The First Star Wars Trilogy Limited Editions
by henning
A friend of mine has a laserdisc player. He also has the original Star Wars Trilogy (yes, I capitalized the “T”) on laserdisc. Recently he supersampled the laserdisc output, digitized it, and created and MPEG4 version of the movies for his own personal use. (I’m sure he’ll correct me if I got any of that wrong.)
I wonder how that compares to Fox’s versions, where they had to do something similar? Yup, Fox released the original Star Wars movies on DVD, finally, and they came from laserdisc sources. How do they look? Not bad, but not really all that great either. Nor is the sound anything to write home about - it’s not even 5.1 (just like the original!).
Home Theater Magazine had a look, at this is what they had to say:
“The video is listed as 2.35:1, but is not anamorphic, so be sure to set your DVD player and display accordingly. The movies do vary slightly, and they all actually measure out a bit narrower than the full Panavision aspect ratio. As the resources at Fox and Lucasfilm are behind these releases, I can honestly say that they look better than any of the bootlegs I have ever seen—which were generated from the laserdiscs, the best-ever renditions of the original films. The colors are truer to the theatrical presentations, and the discs have an overall more filmic look than the reinvented 2004 special editions, even if they are a bit soft, dirty, grainy, and artifacty. The Dolby Surround audio is a hybrid mix of different soundtracks from over the years, with respectable fidelity and directionality. Extras are simply an Xbox-playable demo and a trailer for the fun Lego Star Wars II video game from Lucasarts.”
