bindibadgi
Flashlight Enthusiast
With the imminent release of the SW originals on DVD, I must say I'm one of the whiners. George Lucas is diddling us again.
See the following email from Lucas Film (note in particular paras 4 and 5):
Not anamorphic? That sucks for me, because I almost always watch DVDs on a widescreen TV and I want full res, not a little picture with black all around, and not a crappy low res picture as a result of zooming on the tv. Also, with no work on restoration, this is a bit of a disappointment.
Sorry for the whining but it gets to me a bit that GL is so hell bent on not giving a large number of fans what I think we deserve, especially from a company which claims to be at the forefront of technology.
That said, has anybody heard of moth3r's PAL DVDs from the French laserdiscs? I'm interested in obtaining a copy of that or the TR47/cowclops v2 discs. I contacted these people but they're not producing them anymore. Does anybody here have access to them? Shoot me a PM if so.
Please note that I'm not trying to prevent the owner of the copyright from making money by pirating or anything. GL has a right to make money. I own the VHS tapes and will be buying the commercial DVDs when they hit, but I want these transfers as a preservation backup so that I have a copy of the originals even if GL won't give me that officially.
See the following email from Lucas Film (note in particular paras 4 and 5):
LucasFilm said:I wanted you to know how much we appreciate the passion and enthusiasm you have for Star Wars, and thank you for sharing your concerns about our upcoming DVD release.
The DVDs being released in September will contain two versions of Star Wars: Episodes IV, V and VI – the Special Editions (which represent George's vision of the movies) and the first versions, which will be included as bonus material. We hoped that releasing those "original" movies on a bonus disc would be a way to have some additional fun with the debut of the movies as individual DVDs. We certainly did not want it to become a source of concern or frustration for any of our fans.
As you may know, an enormous amount of effort was put into digitally restoring the negatives for the Special Editions. In one scene alone, nearly 1 million pieces of dirt had to be removed, and the Special Editions were created through a frame-by-frame digital restoration. The negatives of the movies were permanently altered for the creation of the Special Editions, and existing prints of the first versions are in poor condition.
So many fans have requested the original movies, we wanted to find a way to bring them to you. But since these movies do not represent George's artistic vision, we could not put the extraordinary time and resources into this project as we did with the Special Editions. The 1993 Laserdisc masters represented the best source for providing the original versions as DVD bonus material. Although these are non-anamorphic versions, they do preserve the original widescreen composition of the movies.
We want you to be aware that we have no plans – now or in the future – to restore the earlier versions.
We hope you will understand our decision and, again, want to let you know how much we appreciate your interest and enthusiasm.
Sincerely,
Lynne Hale
[email protected]
Not anamorphic? That sucks for me, because I almost always watch DVDs on a widescreen TV and I want full res, not a little picture with black all around, and not a crappy low res picture as a result of zooming on the tv. Also, with no work on restoration, this is a bit of a disappointment.
Sorry for the whining but it gets to me a bit that GL is so hell bent on not giving a large number of fans what I think we deserve, especially from a company which claims to be at the forefront of technology.
That said, has anybody heard of moth3r's PAL DVDs from the French laserdiscs? I'm interested in obtaining a copy of that or the TR47/cowclops v2 discs. I contacted these people but they're not producing them anymore. Does anybody here have access to them? Shoot me a PM if so.
Please note that I'm not trying to prevent the owner of the copyright from making money by pirating or anything. GL has a right to make money. I own the VHS tapes and will be buying the commercial DVDs when they hit, but I want these transfers as a preservation backup so that I have a copy of the originals even if GL won't give me that officially.