Star Wars on DVD

twigstamc420 writes "USA Today is reporting that Lucasfilm has announced the details of releasing the Star Wars episodes IV through VI on DVD as well as a bonus DVD with commentary."

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Re:I'm going to wait...believe it or not.

[blackpaw]

So how were you sucked in by LOTR 1 ? Jackson was upfront from the start that there would be extended versions for all three movies after the cinematic dvs were released

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Actually...

[EvilCabbage]

Jabba didn't meet up with Han before Han took off (and certainly not the significantly older looking version of Han that you see in this scene). Etc. Etc. Han did meet Jabba in the original cut, the scene was pulled from theatrical release though. Jabba was originally a dumpy irish fellow dressed in fur and leather.

If you're going to bitch about scene changes, at least have the facts my friend.

Re:Yawn.

[Don Sample]

Uh... "the significantly older version of Han" was filmed with the original movie, and a stand-in (a fat guy wearing some sort of fur outfit, looked kinda like Cyrano Jones from The Trouble With Tribbles) for Jabba, that George originally planned to replace with a stop motion Hut.

When that plan didn't work out (didn't have the time/budget/tech to do it convincingly) they added the Greedo scene to pass on the same information about Han's difficulties with the local smugglar king, which is why the conversation with Jabba is essentially the same as the conversation with Greedo.

I'll stick to my LaserDiscs....

[elberserko]

The only true way to see the original theatrical versions of the trilogy is to get the laserdiscs. Not only does it look and sound better than the VHS but If you get the right ones, they are widescreen, which no VHS copy of the "original theatrical" versions have to the best of my knowledge.

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Re:Non special edition dvd's

[djward]

Find a used laserdisc player. You can find the orig. trilogy, remastered THX but pre-extra shite, for pretty cheap now on LD. Damn good quality (almost DVD quality), surround sound, etc. I've been enjoying them for years. I suppose you could borrow a LD player and hook it up to computer and burn over to DVD if you were inclined.

I love the laserdiscs though. Big, beautiful cover art. The Empire Strikes Back LD cover is a thing of beauty.

Re:I'll stick to my LaserDiscs....

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1995, when the originals were remastered and released as the "faces" box set, they released VHS full screen, VHS widescreen, and LD widescreen editions.

In 1998, when they released the Special Editions, they released both full and widescreen in VHS and widescreen in LD.

Re:I'm going to wait...believe it or not.

[The-Bus]

and am not going to get taken like a sucker on this like I was with Fellowship of the Ring.

Purely your fault...

1. Peter Jackson announced the EE (extended edition) before the regular edition had been released.
   
2. The EE is an entirely different cut.
   
3. The extras are all different.
   
4. New Line offers at least $5 off if you send in the UPC from the first one, bringing the cost of the EEs down to about $20 when they come out.
   

And, on topic, I'll be getting the DVDs.

Re:hopefulness

[Jugalator]

Or the part where Luke shouts "Carrie!" instead of "Leia!" at the end of Ep IV. Fun stuff like that should definitely be left in.

From IMDb...

Incorrectly regarded as goofs: It is frequently claimed that upon returning to the Rebel base after destroying the Death Star, Luke exclaims, "Carrie!" when he hears Leia (Carrie Fisher) call "Luke!" Sound designer Ben Burtt has confirmed that, after extensive listening, it appears to be "Hey" or "Yay"; 'Mark Hamill' reports that he said, "Hey! There she is!" but mumbled the last word.

Re:I'll stick to my LaserDiscs....

[Nogami_Saeko]

I did that myself - I wouldn't buy pirate DVDs, but I had no problem format-shifting them myself (and doing some cleanup) - LDs through a DV transcoder into the computer, some DVNR and pull the edges of the letterbox down to pure black so as to not waste bits in MPG encoding, pulldown to 24frame progressive, multipass encoding, then some subtitling for the aliens talking.

That said, although the video looks good, it would certainly benefit from a digital-surround mix...

Hmm... Wonder about extracting the new remastered audio from the DVD release and re-editing it to match the older visuals, then recombine it. May be worth a shot :)

N.

Re:Now that does not make sense?

[jargonCCNA]

Not necessarily his purest form.. but the spirit shows the Jedi as they died as a Jedi.. Ben said it himself, Darth Vader killed Anakin Skywalker. When he became Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker died, but his spirit didn't get released.. but when it did, that's why he's seen as Hayden Christensen.

All I ask Lucas at this point (because there's a lot of stuff that he really can't atone for) is that we see Anakin with that hair sometime during Revenge of the Sith. He might be making weird plot holes, but let's at least see a vague effort at continuity here.

I haven't seen anyone mention this yet.

[cheetah]

But there is a longtime petition site to get the original movies put on Dvd. http://www.originaltrilogy.com/ [originaltrilogy.com] Check it out...

StarWars.com News Releases

[crashnbur]

DVD Details [starwars.com] (April 20, 2004). Extras include:

Episode III Behind the Scenes Preview: The Return of Darth Vader

The Birth of the Lightsaber
The Characters of Star Wars
The Force Is With Them: The Legacy of Star Wars
Star Wars Battlefront Trailer and Playable Demo
Star Wars: Episode III Making the Game Preview
Original Trailers and TV Spots
Never-Before-Seen Production Gallery
Original Posters and Print Campaigns

The DVD package is described here [starwars.com], and this page [starwars.com] shows each individual case and DVD nicely.

Re:How hard would it be...

[Anonymous Coward]

Roughly as hard as it would be to do a search on ebay. I bought DVDs transferred from the laserdisc several years ago from ebay. Both the original trilogy and the special edition. They're a little grainy what with the mpeg artifacts (I assume because of both inferior source material and encoding techniques) but they're still worlds better than vhs. Also, the boxes looked fairly pro and the dvds were factory pressed. Came from some people in Hong Kong. I know, big surprise.

Re:Laserdisc

[iainl]

Laserdisc is indeed analogue (at least the picture is analogue - its got either PCM, Dolby Digital or full-bitrade DTS sound, depending on title). Doesn't mean that its in any way bad, though; it took DVD a good year or two to substantially beat LD for image quality.

Re:Well? WELL?

[iainl]

Since no-one else has given you a straight answer, they now both shoot at the same time, but Greedo's shot misses.

Seriously - to the frame.

It blatently looks like George wanted to appease the fans who didn't like Greedo shooting first, but at the same time felt it necessary to have him shooting.

So its still stupid, but looks nowhere near as dumb as it did in '97; Greedo is at least aiming vaguely in the right direction this time.

Re:Anyone have a .torrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the non-special editions do? :)

• A New Hope [66.90.75.92]
• The Empire Strikes Back [66.90.75.92]
• Return of the Jedi [66.90.75.92]

They're DVD-R sized, so make sure you're on a fast enough connection!

Re:Lucas-Crap(TM)

[Anthony Boyd]

If they wanted to replace the fat guy with a puppet in 1976/1977 they would have had to do the scene with greenscreen or rear projection.

Huh? No they wouldn't. They would film the stop-motion Hut with greenscreen, then superimpose that on top of the furry guy.

Re:Some of the changes (possible spoilers)

[JET 666]

you can still buy the cinema/VHS release on dvd(and it is cheaper)

Re:Han shoots first?

[Alcimedes]

no, i'm just really bad at proof reading.

Lucas directed the movie, but it was basically a ripoff of an older, Japanese title. what i don't understand is why he'd make a fairly significant change without an excellent reason.

in our society, we have justifiable homocide. if you're protecting yourself from someone who's trying to kill you, and you kill them, you don't go to jail.

if, on the other hand, you murder someone, you have problems. Han murders Greedo. (or whatever his name is) because he doesn't want to go back to Jabba. the character that murders someone to me is a fundamentally different character than the guy who's just trying to keep from getting shot.

Re:Anyone have a .torrent?

[Darth Maul]

These DVDs are *great*! The ones I got a while back are rips right from the LaserDisc. Pre-Special Edition, so everything is as it should be. There is even a DVD menu with limited special features and audio commentary.

At 4.5G per dvd, it's still worth it. Share it with all your friends! This is how the Star Wars trilogy should be preserved on DVD.

Re:Some of the changes (possible spoilers)

[rgarcia]

Actually, that asian "release" is not official and is really a Laserdisc rip to DVD. That's why your version doesn't have the so-called enhancements Lucas put in; they were done after the Laserdisc release.

Re:How hard would it be...

[jayteedee]

I have the Laserdiscs for ANH and ESB. The LD's were pretty good for the day, but they have a lot of the old movie artifacts which I find slightly annoying to watch. You see some film scratches and you see the "double dots" which appear in the upper right corner, which for you young-uns was used to switch from one film reel to the next during presentations in a theater. The new versions of the VHS competed with the LD quality just because of the clean-up work they did. Don't get me wrong, LD can compete and exceed the DVD quality, but more often than not, the original film (used many times) or the transfer process makes the difference in the final LD quality (or DVD for that matter). It seems to be only in the last 8 years that the majority of film production has concentrated on making a good transfer to VHS, DVD, or LD. Before that, you got what you got unless you paid through some orifice for the "Criterion Collection" (or some other "richly titled" equivalent).

I think the best approach would be to rent the new DVD's when they come out and use the existing tools (DVD Shrink, Ifoedit, VOBedit and VideoReDo) to take the movies and simply remove the offending junk and burn to a new set of DVD blanks. Simple and effective, but you'll end up with better quality in the end. VideoReDo does a real good job with cutting the video and sound rather seamlessly if you run a few trials 1st since the actual "cut" location floats a little, but with trial and error you can get it basically perfectly.

I was once going to transfer all my LD's to DVD, but once DVD Shrink came out I found it far-far-far-far easier to rent the DVD (libraries, WalMart, etc) and copy to disk in less than 30 minutes than to do all the record, crop, compress, tweak, compress again (10-20 hours total although a lot of that is computer time). I did do this route for transfering my old 8mm videotapes to digital and that QUICKLY cured me from attempting the LD to digital route. But if you've got the time.....