Widescreen Star Wars (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Larkin]

Oh, I see. Keep them becuase they are the last remnant of the original trilogy and the future DVD set will be the re-edited versions. Good point.

 

[Jeff Ashforth]

I wouldn't worry about the bass. Even without the dedicated LFE channel, these discs have very deep bass. Just turn your reciever up and enjoy. I especially like in the beginning of ESB, when the probe droids leave the star destroyer.... BOOOOOOOOM! It rattles the windows!!!

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

The pro-logic sound on ESB and RotJ will be much more impressive than the first film. As long as your fronts can handle low bass or you have bass management set up to send it to your subwoofer, you will not miss the LFE channel too much.

BTW, CAV laserdiscs are limited to 30 minutes per side. The frames are stored in concentric rings on the disc. CLV discs are limited to 60 minutes per side. The frames are stored on roughly equidistant strips of the disc with one rotation containing more than one frame until you get close to the center. CAV, the original format for all laserdiscs, allowed perfect freeze frame and forward and reverse slow motion on all players. CLV did not.

Regards,

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Quote: "CLV discs are limited to 60 minutes per side. The frames are stored on roughly equidistant strips of the disc with one rotation containing more than one frame until you get close to the center."

This seems to imply that the reading starts on the outer edge of the disc and eventually gets close to the center towards the end. It's the other way around, isn't it? Well, off-topic, anyway...

 

[Patrick Larkin]

So these discs I bought are CLV then?

 

[Rachael B]

Si senor! You got a good price too. They listed for $69.99 each when they came out which was really shitty on Fox and George's part!!!!! They really hurt the LD format with those numbers IMO. Extreame greed is so pervassive in the entertainment biz.... Best wishes from Laserland!

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

No play sequence express or implied was intended in my description. Lars is right that they play from the inside out.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

JohnJB

Yes, we have Digital Satellite TV, and no, most channels do not show OAR unless it's on an HDTV channel, and even then some crop it to 1.85:1. As far as I know, the SciFi channel's annual broadcasts are the only time they are, or have ever been shown widescreen on TV, and that's with tons of commercials and annoying station bugs

 

[Dave H]

They listed for $69.99 each when they came out which was really shitty on Fox and George's part!!!!! They really hurt the LD format with those numbers IMO. Extreame greed is so pervassive in the entertainment biz....

I disagree. Many laser discs were priced high because they were not mainstream - most people thought laser discs were too big and didn't like flipping them. Since only a smaller portion of the market were buying these, they had to be sold at a higher price than what we pay for DVDs. George Lucas had nothing to with it. Furthermore, do you really think Star Wars can be responsible for driving or sinking a technology such as laser discs??!!

 

[Jeff Ashforth]

I lucked out when I bought mine. I got them for a buck each when I signed up for the now defunct, Columbia House LaserDisc club.
That club crashed and burned so fast, they didn't even make me fulfil my commitment. They just stopped sending me the catalogs/order forms/director's selection.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Everything Dave said was correct, but I still agree with Rachael. They were priced at 175% of the price of any other movie on laserdisc from the time even though they had far more volume potential than almost any other title. A $30 MSRP premium was extreme no matter how you dissect it. These were the kind of titles that could have sold players if priced corectly. Heck, they sold a player to Patrick just recently.
The rough equivalent today would be if Fox released bare bones DVDs of the OT on DVD for $50 a piece.
Regards,

 

[Dave H]

Again, I just don't think Star Wars is big enough to sell players to make a meaningful difference. I mean how many LD players did the CBS Star Wars discs sell? How much did the original discs sell for - I would imagine they were cheaper than the later, THX versions - although I don't know for certain. Anyone?

 

[John P Grosskopf]

How much did the original discs sell for - I would imagine they were cheaper than the later, THX versions - although I don't know for certain. Anyone?

Actually, the widescreen versions of the discs got cheaper with each new release (except the Definitive Box versions).

All titles listed below are for Domestic US laserdisc releases of the Star Wars films:

The 1982 Pan and Scan CLV LDs (analog audio) listed for $34.98 each.

The 1982 Pan and Scan CAV LDs (analog audio) listed for $64.98 each.

The 1989 Widescreen CLV/CAV-{Jedi side 3) LD's (digital audio) listed for $69.98 each.

The 1992/1993 Pan and Scan CLV LD's (digital audio) listed for $34.98 each.

The late 1993 THX CAV Definitive Collection Widescreen Box Set (remastered digital audio) listed for $249.98 ($83.34 for each film).

The 1995 THX CLV Widescreen LD's (remastered digital audio & the same transfer as Definitive box set) listed for $59.98 each.

The 1997 THX CLV/CAV-{sides 3 of New Hope & Empire} Special Edition Widescreen Box set (Dolby Digital audio) listed for $124.98 ($41.66 each film).

The cheapest versions of all were the $35 CLV pan and scan releases.

 

[Travis Hedger]

/me hugs his copy of the Star Wars Trilogy Widescreen THX before Special Edition edition!

 

[Terrell]

A $30 MSRP premium was extreme no matter how you dissect it.

Ken, where did you buy your LDs? $30 was not an extreme price for newly released LDs. New LDs routinely ran $39.95. And anything in a box set or a 3-5 disc set was considerable more. Also, many new releases even ran $49.95 some of the time. I have the THX Definitive Collection, and for what you get, I don't really consider $250 unreasonable. You have a very nice hardcore book, a smaller softcover booklet with chapter stops. You have all 3 films in the best they ever looked and sounded, up until the SE Box Set, and I still think the Definitive Collection had a transfer just as good as the SE Box Set. Only the new 5.1 mix in the SE Box Set was better than the Dolby mix on the DC Box Set. But even the original Dolby mix on the DC Box Set was amazing. You have 9 discs all in the CAV format, plus a very nice case. Certainly not cheap, but not out of the realm of what a BTTF Box Set or an Alien Box set presented the same way would have cost.

And the 1997 SE Box Set was far cheaper, and certainly not overpriced. At least I don't think so. Thank God I bought both Box Sets. If the original theatrical cuts of Star Wars is not released on DVD, I'll just buy a top of the line DVD-R and make DVDs of them. Just to see what some people would pay for that Definitive Collection Box Set now, would be amazing.

 

[Dave H]

Then what title on DVD would be? As for LD, that format was not a format for the masses. LD was strictly a format for enthusiasts. Nothing would have sold a lot of LD players. But Star Wars would sell a ton on DVD and would sell as many players as any film or franchise would.

Laser disc was for enthusiasts but don't you think studios and Pioneer would have loved for the masses to have caught onto it considering they would have made WAY more money? Profit is the bottom line, don't ever forget. The masses just didn't like the idea of LD for reasons I stated in my last post.

What I am saying is that Star Wars (or ANY title) is NOT responsible or the main reason for driving any technology. The original Star Wars movies are NOT on DVD, yet look how well DVD is selling. Look how well VHS sold - do you really think Star Wars was behind it??!! VHS blossomed well before Star Wars was ever released. No movie is big enough to be responsible for a technology's success.

Furthermore, I entirely disagree that Star Wars would sell as many players as any film; there are several DVDs that have outsold Phantom Menace (and again, no single one title, in and of itself, is solely responsible for selling players). And, I don't believe any of the individual original films would outsell some other films out there and to come (Shrek, Harry Potter, etc.) Star Wars sells - I never said it didn't - but it's not or never was the main driver for VHS, LD, or DVD. People buy a DVD player to watch movies - not just Star Wars. People bought and buy VHS for movies and recording - not just Star Wars. Star Wars, like any other movie, is just a tiny, little piece of the "movie pie" that sells players.

 

[John P Grosskopf]

In the early to mid 90s when LD had its highest following, disc prices usually ranged from $24.95 to $49.95 for most films.

Warner's single disc films usually were $34.95, with certain releases (those single discs that would sell a ton and first relesed as sell-through VHS) at $29.95.

Some two disc Warner titles would list for $39.95, but most were $34.95. Older Warner films often were repriced to $24.95 & $19.95 when sales flatened out after a year or two.

Paramount's single discs were usually $34.95, but later were moved to $39.95 whether single or double discs. A few 2 disc titles went for up to $49.95 depending upon extras or CAV format. MGM followed a similiar price structure except for very special editions (like Mad, Mad, World & Logan's Run) which were priced on a case-by-case basis. For some reason, Paramount priced the single disc of "The Keep" at $44.95.

Columbia liked the$34.95 single & $39.95 double disc price points for most titles. Special editions were usually licenced out to Criterion.

Image Entertainment stuck to the $39.95 price whether single or double disc except on older catalog product that ran anywhere from $19.95 on up. Many bare bones Image titles also got the Criterion treatment as special editions.

Fox was the odd studio out, with single disc titles almost always at $49.95 and dual discs $10 to $20 higher depending on title and perceived demand. Some single disc titles went for $29.95 to $39.95, but that was toward the end of the format's following. Prices for special editions varied, but usually hit the $99.95 price point.

Criterion's prices usually ranged hit $39.95 to $49.95 for single disc movie only releases to $125 or more for the super-special-edition treatment. Older catalog single disc titles were often repriced to $29.95 or $34.95.

Prices on special edition release varied widely from studio to studio depending upon conents, extras, and novelty packaging.

It cost a lot more to collect LDs then than it does today to collect DVDs. However, the hometheater crowd was a lot smaller and had to brunt a higher cost to keep software coming due to the lower volume of sales.

Hometheaters were also more of a luxury back then than they are now. Having people over to watch the latest LD or multi-film themed program on a large screen projection system in a dedicated theater room with a high-quality Dolby sound system was a major event planned ahead of time.

Now with DVD and hometheater in the mainstream like LD never was, that event status really does not seem to apply as it once did IMO. Sure it's nice to have superior quality (generally) with DVD, but it's now so common place as to be mundane and taken for granted.

In many ways, I miss the salad days of LD. Something special was lost when DVD took over.

The King is dead. Long live the king.

 

[Matt Wallace]

I have to chime in here. I got those editions in the capture above on Widescreen VHS for about $40 in October from my store ( a Hastings). It took my special order 3 times as long as normal ( about 6 weeks) to fill, and I honestly feel lucky that it came at all. There are WS copies out there, but they have to literally scrape the barrel to find them. I have an Onkyo 696 reciever that converts composite to S-Video, so it seems to be a little cleaner. I can imagine that the LD looks even better. What's an added bonus is that there are short interviews on each tape with George Lucas that are pretty cool.

The 696 also has Pro Logic 2, and it REALLY enhances Star Wars on VHS. The rear seperation is much better than I expected, and the low end gets directed to the subwoofer very actively. I hunted for a good copy of the originals on Laser and a good LD Player for weeks before I settled on the WS VHS and I've been pretty pleased.

Happy Viewing!!

Matt

 

[TheoGB]

Furthermore, I entirely disagree that Star Wars would sell as many players as any film; there are several DVDs that have outsold Phantom Menace

Come on - The Phantom Menace is the least liked SW film and look how well it did. The OT SE or not on a DVD of that calibre would sell DVD players to people. Not a lot but that's as much to do with the fact that so many people already own them.

In this country at least I remember The Matrix being the 'killer app' that pushed a lot of people to get DVD.

 

[Dave H]

Theo,

You didn't quote me in full context and fully ignored my point. Furthermore, the *main* Star Wars fans are men between the ages 25-35. Most kids today or adults of other ages could care less of Star Wars. Phantom Menace failed to re-capture the Star Wars mania with today's youth, by and large.

Show me the evidence that any single title, as Matrix, in and of itself, was responsible for selling enough players to where it was responsible for a substantial amount of DVD player sales and a prime technology mover. It's a variety of "big" movies that is responsible; not just one movie.