STAR WARS ON BLU-RAY - FALL 2011 - Page 38

And the OT had at least four DVD releases recycling the same DVDs: 04 - the Special Special Edition Trilogy with a bonus disc, 05 the Special Special Edition Trilogy (same transfer and everything) without a bonus disc, 06 The Special Special Editions (same transfer and everything) separately with a bad quality bonus disc each, 07 The Special Special Editions (same transfer and everything) as a trilogy box with a bad quality bonus disc each. And of course, just as with the upcoming blu-ray release, the bad quality bonus discs were the sole reason for many people to shell out their money for the old transfer of the version of the film they'd already had and didn't really want.

Changing the box isn't a different release. On DVD, there's two distinct releases of the OT and one of the PT.

Peter, I'm confused.  You referenced 1080p broadcasts of the movies.  I thought those were 1080i broadcasts, as played on digital cable where there is a notorious amount of compression that can interfere with PQ. 

 

I thought the new Blu-rays were to be the first time the movies would be available in 1080p.  

 

I honestly could have made a big mistake here - if so, I apologize.

Well, the way I understand it, the German HDTV broadcasts, which seem to be the highest quality to date were 50fps 1080i, which means that it was basically 25fps where each frame was divided into two fields, so when captured, they could be re-encoded back into 25fps progressive. The compression is definitely higher that it will be on the BD release but not by that much really.

This U.K. documentary should only fuel the fire even more now.

http://www.cinemamontreal.com/movies/39359/The_People_vs_George_Lucas.html

http://www.peoplevsgeorge.com/

The thing is with HDTV broadcasts, most of the time the broadcasters turn up the compression knob until they get complaints. 

 

Blu-ray (and HD-DVD) has been the only way I've been able to appreciate truly uncompressed, full 1080p transfers of movies and other programming.

 

Based on what I've been reading, the SW blus should look much better than people have been worrying about.  But we'll know for sure when the discs land next month.

why would lucas want to have 4k transfers done of the four film based pictures? If he did, the 4k downconverted to 1080p films would look better than the digitally native films, and we just can't have that. If Lucas want the look consistent, we have to stay in 1080p/2k land for transfers of the film based pictures.

I guess this is allowed here (someone please tell me if it's not) but there's a "Save Star Wars - Boycott The Blu-Rays" page on Facebook, soon to be augmented with printable bumper sticker and t-shirt designs:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Star-Wars-Boycott-The-Blu-Rays/269110113114406?sk=wall

It'll give some of us something constructive to do between now and 09/16/11 (and beyond).