[barend]

just picked up my orignals DVDs...

the covers are hilarious, becuase they've used a composit of the posing photos... so for ANH han solo has a nice clean cut short back and side military haircut on the front....

secondly, the Originals are on disc 2.... A HAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA oh lucas, you'll be the darth of us all...

the little booklet inside is great too, theres a little pair of pics... special bonus: han shoots greedo first and look! its sebastian shaws ghost.

can't wait to watch the 4:3 aspect 2.0 stereo marvells...





oooh, heheh... there's more.

just tried it (disc 2 of course) on a work computer... it automatically opens up a menu listing all the options and features... EXCEPT!!! you guessed it... the original theatrical version.

with a tiny little entry at the bottom that reads: to play feature exit this menu and run your computers usual DVD player....

hmmmm.... nice. we had a good laugh here at work about that.

[KurganX]

Congratulations! You are the first nerd on the planet to own them!

Well, unless you snuck them out of the store, you're a Lucas lackey or your dad worked at the company or something.

Anyway, thanks for biting the bullet for the rest of us. I wasn't planning to rush out unless I saw 'em for $10 or something (I'll wait and price shop to see if anywhere sells them cheaper than Amazon).

Is that that stupid "PC friendly/enhanced" crap or whatever it was called? I never install that BS, even if I miss out on one or two "bonus features" on a few DVD's. It's just annoying, stuff, many people's computers can't even handle it, but oh well!


How much did it set you back? Where'd you get it from? You know that somewhere, deep down, we're all jealous, even if we deny it! (hey, more exciting than the prequels, right?)

This post has been edited by KurganX: 12 September 2006 - 01:59 AM

[barend]

$68.50 AUD (51.58 USD)

[barend]

just flicked through scenes in both versions...

firstly the original IS in wide screen... WTF is that about? you loose nothing.

the extraspecial edition looks like an amature photoshoper did it...
the microscopic grain has been smoothed out but the contrast is offensive... luke (and anikans) lightsabre is suddenly green... WTF again? the exta residents of Mos Eisley have blurred edges that betray them as add ons, its utterly pathetic....

the originals look great.

and it's not nostalgia, to all the gushers, its physically better.

i am one content crazy monkey!!!

it's sweet... purchase this product.

[KurganX]

just flicked through scenes in both versions...

...

the extraspecial edition looks like an amature photoshoper did it...
the microscopic grain has been smoothed out but the contrast is offensive... luke (and anikans) lightsabre is suddenly green... WTF again? the exta residents of Mos Eisley have blurred edges that betray them as add ons, its utterly pathetic....

the originals look great.

and it's not nostalgia, to all the gushers, its physically better.

i am one content crazy monkey!!!

it's sweet... purchase this product.

Well, the movie on disc 1 is just the 2004 edition, but it's cool to hear your impressions (I agree about the blurry "new residents" of Mos Eisley btw, I noticed that right away... in virtually every scene that wasn't completely new but a combination of stuff from the 1970's and 1990's). And yeah, back in 1997 most of us were impressed, but video editing has come some way since then! (even if you thought CG Jabba was impressive back then, any fool could see he didn't look anything like ROTJ Jabba)

firstly the original IS in wide screen... WTF is that about? you loose nothing.

Okay, this requires some explanation. Whether you bought the "Widescreen" or "Full Screen/Full Frame" edition of these Star Wars sets, the movie feature on "bonus" disc 2 is ALWAYS in widescreen.

It is NON-ANAMORPHIC widescreen. That is, it's stuck in letterbox, and if you have a widescreen monitor or TV, and you fire this DVD up on it, you will notice there are thick black (or gray on many tv's) bars on the sides of the screen (vertical AND horizontal, with a small rectangular area of video display in the center). On a PC monitor you can blow it up and on most widescreen TV's you can hit a 16x9 zoom or "Zoom" button and it will blow up to fill the screen area. However when you do that, it will often increase jaggies/pixels OR it will become really blurry to compensate. With Anamorphic, you lose no detail because it was meant to blow up and show you the rest in the full (or close to the full) screen area.

To check, if you don't have a widescreen display, is to open up your DVD player on your comp (if you have PowerDVD, go into settings and make sure that screen captures are on and "default size" rather than "fullscreen/current window size". Don't fullscreen it or apply any stretching filters, just default size and uncheck "preserve aspect ratio" or anything like that (don't run "pan 'n' scan mode" or any other tricks), and just take a screen cap when it's in a window. Look at the screen (or posti t). If it's goofy looking, like the video is squashed or the people look stretched, then it is anamorphic. If they look properly proportioned, then it's simply widescreen letterbox.

For a full rundown:

http://en.wikipedia....phic_widescreen (see the section on DVD video), and yes this info is posted on lots of websites, even if you don't trust wiki.

[KurganX]

Here's a review. Confirmed, they're non-anamorphic (at least "bonus disc" isn't, obviously disc 1 is, since it's the 2004 version copied exactly from the the previous two releases).

http://avplay.avforu...;reviewid=12516

And their reviews of the other two:

http://avplay.avforu...showreview=8245

http://avplay.avforu...showreview=8251

This post has been edited by KurganX: 12 September 2006 - 12:31 PM

[Lord Aquaman]

So the original theatrical cuts are in fact presented in widescreen and not full screen?

[KurganX]

Disc 1 (2004 version): Anamorphic widescreen OR plain full frame (depending upon which version you buy)

Bonus Disc (1993 version): NON-anamorphic widescreen (even if you purchased the "Full Frame" version of the movie)


They're in widescreen, no matter which version you purchase. They are NOT anamorphic.

Meaning on a widescreen TV or widescreen monitor you'll see this:



Instead of this (what you want to see, and what the 2004 sets look like, because they ARE anamorphic capable):




On a standard (4:3) screen, you won't notice any reall difference, except it's going to be lower detail (anamorphics are generally higher detail because they are going to be blown up to a larger size on the longer rectangular screens of widescreen displays).

In a non-anamorphic picture, the "black bars" are actually part of the movie, rather than "empty space."

To avoid the gray sidebars (as the top pic shows), you can use the "zoom" feature present on most widescreen displays. However in doing so, you're stretching and blowing up the picture, meaning it will either get blurrier or jaggier. An anamorphic display will stretch itself, without losing detail (in fact, you'll notice more). It'll stretch as much as it can to take up as much of the screen area as possible (reducing the black bar space) without distorting the image proportionally (so no people with stretched heads or whatnot).


But for a better description:

Worlds Easiest Explanation of Anamorphic 16:9 Enhancement in DVDs (don't let the name fool you of course, since this "enhancement" is what makes a movie at home look more like it would in the theater).

This post has been edited by KurganX: 12 September 2006 - 01:18 PM

[Vesuvius]

Yes kids, I too have purchased such trilogy. I didn't want to but hey, I it was useless to resist. It was unavoidable, ...it was my destiny. I have only seen EP IV in widescreen, but I was skipping through parts of EP V and it looks wonderfull! I'll have to blow a day watching the entire trilogy now. And with such an agenda, I can do that because I have some days off of work! Yippeee!

Oh, the price I paid was 54.29, got it at the Target, BestBuy has it for the same price (bought individually). I'm sure this price will only be for this week due to it's release. Better hurry before the price skyrockets to Hellish proportions.

[barend]

i have a widescreen tV. both movies have the same level of detail, except the special disc 1 digres version has a sloppy white line at the top, a dark tint due to de-speckling, and seems slightly less focused than it could be.

watching the original, i have never seen it look better, i must say. i had friend over who was gob smacked, and wondered why he ever bought the special box of 2004.

the only prob with watching org in widescreen is the second line of subtitles gets cut off... but seeing as i know quite well what greedo is saying, i think i'll be cool with that.

kurg, when i say you loose nothing in wide, i just meant that you don't loose any visual information... they haven't just slapped black bars on the whole film is there... but i know what your talking about with anamorphic... but seriously... it looks fantastic

[Despondent]

Don't want to pay GL any more money.
Don't want to watch the videotapes.

I don't want to support something I don't believe in.

I guess I believe in the OT.
Too bad the packaging sucks.

[barend]

this is the first copy of any Starwars i have EVER purchased...

aside from thousands of dollars spent in the late 70s and early 80s on toys...

this is the first money i have sent in his direction... for a non box office purchase. and i got before he wanted me to have it...
further more his lack of effort on the dvd menu on disc two means i can watch it quicker too...

[Despondent]

and i got before he wanted me to have it..

I hear ya.

But I still maintain that once the gushers all have theirs, they'll be more than happy to sell their OOT discs on ebay.

This post has been edited by Despondent: 12 September 2006 - 08:08 PM

[Chefelf]

Mine shipped today and should arrive tomorrow or later this week. I don't think I'm gonna watch them right off the bat... just gonna put them in my collection until I get the urge to see them again.

[Zatoichi]

I do not plan or spending fifty or so dollars on them no matter how much I may want them. There is a good chance that I will commit sin by stealing them instead. I don't want anything else besides those second discs anyways (I already own the others). I'd be pilfuring it from a Wal-Mart or something anyways. At least some gigantic evil corporate overlord entity anyways. GL already has gotten more than his fair share of mine and my parents money.

I would now like to make a crack about the PT by saying that it is not even worth the effort to steal it. If I could find all three for five or less, then, only then, might I be even tempted to buy them. Yeah, as if I desired to sell my soul. There, nowI'm finished. I apologize if I've offended anyone *fingers crossed*