Star Wars DVD Box Set Released 536
dealsites writes "CNN reports that George Lucas is releasing the Star Wars DVD box set early on September 21, 2004 due to piracy concerns. Lucas had intended to release the box set of the original 3 movies after Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was released. However, he mentions that due to piracy concerns the profits are being eaten up and there might not be a market for the films at that time. The box set contains the changes that Lucas has made from the original releases. CNN also reports on the top 5 major changes. Lucas is quoted as saying that he never intends to re-release the original 3 movies in the first CNN link."
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:4, Informative)
Already got it ... (Score:1, Informative)
Had enough time to see some of the documentaries and i'm more then happy so far
5 changes? I think not (Score:5, Informative)
Bad Wikipedia link (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:5, Informative)
The process of transferring a film goes (roughly) like this:
Source material (film) -> master (video) -> cleanup -> duplication master -> consumer product.
"Remastering" refers to re-transfering the original film elements on a telecine, and cleaning them up to provide the best quality master for mass production possible. Unlimited quantities of DVDs may then be created from the duplication masters.
So they aren't creating the consumer DVDs from the VHS masters, but rather re-transferring from the original film elements. That, with the additional cleanup work (e.g. Scratchbox) is what makes a remastered/restored film look good.
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure there are 50 people replying right now, but
It's better because the original film is significantly higher res than VHS (one would think this goes without saying, but anyway). Even if it were a simple direct from master copy to DVD, you'd still get a significantly better end result than could be achieved by VHS. But typically they'll do other things in the process like cleaning up the print (digitally) while they're at it. Also note that the 35mm film is higher res still than DVD (which is actually quite low res) so there is still a lot of headroom there for even better quality formats in the future (e.g. DVD-HD).
Re:Already got it ... (Score:2, Informative)
Everyone would do well... (Score:4, Informative)
... to buy a laserdisc player, buy the trilogy on LaserDisc (my dad still has the original trilogy), record to DVD, and voila. Star Wars Episodes IV, V, and VI the way they were ORIGINALLY viewed. As an added bonus, the LaserDiscs do sound better than any VHS your going to find and the picture (barring laser rot or a warped LD) is pretty nice too. :)
CliffH
UK release yesterday (Score:5, Informative)
Got to be a first, we actually got a US release *before* the US, rather than 3 months later as is usually the case.
Wife and I watch epIV last night (and yes Greedo and Han do shoot at the same time) and thoroughly enjoyed it: the improvements are noticable: especially compared to our worn out VHS copy ;-) some changes (all the wild life wandering in and around Mos Eisley for example) seem a little gratuitous but not over the top.
I'd give it a thimbs up so far (but then I always did like IV, V was risible, ewoks *spit*, and VI was OK).
Re:Everyone would do well... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:UK release yesterday (Score:2, Informative)
"...V was ok, and VI was risible, ewoks *spit*"
Hollywood lives in a fantasy land (Score:5, Informative)
Home video sales now account for nearly 60 percent of Hollywood's revenue. DVD sales are not only the fastest growing part of the movie business, they're changing the way Hollywood does business.
He says DVD sales can save a film like "Dark Blue," which pulled in a modest $9 million in theaters. "It actually did more revenues in DVD than it did at the box office," says McGurk, because the DVD market is a man's world.
Blockbuster films now often sell more than 10 million DVDs in the U.S. alone. And that's at $20 a pop. And with DVD players still in only half of American homes, Hollywood believes those soaring sales will just get hotter still.
Finding Nemo grossed $320 million [leesmovieinfo.net] from DVD sales in 2003. "Consumers spend more money on the DVD version of almost every movie than they do on that same movie in theaters, including blockbusters such as The Lord of the Rings, Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean" (USA Today [usatoday.com]). CNN/Money reports [cnn.com] that the movie studios "pocket roughly 80 cents of every dollar on each DVD sold, a take well above the 50 cents for each dollar at the box office" and The Hollywood Reporter [hollywoodreporter.com] says that "studios are earning about 60% more upon initial release from video sales of theatrical feature films than they did during the VHS-only era". So, not only are video sales up overall, DVDs are more profitable for the media companies than VHS or the box office.
And the future looks rosy as well. PriceWaterhouseCoopers has a sample chapter of their Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2004-2008 report [pwc.com] online which says:
We project filmed entertainment spending in the United States, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), Asia/Pacific, Latin America, and Canada will rise at a 7.5 percent compound annual rate, reaching $108 billion in 2008 from $75.3 billion in 2003. EMEA will be the fastest-growing region, rising by 10.3 percent compounded annually to $36.9 billion in 2008 compared with $22.6 billion in 2003. The U.S. market will expand at a 6.3 percent rate, from $34.3 billion in 2003 to $46.6 billion in 2008. Spending in Asia/Pacific will increase from $13.3 billion to $17.3 billion in the five-year period, growing at a 5.4 percent compound annual rate. Filmed entertainment in Latin America will total $1.6 billion in 2008, up from $1.3 billion in 2003, representing a 4.6 percent gain compounded annually. Spending in Canada will rise from $3.9 billion in 2003 to $5.6 billion in 2008, 7.7 percent compounded annually.
This is anything BUT piracy eating into sales. Mr. Lucas, would you like to change your answer?
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Everyone would do well... (Score:4, Informative)
http://everythingisnt.com/torrents/
Re:In movies advertisement always existed (Score:3, Informative)
Interview with Mark Hammill (Score:4, Informative)
--
Live deals [dealsites.net]
Re:5 changes? I think not (Score:4, Informative)
That list is just the major ones, not all of them.
Re:Sure. (Score:4, Informative)
I read somewhere (but now can't find the source to save my life, so call it heresay) that Lucas is essentialy doing this in preparation for a HD release of the films. I think he'll be waiting for the HD format to settle down before he makes any moves.
For those of you who want to try out HD DVD you've got only one choice as of right now.... Terminator 2's latest addition (fugly metal case etc) is the only HD DVD on the market in the US.
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately (Score:1, Informative)
if you look here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserdisc
You'll see it is an analog format, not digital.
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Informative)
Empire has never been my favorite (don't ask my why, I dunno. Might be that it's so dark), but I don't remember any big-huge changes in it (correct me if I'm wrong). Because of that it's the best of the Special Editions in my mind simply because there are no real glaring changes.
Everyone complains about CGI Jabba, Han shooting first, and so on (why doesn't anyone complain about the godawful music video in Jedi?), but I've not seen any complaints about the additions to the Sarlacc, the skies of Bespin, or the 'sneak preview' of Coruscant at the end of Jedi.
For the record, not that anyone's asking, but Jedi was my favorite, simply because it was the first one I ever saw as a kid (born in '81). And it still is. Ewoks aside, the conflict between Luke and Vader and Palpatine makes the entire trilogy for me. I found a copy of the radio drama for Jedi the other day and listened to it, and my eyes watered just a little (yeah, I know, it's dumb... but still) when I heard the extra dialogue they added for Anakin just before he throws the Emperor down the ventilation shaft. I need to get the whole set of the radio dramas, just because they did Jedi so well (well... apart from Threepio's color commentary in Jabba's palace, but hey, it's radio.
the originals are here (torrents) (Score:2, Informative)
Piracy my ass, these versions are dead and the community who wants them should be keeping them alive.
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:2, Informative)
Article follows:
John Lowry: Restoring Films to the Galaxy
September 16, 2004
On September 21, when Star Wars fans insert A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on DVD for the first time, they are going to see picture quality no Star Wars audience has ever seen... including those at the first screening of the first day back in May 1977.
The growing popularity of films from all eras on DVD format has helped to illuminate a growing problem with some of the movie industry's greatest treasures -- they exist only on physical film stock, and that film stock is fragile and deteriorating rapidly.
When Lucasfilm began to prepare the trilogy for a digital release, they called upon John Lowry and Lowry Digital Images to step in to save the day. In the past four years, Lowry Digital has been hired to use their patented custom software processes to digitally clean and restore hundreds of films, including high-profile efforts on Snow White, Citizen Kane and last year's acclaimed Indiana Jones Trilogy DVD set.
At the Lowry Digital Images facility, over 600 Macintosh dual-processor G5 computers utilizing over 2400 gigabytes of RAM and 478 terabytes (over 478 million megabytes) of hard drive space processed each of the classic Star Wars films for over 30 break-neck days to create the stunning new versions fans will see in the Star Wars Trilogy DVD set.
"There are three key contributing factors to the degradation of film," Lowry explains. "Dirt, time and chemical damage due to conventional restoration processes."
When creating a duplicate of a scratched original, a wet-gate printer is commonly used. The master copy passes through a special fluid which temporarily fills any scratches or holes in the original. According to Lowry, this process is physically harsh and actually adds more grain and softens the images. Proper storage of the fragile film is also an industry issue. "Storage problems in the past have led to flicker, color damage and color flicker," says Lowry.
But the greatest challenge on the Star Wars trilogy was dirt damage. The more a film is used, the more dirt it accumulates. The unexpected success of A New Hope took a particular toll because each copy of the film ended up being played far more often than is usual, to the point where even Fox Studio's master originals began to wear out keeping up with demand.
"We have never seen anything quite this bad from a dirt perspective," says Lowry. "At some point the dirt becomes part of the picture and very, very hard to get rid of."
Over the years, Lowry Digital's computer algorithms have evolved from automating the removal of hundreds of pieces of dirt in a scene, to handling the 100,000 pieces of dirt in the Indiana Jones trilogy, to taking on the Star Wars trilogy which required automated and manual removal of up to a million pieces of dirt in scenes like R2-D2 and C-3PO's arrival on Tatooine in A New Hope.
The Star Wars restoration process began with a 10-bit RGB high-definition scan of the original negatives. This data was then used by a team at Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic to work with George Lucas to do some significant color correction to the movies. This color-timed data was then transferred to Lowry Digital hard drives, to begin the massive clean-up effort.
Most effects in the original trilogy were achieved, at least in part, with the aid of optical printing -- a process in which one piece of film is passed through a printer multiple times, once for each effects element. With each optical effect layer, grain can be introduced and some of the original clarity reduced. "Every time there was a lightsaber in frame, it was exceedingly grainy due to opticals," Lowry recalls.
"Sometimes the scratches were very bad," says Lowry, "at one point in Return of the Jedi there was a literally
Re:My feelings on the changes (Score:3, Informative)
Earlier on, but you're right. There's a reason for that:
Link [ign.com]
IGNFF: I've heard different stories. One was that it was never intended to be in the film, that it was just a let's see if we can do this, and replace it later. The other school of thought was, it was always supposed to be there.
KURTZ: Well, the original idea was that it was supposed to be there. It is in the script ... but it was a guy, a human being, this sort of fat guy... looked a bit like Sydney Greenstreet... and the scene is pretty much, I mean dialogue wise, it's exactly what you see in the Special Edition. But it was a person that was there, and we had technical difficulties with that scene. We shot it over three times for camera problems, focus problems, and film stock problem, and then abandoned it because we ran out of time. We just said, "Well, the bulk of the information that comes across in that scene, about Jabba threatening Han Solo and wanting his money and all of that, we could get across in the scene in the Cantina, with Greedo." It's basically the same kind of information. So we just added some bits to the Greedo scene to make it a little bit longer that gets across that information, and then jettisoned that other scene. This all happened while we were shooting. It wasn't done in the cutting room.
(End excerpt)
Lucas seems to have forgotten, or simply doesn't care, why that Jabba scene was cut in the first place and that the film was reworked at the time to account for that. Without shortening the Greedo scene, Jabba's scene really does come across as a pointless rehash of what we just learned -- not to mention ruining the introduction of the Millenium Falcon (originally not seen until Luke first sees it), tossing in a pointless Boba Fett cameo, and undermining Jabba's threat somewhat. Of all the changes Lucas has made to the films, I think this one is tied with the infamous one as the worst.
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:2, Informative)
Oftentimes these movies are cleaned up and rereleased on DVD later as a special or deluxe edition with a cleaner transfer.
It's a a good idea to check out DVD review sites for information about the quality of the films transfer.
Re:5 changes? I think not (Score:3, Informative)
I created a small and short animated GIF of the Han/Greedo sequence. You can get it here [strangecharm.net].