters. Some sort of fold open deal. Nothing I want to stand in line for.

 

[jlee562]

I've generally been pretty ambivalent about the SE changes and so forth, but man, the "no" really just is really bad because it's totally superfluous. It definitely detracts from the scene.

The technical limitations of the time forced Lucas to be creative in ways he otherwise would not have been. The perfect example is the wampa. The suit looked awful, so they had the noir-ish shots where you only saw the limbs. And in the way it was cut, you didn't need to see the whole monster. IMHO, there was more tension and the scene felt more dire precisely because you never saw the whole thing.

I mean, I get it. Wide shots of Mos Eisley, whatever. It doesn't really add much to the story, but I get it, Lucas always wanted to show it as a bustling space port.

It's the same "less is more" with the "no!" in ROTJ now. The simple act of Vader turning his head back from Palpatine to Luke says everything you need to know about Vader's actions. There is no need to use the "no" to "tie it back" to the PT because there is already enough context in the scene itself that we know Vader just had an internal dialogue with himself and decided in favor of his son.

That's why the change is dumb. It's completely unnecessary. Adding the "no" is not going to suddenly reveal anything new about the character that wasn't already there in the scene itself.

 

[micdavis]

You're really going out of your way to not get it.

Yeah that's what it is.

 

[Mola Rob]

It seems that the Walmarts having the midnight release sale will be giving away 50 Fett Art posters. Some sort of fold open deal. Nothing I want to stand in line for.

I'm not sure I'd want to stand in line at Walmart if they were offering free immortality injections.

 

[Timmythekid]

You know this how?

....'cause I've ****ing SEEN them? 'Cause I compared them side by side to the HDTV rips, movie by movie last night (by the way, Han has a new de-thawing effect which is actually not bad - I would never have minded the SEs if it was this kind of subtle reworking that had been done) and the exact same missing shadow and highlight detail is present in both files? The new horrible lasers missing any sort of glow in the opening shot? The same. The missing and muted starfields? The same. My goto scene for this is the first shot introducing the Imperial fleet in ESB. The mid-BG detroyer is in such deep shadow that it literally blends into the starfield on the DVDs and HDTV rips. In the GOUT, and in all LD rips, it's lightly shadowed, with detail clear to see. Go check, I'll wait. Back? All flippancy aside, weird, huh? There's actually more detail in the GOUT when you get near hotspots or shadow than there is in the DVD or HD broadcasts. That's just...wrong. Okay, look, there's been a lot of crap from people desperate to believe that there's going to be a magical pristine copy on Sept 16, that all of the worthlessness of the video is down to "compression". I understand that, I was hoping, REALLY hoping that with all the talk from LFL over the last month that these were going to be significant improvements over what's already been available for years. I get it, I really do, and I was all set to marathon the whole saga with my little guys when the package arrived. However these are 19 gig rips of 1080p material to 720p files, not condensing BR to flash or something absurd. I'm telling you, unless it's all a hoax by LFL to thwart pirates, THIS IS IT, THIS IS THE PRODUCT. It's pretty clear at this point that that's all there is in the 2k scan they did close to 10 years ago, every single thing based on that source suffers from the same issues in dynamic range and colour. These films need a new 4k scan to put any of this nonsense right, and it's not gonna happen as long as people keep buying the same garbage. Strike that, maybe, just maybe they've been forced to do a new transfer for the 3D versions, but then the home release will undoubtedly be 3D only, and I'm NOT buying into 3D. It's not even possible to hope for a fan edit to fix this poo-poo because there's no image data there to fix! Sorry, but it's just been a very, very dissapointing day and a half.

 

[JD]

Ya know, after the DVD's came out and we have pink and white lightsabers I wasn't going to pick the BluRays up.

I'm one of those guys that just doesn't see enough significant gain from DVD to BluRay - yeah, I realize it's HD and the pciture is going to be clearer. But, I don't see it... I have HD TV's both at home and at work and I just can't really tell the difference most of the time. I have a few BluRays and most of the time it's just because the price vs. DVD was close enough to just get the BR.

The extra's on the SW BR's seem pretty nice. But, I am really going to sit through documentary after documentary? The deleted scenes are nice, but I've seen enough of them over the years and I'm sure they'll pop up online in time.

Now that I now that they've fixed the issues with the DVD's I'm a bit stoked for this.

 

[Timmythekid]

Now that I now that they've fixed the issues with the DVD's I'm a bit stoked for this.

:darnkids GAAAAAGHGHGHGH!!!! That's what we've all been trying to tell you guys, THEY HAVEN'T!!!!! Aside from the actual specific shots they've released screencaps from, they haven't fixed anything! Even sequences like the lightsaber training on the Falcon - yes that first shot is fixed, but guess what, next shot it's still desaturated white, next shot it's still green. That's what I mean about this being a half-assed job, the whole trilogy is like that - some one off fix which isn't carried forward beyond what you've seen from the press released. Nothing is fixed in any kind of consistent way. If you hated the pink sabers, you're going to LOVE the purple sabers in Jedi. The video and effects, apart from the half-dozen specific shots that have been released, is still the same unholy mess it was in '04; the audio, albeit a NEW mess for ANH, is STILL a mess with buried music and dialogue. I probably would have left my pre-order in if this had just fixed the problems on the DVD. Even with the new stupidity, I would have bought them. But to see that it's the same uncorrected mess, just with new asinine crap slopped on top? No, that's a deal breaker for me at long last, and this'll be the first time since Beta that I haven't owned a next-gen version of these films.

 

[Lutso]

This is a dark day indeed.

I saw a VHS set of the OT at the Goodwill a few weeks back. Wonder if it's still there...

 

[Solo4114]

:darnkids GAAAAAGHGHGHGH!!!! That's what we've all been trying to tell you guys, THEY HAVEN'T!!!!! Aside from the actual specific shots they've released screencaps from, they haven't fixed anything! Even sequences like the lightsaber training on the Falcon - yes that first shot is fixed, but guess what, next shot it's still desaturated white, next shot it's still green. That's what I mean about this being a half-assed job, the whole trilogy is like that - some one off fix which isn't carried forward beyond what you've seen from the press released. Nothing is fixed in any kind of consistent way. If you hated the pink sabers, you're going to LOVE the purple sabers in Jedi. The video and effects, apart from the half-dozen specific shots that have been released, is still the same unholy mess it was in '04; the audio, albeit a NEW mess for ANH, is STILL a mess with buried music and dialogue. I probably would have left my pre-order in if this had just fixed the problems on the DVD. Even with the new stupidity, I would have bought them. But to see that it's the same uncorrected mess, just with new asinine crap slopped on top? No, that's a deal breaker for me at long last, and this'll be the first time since Beta that I haven't owned a next-gen version of these films.

For those wanting a "Cliffs Notes" version of this:

Timmythekid is irritated primarily by the TECHNICAL flaws in the release. Putting aside whatever one thinks of the ARTISTIC choices (IE: "Nooooooo" vs. musical score and a look), the issue is whether you think you're getting your value for a set that includes SOME fixes but doesn't (apparently) resolve all of the lingering issues from the '04 release.