Star Wars discussion from The Bits... (1 Viewer)

[Simon Massey]

Well I'm avoiding these, though Id love to own the originals. However, I wil be interested to see what the sales figures for these discs are like in the coming weeks. Even though Im not buying, I am sort of hoping they might sell extremely well, enough to suggest to Lucas that perhaps the OOT isn't as worthless as he seems to think they are.

 

[DouglasRobert]

Just got done watching Star Wars and am happy with it. The video is a little soft at times, but is on par with the old LaserDiscs I still have. The only reason I bought these was to replace the old LD's and obviously don't have to flip them over 1/2 hour or so. It's nice to be able to watch them non-stop in their original form.

So I'm happy with them and that's all that matters to me.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam_WM
Sounds great to me, Greg, but I highly doubt we will ever see any DTS audio on a Lucasfilm product.


There's a fine line between "dreaming" and "hallucinating".

Regards,

Joe

 

[Dave Mack]

In your opinion, you mean? If you truly believe that the gimmicks didn't entice anyone on the fence to pick these up then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.....
And many people including the esteemed Mr. Harris agree that these are subpar releases. If you have lower standards than us that's your issue. I seem to remember a mission statement here at HTF....

"sub·par (sŭb-pär')
adj.
Not measuring up to traditional standards of performance, value, or production."

Considering that anamorphic enhancement has been the standard on DVD releases for what, the last six years now, yes, this release definitely qualifies at least by definition as "subpar", not just because I consider them that way.
And what's funny is when you go to the trouble twice in a post to say, "in my opinion" and then someone comes along and pretty much implies that your opinion is "wrong" and that they're correct....

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

"Nonsense" is a little strong. Do I think that there isn't a single person on the entire face of the planet who might otherwise not bought this release at all who was tempted by the in-store promos? No. I'll grant you there is probably one. But I think the notion that any significant number of people who weren't otherwise planning to buy this release did so because of a tin box or a lithograph is laughable. What I think the promo items did was what they were intended to do - make sure the guy who was going to buy the set anyway bought it a my store. If I'm Best Buy, I don't want that guy going to the Circuit City three blocks away, so I give him a reason to make my store the place he goes to buy what he was going to buy somewhere no matter what I did.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Dave Mack]

You're right, nonsense is strong.
But I have read of people buying more than one BB tin because they think one day they will be worth $ due to them being limited and people are selling them on Ebay so I totally think that the exclusives affected sales....

Once again, just my opinion

 

[Beast]

Exactly. Simple as that. If all it takes is a pretty box, lithographs, or comic books to get people off the fence, more stores should demand even more exclusives for DVD releases.

 

[Beast]

That happens in ever arena (movies, toys, comic books, etc) when you announce something as limited/available only for a limited time. Then you have retailers demanding exclusives to go along with the package, and you have even more people picking up extras to try to make a buck off it. I'm sure a number of people here recall the limited number of the Best Buy Bonus Disc for the Friday the 13th DVD boxset a year or so ago. The disc by it's self was going for around $50 bucks by it's self afterwards on Ebay.

 

[TravisR]

I think there was a small bump in sales for Best Buy because of the tin. For two reasons 1. it was a fairly nice looking tin (which is why I picked it up) and 2. since it's Star Wars, there's always going to be a group of sleazy scalpers who are planning to retire on selling a DVD tin/toy/cereal box/whatever and screw another fan out of it. So the combo of the two helped boost sales slightly for them.

 

[Dave Mack]

Very true.

 

[Chris Atkins]

You probably made a good choice. I just finished the PT version of the Lego Star Wars game tonight, and I had an absolute blast. I have to wait until early November (my birthday) to get the OT version.

 

[Beast]

I think we can all agree that scalpers suck.

 

[Paul_Scott]

I may end up making this my new sig line one of these days, but as someone on another forum so eloquently said "nothing about Star Wars is limited".
Its going to be pimped from here to eternity. With that in mind, it's much easier to forego what I know to be inferior products served with a vile attitude.

Some people will continue to eat there because they have been eating there for years, but for me to go back, they not only have to raise the quality of the food, they have to adopt a new attitude in regards to how they treat us 'regulars'.

 

[AaronMan]

I just think life is too short to worry about this. I wanted to watch Han shoot Greedo first again, so I picked them up. Anamorphic or not. I mean, people have been going on and on about this waiting for the elusive perfect versions of these movies. When you sit back and look at the big picture, you realize that a sizeable chunk of life has blown by waiting for this to happen.

I'm just going to watch them in stretch mode. Yes, the horror...

 

[jim.vaccaro]

Watched Star Wars tonight. The first one.

The transfer looks decent on a 4x3 42" Sony HDTV. The biggest and most noticeable problem with them is aliasing. R2's dome is a major offender, as is pretty much any other surface where long straight lines are shown on screen. Detail is a little fuzzy, but that's to be expected from a non-anamorphic, heavily DNVR'd transfer.

Other than that, it looks decent. It was even watchable on a 100" screen displayed by a SP4805.....that is, until the jaggies reared their ugly head.

Verdict: signficantly better than the laserdiscs. If the jaggies could be exorcised, this would be a fair effort. Just goes to show that with even a *minimum* of effort, the theatrical cuts could look great. If they'd taken a new anamorphic transfer from the same print they made the '93 transfer from, I'd be in near heaven.

 

[Paul_Scott]

I'm thinking I'll be upgrading my pj this fall to the Pearl, and I was in a local dealer playing with the Ruby to see if I could get an idea of how it handled a spectrum of titles from my collection- from good to bad. One of the titles I had with me was The Rocketeer to see how well a non anamorphic 2.35 AR film could look. Some scenes looked ok, but jaggies and compression artifacting were a huge problem. Even if the Star Wars films were better compressed, the jaggies are still impossible to ignore and kill the big screen experience for me- and of course, I couldn't zoom the picture out to fill the screen as a normal 16:9 enhanced 2.35 film could- tho with that level of quality the smaller the better. For me, the whole point of bitching and moaning for the OOT to be released on DVD was so that it would be in a format whose technology was up to a level as to be able to provide a satisfying big screen experience. I also had the Entrapment dvd with me and it just looked spectacular.

I agree Jim, very little effort was required to make this a very satisfying release for many people. Instead the results are no effort whatsoever- and that still = quite a lot of happy SW fans :frowning:

 

[Sebastien S]

I just finished watching "A New Hope" (1977 version) on my "Toshiba 34HFX84" and used the zoom in option on my TV...

They looked fine! Sure, the 2004 version looks much better but they were not horrible to watch like many speculated. Actually... I was surprised at how good they looked, I expected them to look far worse!

 

[Bill Robertson]

How very true. I think most of us here have probably made those kind of rationalisations at one time or another to justify a double-dip or some such. I think its part of the nature of being a fan/collector. Even today I felt a moment of weakness (well, I was kinda hungover to tell the truth ) as I popped into my local Sainsburys and saw the big dvd promo stand loaded with Star Wars I did feel a slight tug at my heartstrings. That little voice of rationalisation was speaking up loud and clear - "Hey, some of the guys are saying that they didn't suck all that badly" it said, "It would be pretty cool to see the movies the way you saw them when you were a kid" it added, "you don't have to tell anyone at HTF you bought 'em it can be our little secret just you, me and George"

Luckily, I was able to tear myself away. I really would like to own the OUT but I'm not willing to compromise my principle on this release. The whole marketing campaign, the blow off from the LFL people and Sansweet about the fuss we all made, the realisation that Oscar winning movies celebrated by the AFI etc and loved the world over were being used essentially as a come on to flog unsold special edition dvds and video games and as such were given this crappy sub par transfer. I think this above all has ended my relationship with the franchise. Finally, to see so many people caving in and buying them anyway made me think that perhaps we get the product we deserve.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Can't believe nobody's posted this yet:



Regards,

Joe

 

[MielR]

The rationalizations NOT to buy the DVDs are also interesting.

"well, I like my laserdiscs just fine.....and my editdroid bootlegs look great......and the X0 project is coming soon......"

It reminds me a little of the LP-to-CD transition period, and my inner rationalizations as to why I didn't need a CD player and to re-purchase all of my LPs on CD.

"my LPs sound just fine- especially with loud rock music- you can't hear the pops!" I eventually gave in and bought a CD player.

So, CDs aren't perfect - but they sound a lot better than the LPs (in most cases, anyway).