My Star Wars laser disc definitive trilogy arrived today!!! (1 Viewer)

[Mattias_ka]

JeremySt, What kind of player was used for the screenshot? And what card and program was used? The picture didn't look that hot.

p.s. the "zoom" for non-anamorphic WS material looks pretty crappy on the BenQ 8700...lots of aliasing and general noise (???). My DVD player has it's own zoom mode for non-anamorphic WS stuff which looks great (at least it doesn't *add* any artifacts) so I use that instead...but with WS laser I'd be stuck with the projectors inferior zoom which is another reason why I'd prefer to go LD for classic 1.33:1 material only...

Yes, and many people don't think LD can look great on a PJ. But if one use a great scaler, like mine Crystalio, LD can look REALLY good. But it COST a lot for that kind of picture quality.

 

[CraigL]

Thats a picture from one of the many bootleg DVD's. Welcome to Laserdisc. By comparison it looks like shit.

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

While I'd never say that LD could compare to DVD in terms of resolution, or that specifically the Star Wars THX LDs could look as good as the new DVDs (they can't, because of the noise and grain filtering done for the LD release, as I said before), that above example doesn't look as good as what I got by simply recording my LDs onto DVD with my Panasonic E55. If I remember, I'll try to stick a segment onto a DVD this weekend and bring it to work to make a capture of the same scene so I can post it for comparison.

What the above captures very clearly demonstrate is the colour difference -- on the LD, the stormtroopers and Leia are wearing white. Not so much on the DVD.

LaserDisc was a great format for its time. It kills VHS. Full frame b&w material looks magnificent blown up. And the PCM soundtrack is superior to virtually anything.

I'm very happy with most of my LDs on a 52" standard definition set.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

post those screen-caps!

LaserDisc was a great format for its time. It kills VHS. Full frame

b&w material looks magnificent blown up. And the PCM soundtrack is

superior to virtually anything.

Agreed. Even on my CLD-99 (non-X9) player 1.33:1 B&W material really shines on laser...no chroma noise to deal with and the 1.33:1 image makes full use of NTSC's 4x3 frame resolution. A superbly mastered B&W 1.33:1 DVD can still look better (more detailed) but in this context LD is *not* far behind and doesn't have any of the posturizing (banding/blocking) issues to deal with that sometimes affect even good DVDs....oh and that glorious PCM sound! Those of you without LD would be surprised how much better many older mono films (even sourced from optical soundtracks) sound on LD compared to the DD compressed DVD versions...no kidding.

-dave

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Heckyeah, Dave. I have a lot of LDs of older mono/stereo films that I wouldn't "trade up" to DVD because of the sound difference.

 

[JeremySt]

Mattias.. follow the link at the bottom of my post... That cap of the LD is just one persons example... but still an average example of what the LDs look like. follow that link and you should be able to figure out what equipment was used, as well as see a few other peoples examples.

 

[Mattias_ka]

Here is EP1 Laserdisc taken from my HLD-X0:
http://www.2l8.nu/dholm/test/B1.bmp
I would not call this shit, and when I take this thru my Crystalio I get even better picture quality.
Here is a screenshot from EP4 Laserdisc from my HLD-X0:
http://www.2l8.nu/dholm/test/B5.bmp
Note: this is the picture from the LD. I haven't yet color corrected, fixed contrast/brighness and "master" the picture to better quality and 16:9 yet. So it will be much better than this.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Gosh...just looking at those (pretty good considering) 2.35:1 aspect ratio shots trapped in those 4x3 NTSC frames...do you realize that putting 2.35 OAR into a 4x3 frame requires you to throw away almost *half* of your vertical 480 resolution?!?
Amazing that we actually paid so much $$ for such a compromised solution. Amazing that we still see many widescreen DVDs come to market not utilizing 16x9 encoding!
Ok...soap box session over...
All things considered the Ep1 capture looks pretty good. would love to see that Ep1 played back on my front-projection system side-by-side the DVD for comparison...
Of course I don't have Ep1 on DVD (didn't buy it for a number of reasons...the EE that THX allowed in that transfer being one of the primary reasons) so I'd be seeing both images on my system for the first time...

 

[greg_t]

All things considered the Ep1 capture looks pretty good. would love to see that Ep1 played back on my front-projection system side-by-side the DVD for comparison...

On my setup, which is an X9 LD player and a Panny RP82 DVD player into a 53" Pioneer Elite HDTV, I don't think most people here could tell the difference. The EP 1 LD is really good. Wish all lasers looked as good.

 

[Brendon]

Those of you without LD would be surprised how much better many older mono films (even sourced from optical soundtracks) sound on LD compared to the DD compressed DVD versions

Agreed! Silk Stockings sounds better on LD than the DVD (although the DVD is not too shoddy by comparison).

I can only hope that the forthcoming Easter Parade DVD sounds as good as the PCM LD - I somehow suspect it won't, whatever is done with the soundtrack (DD1.0, 2.0 mono or a 5.1 "enhancement").

The Band Wagon, on the other hand,had a slight hiss to the soundtrack. This in no way detracted from the film - until a long pause in the final scene, where rather than leaving the soundtrack running, it gets turned off! On the LD PCM track, this is obvious to the point of annoyance. Maybe the lower res DVD soundtrack will mask this (if they use the same audio master)

We now return you to the point of the thread....

Brendon

 

[Jose Martinez]

Well, I'll be receiving my Star Wars Definitive Collection set next week and I can't wait! After reading all these posts about the difference in LD player picture quality I might just have to buy one of those expensive ones! All just to enjoy the original trilogy. Actually, my current LD player is hooked up to my computer and I just bought a new ATI 550 Pro card which does a great job in reducing video noise. I plan to add to my LD collection with movies that I just can't find on DVD.

 

[JeremySt]

The cap of the LD is not very good here, but check out what overfiltering did to the laserblasts on the DVD version.
DVD

LD (THIS SHOT IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE LD QUALITY. ITS JUST TO ILLUSTRATE THE GREEN LASERBLAST. THE LDS QUALITY IS MUCH BETTER)

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Did they replace any of the laser effects when they recomposited the effects for the '97 SE release?

It's unfortunate that every release has some kind of flaw to it, but what can you do, right? Actually, when I bought the THX Faces set I was mindblown by them way back then. They were pretty much the cream of the LD crop at the time.

Still, I think the best overall LD I own is the Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible. Looks great, and the PCM track is to die for.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

That's not over-filtering on the DVD that makes the laserblast look different...look at how much more detailed the DVD is in comparison to the *blurry* laserdisc...

the laser-blast difference was a Lucas alteration for the new version...

an example of overfiltering would actually be what you see on the laserdisc (not talking about the laserblast issue). Look at the detail on the spaceship and distant moon/planet that you can see in the DVD image that's not even hinted at in the laserdisc image.

 

[Gary Seven]

Still, I think the best overall LD I own is the Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible. Looks great, and the PCM track is to die for.

I find the DD 5.1 track on that disc to be extremely powerful as well.

 

[Grant H]

I'd say the difference with that laser-blast is (mostly, anyway) due to the way overblown contrast on the Star Wars laserdisc (and all previous home video versions.)

Look at the belly of the Star Destroyer on the LD cap. It's practically glowing!!

This weekend I watched the Star Wars DVD synched to the SE 5.1 LD.

I HIGHLY recommend this to anyone who can do it. It's a much more enjoyable experience. Aside from having to re-synch at every side break AND post revised Han-Greedo scene and likely your layer-change.

The old 5.1 track could sound a little warmer (possibly a treble adjustment would do it), but other than that it is in every way superior to the newly created crap 5.1 EX mix.

A much more emotionally satisfying experience. After watching the DVD several times with the new mixes, getting the music back up there in the mix (or back period) really was striking. And it's not just the music. The quality of the whole mix is SOO much better than the new one they literally threw together.

For as much as some people defended the shortcomings of the new mix listening to this track (or any of LD tracks) shoots down many of those arguments.

One of the things I heard often was "it always sounded crappy." This was often in regard to dialogue. Well, there are other movies newer than Star Wars with big budgets that have much worse sounding dialouge STILL than Star Wars ever did. Case in point: Star Trek II, and to a lesser extent Star Trek III.

Any place people think the new mix "improved" the sound of the dialouge, to me just sounded like all processing was removed from ADR, processing that was used to make the dialouge sound appropriate for the screen environment. In some cases, the new mix may even use ADR in place of on-set dialogue that existed before. I won't swear to that, but it's quite possible. Should dialogue sound like it was recorded in a studio when it is spouted in a narrow metallic corridor? I don't think so, but whoever mixed the DVD thought differently. Whether or not there even is a "new echo" during the bridge scene I'm not even confident in saying. Whatever's there now is so faint compared to the old mixes, I'm not sure it's there or isn't. I prefer the old echo some say was cheesey. Sure seems to be in the spirit of the film.

The quality of the dialouge on the old 5.1 mix is quite conistent and always sounds appropriate to the screen environment. In addition, I don't hear faders sliding on and off. Also quite notable, atmospheric sounds don't disappear and reappear between lines of dialogue. (Think Ben talking to Luke in the Jundland Wastes). Everything on the old mix is so well integrated compared to the new one.

It's obvious that someone went to a lot of trouble for the '97 SE to create a high-quality digital 5.1 mix that was very true to the original film soundtrack. It angers me that it was thrown away for a crappy DVD mix that could have been put together by a college communications student. I truly hope we won't be stuck with it on all future releases. Even if they fixed some of what was wrong with it (i.e. flipped surround music), there is SO much left to correct that is seems to me it should be abandoned completely.

And since the quality of the original stems ain't getting any better over the years, I'd say the best bet is to go back to the '97 mix. If they want to give it some subtle tweaks (like create the EX channel from the surrounds or make it sound a bit warmer), fine, but please don't let those horrid DVD mixes exist for posterity. If no one makes an effort to destroy the 2004 mix, we can hope we'll luck out some day and maybe Blu-Ray will have a DTS track that uses the '97 mix. What a happy surprise that would be.

 

[JeremySt]

Thats mostly because its a bad capture... as I explained in that post. The overly contrasty image is just because of the bad capture card and video settings. Here is a better LD transfer.

Im not debating the changes Lucas made with all the new special effects and new scenes etc, but persdnally, I think the Lucas DVDs are a total botch job. Colors suck, the picture looks way over processed, (episode IV in particular) Im not trying to illustrate that the LDs are superior, just that some of the clean up work done omn the new DVDs seems somewhat overcooked, or at least noticably different. I also realize that there were errors of this nature on the old LD transfer as well. If the changes on the new DVD were intentional, I dont get it.
More offical DVD shots..
Are the rebels shirts grey?

..or blue?

Is lukes sword a bright blue?

or a thin green?

(I did not do these caps. Check the pic properties to find their source)

 

[TravisR]

Man, George Lucas could come to your house and give you a copy of these movies for free and some people would have a problem with it.

 

[greg_t]

I wouldn't say they're a total botch job, but there are many mistakes. Too many mistakes. How did no one notice that Vaders lightsaber looked like a stick of pink bubble gum in Jedi and parts of Empire? The lasers, while not as clean and detailed as the dvd's, just don't suffer from these errors. I won't even go into how I feel about the dvd soundtracks.

 

[Patrick H.]

Grant, I salute you. I never posted my feelings about the issues with the new discs in the official review or glitch threads, as debate in there was...a little overheated, to say the least. However, you just summed up the audio issues perfectly for me. I caught the negative pre-release buzz and passed over the DVDs, but since then I've given Episode IV a rent and had a listen. The whole thing has been "prequelized." The music has been flattened into the mid-range and pushed into the background, the sound effects are overpowering, and the dialogue seems thin and highly variable where it was once pretty consistent. I'm fairly adroit to mixing errors and glitches, particularly regarding music, so the flipped surrounds were obvious, even with the score sounding as anemic as it does.

What is with these films? For every "improvement," there are two significant backslides in other departments. As you point out, what was so "wrong" with the original sound mix on Episode IV? I remember during the '97 restoration, various tech interviewees were talking about how impressed they were with the strength of the old soundtrack, and how their aim was to simply bring it out and around the audience a little more. They succeeded...I was impressed by the power and fidelity of a mix that still sounded like Star Wars as I had always known it. What's on the DVD is not Star Wars. The dialogue sounds canned, the sound effects are weird, and the music is just plain WRONG. Seriously, John Williams practically deserved star billing on these films, and whoever designed this thing can't even mount his music tracks properly in the sound field?! Gimme a break!

I refuse to believe anyone originally involved with this film had anything to do in-depth with this re-mix...they're obviously busy on Episode III. But if you're not gonna do it right, why bother? If they'd just put the '97 soundtrack on that disc, I honestly wouldn't care what the hell color Luke's saber is in one shot...