Star Wars On Blu-ray In 2011

[Vympel]

Personally, I'm content with the last DVD release (which had both the original versions and the newest version). I guess since I grew up watching old, edited-for-time television broadcasts and, consequently, taped VHS versions, "it'll look like crap" doesn't really bother me, particularly when it's a choice between "video quality is average" and "Vader's lightsaber is pink."

That's one of the reasons why I'm keen for the Blu-Ray release - the 2004 DVD release was wanting in many ways.

And if this blu-ray looks anything like the other blu-ray movies I've seen, that might not even be a choice.

I'm not sure what you mean?

[Stark]

Maybe he expects massive DNR halos. All kinds of stuff are fucked up by too much processing.

[Vympel]

Maybe he expects massive DNR halos. All kinds of stuff are fucked up by too much processing.

If its a shitty release that has been raped by too much processing, I won't touch it with a ten-foot pole. But excessive DNR is the exception rather than the norm for blu-ray releases. Most releases are high quality. Heck, even Gladiator, which was a rare high profile release mostly-wrecked by too much DNR, is getting a re-release so it actually looks like (gasp!) it was shot on film.

By contrast you have the Predator Blu-Ray, which was released in an unchanged, grainy-but-satisfactory (its an old movie, what do you want?) form but was then re-released with so much DNR it was ridiculous.

It really depends on the philosophy they take with the transfer. Dune, for example, is a freaking fantastic blu-ray from a movie that never looked 10% as good as Star Wars, so there's no excuse for fucking it up but incompetence.

[TC Pilot]

I'm not sure what you mean?

I mean that the only blu-ray I've seen looks like shit. Maybe it's just an exception (my sample size is the third X-men movie in a Best Buy), but everything just looked, for lack of a better word, unnatural (Ian McKellan looked like wax, for instance). And considering these clowns couldn't even fix the damn color of Darth Vader's lightsaber, even if it is an anomaly due to incompetence, it's the kind of anomaly they'll managed to include.

[Stark]

I've seen the re-released Predator. Its fucking hilarious how awful it is; its one thing to smooth out an old film (so it arguably looks different) its another to totally fuck it to death so anyone watching can see the horror.

Some people dislike BR because they're not used to more than 50hz. Making everything look like its Home and Away motion-wise puts people off.

[Vympel]

I mean that the only blu-ray I've seen looks like shit. Maybe it's just an exception (my sample size is the third X-men movie in a Best Buy), but everything just looked, for lack of a better word, unnatural (Ian McKellan looked like wax, for instance). And considering these clowns couldn't even fix the damn color of Darth Vader's lightsaber, even if it is an anomaly due to incompetence, it's the kind of anomaly they'll managed to include.

Sounds like a bad release. If you want to see the format as its meant to be, I recommend Serenity, Avatar, Dune (for a look at how it can improve even an old film that was never meant for hi-def), Star Trek: TOS Remastered (I'm serious, its unbelievable), The Fifth Element (the second release, not the bodgy 1080i original that was so bad Sony ran an exchange program so you could swap it without paying a dime), 300- heck, the list goes on and on.

[Vympel]

And considering these clowns couldn't even fix the damn color of Darth Vader's lightsaber, even if it is an anomaly due to incompetence, it's the kind of anomaly they'll managed to include.

Well that's actually a problem they created from their bodgy work on the DVD - whoever it was. Vader's lightsabre (and Luke's on the Falcon in ANH) color is fucked up because of very poor color correction- that's also why Hoth is so inexplicably blue, and Yoda's skin tone goes all weird. There's also the flipping of the audio channels in ANH and how they drowned the music out during the Battle of Yavin at one point. It wasn't a very good DVD release.

EDIT: I've not seen the X-Men: Last Stand on BRD, but it got a good review - blu-ray.com is quite fanatically against DNR so they would've mentioned it if it had destroyed the fine detail and actually made McKellan's face look like wax. In fact they say the opposite:-

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/X-Men-The ... u-ray/208/

[Galvatron]

I have little hope that the Blu-ray editions will correct the colors from the DVD versions. Hopefully Adywan will eventually give us 1080p versions of his ANH and TESB Revisited.

[Vympel]

I have little hope that the Blu-ray editions will correct the colors from the DVD versions.

If they don't the Blu-Rays will get panned. People were desperate for DVDs of Star Wars so you didn't hear much mainstream grousing, but the bar for blu-ray is higher.

The 2004 DVDs didn't even fix Obi-Wan's stick sabre properly. I don't get it. Its so damn easy to do.

[LMSx]

I have little hope that the Blu-ray editions will correct the colors from the DVD versions.

If they don't the Blu-Rays will get panned. People were desperate for DVDs of Star Wars so you didn't hear much mainstream grousing, but the bar for blu-ray is higher.

The 2004 DVDs didn't even fix Obi-Wan's stick sabre properly. I don't get it. Its so damn easy to do.

I vaguely remember some IGN interview around the time of the 2004 release talking to the techie in charge of the update work, and he spoke the party line while implying that the team didn't have all the time they wanted to restore the DVDs. Sort of boggles the mind, but then again, something in the process clearly went wrong if such random shit happened.