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• SAGA BLU-RAY SIXOLOGY • ALL SIX FILMS 9-DISC SET • $89.99
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• PREQUEL BLU-RAY TRILOGY • EPISODE I-III 3-DISC SET • $39.99




http://www.starwars.com/movies/saga/








New Blu-Ray page - with a clean and detailed new transfer still of The Phantom Menace.

Very cool. All 6 stills look quite clean and detailed. Vader's saber still looks pinkish to me, though.

True. I mentioned TPM because it never was before.

Those do look great indeed. Looking at the Return Of The Jedi picture it looks like they did get the color timing corrected this time. I remember that particular shot from the film and the Death Star had a blue tint to it and not the natural gray color like in the 97' Special Editions.

we need some side by side comparison shots to the DVD release. anyone up to it?

Hi everyone. Love the site - here's what I came up with. Obviously I up-scaled the SD versions. I always wanted to post a jiving chewbacca ->

From the top...
• The ROTJ image from the Blu-Ray mini-site
• The same scene from the HDTV broadcasts
• The 2004 DVD version
• The 2006 bonus disc version

The Death Star looks awfully 'composited' in the 'Blu-Ray' image.

Now that I watch them 'side by side', I think I prefer the DVD version with the higher contrast. Not to say that the Blu-Ray still is bad, though.

Just as an aside - I'd never noticed until I came to do those grabs just now that...

• a. The glow around Endor was not even there pre-1997 versions

• b. The pre-1997 versions (well, in this case the OOT bonus disc and a few other fan-made, Laserdisc-sourced bootlegs I checked) don't have that "clean" frame at the start of this sequence, the Falcon is creeping into the top right of frame straight away.

• c. Some of the individual little elements are either missing, or in slightly different positions (weren't all of these FX shots recomposited for the Special Editions? I presume that is the reason).

Well I think generally any "M-Class" (I know Star Trek terms but best I could relate to) type planet would have a blue hue around it.

Agree. I think is was the SFX re-designers way of better illustrating that this moon had an atmosphere. On top of that, it hides the hideous matte line in the abrupt space-to-planet transition.

Indeed.

I think what always gives these things away - in any FX movie - is when the "black" areas of anything superimposed over a starfield are not the same black as the blackness of space itself, if you get what I mean.
I'm not sure (and don't actually care) how these things might actually look if they really existed and were lit in that way above a planet's surface, it may turn out you do get those different hues across black tones - what I am sure of is that my gut instinct tells me it looks a bit wrong, and it makes something instantly recogniseable as being composited in.

I mean, it's no biggie - I'm happy with the level of detail you can see across the dark side of the Death Star now - all I'm saying is the black areas seem to be a deep brown now as a result of raising that brightness to a level that gives you that extra detail. You can see it more in the Rebel Transport in the top right of frame.

I'm not down with all the technical colour timing, white balance stuff, so maybe someone else could explain the significance of this - as in, is this an indication that they are just trying to tweak a version created for the 2004 release which already has fundamental colour issues, or could these things be fixed reasonably at any point in the process?

(Again, I stress, I'm a bit ignorant when it comes to the colour timing issues - I only tend to see them when someone else points them out to me, so it's not actually a big bugbear of mine personally, it just seems to be something everyone is desperate to know about one way or another regarding this new set).

Thanks for the comparisons. Now that I look at it more closely, it seems that Vader's saber was almost orange in the original version. Perhaps it never was the deep blood-red that some are claiming it should be.

I agree with Bandersnatch on the matter with Vader's saber. All though I myself am colorblind so it's a bit hard for me to really distinguish the colors of Vader's saber from those screen shots. Either way it seems like this maybe in fact the best presentation of the Original Trilogy films.

I mean I know a lot of people (including myself) were hoping Lucas would restore the theatrical cuts and release them with this set. Since he's not then all I can say is, "oh well". Honestly for the most part I'm happy with the Special Editions.

I just hope to god that they didn't keep Hayden at the end of ROTJ for this set, I'll be pissed if they did.

They won't change that.

Very good image comparisons. However, I will take all of these with a grain of salt. I want to see the images play across my screen before making any declarations.

TPM picture looks awsome! Can anyone do a compare shot with the dvdrelease?

TPM - DVD vs Blu-Ray Preview:


AotC - DVD vs Blu-Ray Preview:

This seems to be an extension of the scene. (maybe 4-8 frames) There's no dialog or music to contend with, but Yoda's looking at Dooku which doesn't happen in past versions.

RotS - HDTV vs Blu-Ray Preview:


SW - Blu-Ray preview compared to GOUT and 2004:


ESB - Blu-Ray preview compared to GOUT and 2004:


RotJ - Blu-Ray preview compared to GOUT and 2004:



Cut Scene 'Treadwell' Behind the Magic comparisons:

[s]I know what GOUT references (the 2006 DVDs) but can someone please explain to me what the acronym stands for?[/s]

EDIT: Got it-it's an OT.com thing.

Wow. Great post %20! I think its pretty clear from these frames that the color is going to be very similar to the '04 release. Contrast is different - but I see that as an offset/side effect when dealing with a higher resolution frame.

Tatooine looks really nice on BR ANH. Prequels definitely look as if color has been enhanced.

TPM - Looks like the sky has a greener tint to it.

Hope they at least fix Luke's saber on the Falcon in ANH.


[flash width=640 height=385]http://www.youtube.com/v/5y3xKk8fikY&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash]


ALSO: The Bluray site has a new video: a pretty cheesy walk thru of the Comic Con booth. It pretty much confirms the NA packaging. I grimaced a little too much watching this....pretty bad. A few sneak peaks - maybe someone can catch something exciting.

BLURAY REBEL BASE WALK-THRU

The OT.com community has a theory based on what's been shown so far that the Blu-Ray uses the same digital master as the 2004. Adywan did some color tweaks of the preview pics and the theory is an overall gamma change was the most significant color revision.

Although no one's seen the actual discs, the reason why we are assuming the blu-ray was based off the 2004 digital master is a frame 'item' (which first showed up in the 2004 version) was spotted in the Comic-Con preview. TPM is also assumed to be a new digital transfer which will incorporate the digital Yoda first seen in the SW Concert.

I will withhold judgment but as of now, I am far from impressed.

New Video of the Star Wars Blu-Ray Release!

[flash width=640 height=385]http://www.youtube.com/v/xbSp7L9nnps&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash]

And lots more pics and artwork here...

Very nice! The fanfare that was missing in the DVD version of New Hope (or was nearly inaudible) is there again!

this has probably already been posted but i haven't seen it - confirmation of digital yoda in TPM (unless it is a fake)

[flash width=640 height=385]http://www.youtube.com/v/w6T4A8IclkI&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash]

Yes, that was posted already:

That's definitely new footage of the new CG Yoda in the link teamneedle posted. I'm pretty sure that up to this point we'd only seen the new CG Yoda give the "Fear leads to..." speech in the link Bandersnatch posted.

Agreed. Its nice to know the surface was scratched. Hope is alive.

I didn't realize that the X-wings were supposed to resemble drag cars. Makes sense, just never saw it before.

Am I the only one bothered by a clip talking about the 1977 effects cutting to a shot of 97 CG X-wings?

sweet- i figured it was old news, but i hadn't seen it on this board- thanks for the word~

Actually it was there in the 2004 DVD edition but the audio had been fucked up so much that the music was lowered to the point of not being able to hear most of it.

I honestly blame Ben Burtt for that fuck up. Glad to know though that they corrected the audio issues.

Also regards to the Phantom Menace Yoda, ya I think it was practically established that the puppet would be replaced by the CG version for the Blu-Ray release back when ROTS was released on DVD.

I can't find it right now, but I seem to a recall an interview from way back where it was confirmed that ILM had redone all of Yoda's TPM scenes before work on ROTS had even started... that they had done this both as a project to prepare for the ROTS CGI and to also have the replacement scenes ready for "a future release" of TPM....

That last bit wasn't officially confirmed, but seemed to be the logical conclusion. Why else would they completely clean up that Episode I scene with CGI Yoda and tease with it on the ROTS DVD? Obviously not for training reasons.

as long as the london riots are concluded by saturday i should be getting a sneak peek if they are still rioting does anyone have a sniper rifle i can borrow please? (failing that a shotgun will do)

Han's girlfriend is a confirmed deleted scene.

Saber fix screen shot.



BIG SCREEN TRAILER

More from the blu ray site if anyone cares.

Blu-ray site

Cool. Yeah, we mentioned that here too.

The crossed-sabers are certainly different, as are the Emperor's slugs.

Thanks for the heads-up Bandersnatch. Re-edited the post.

Does anyone know why the "slugs" were needed in the first place? Are there any set photos to clue us in to what they were correcting?

I heard there was some kind of light supposed to look like it's coming from The Emperor's eyes, but apparently it didn't work as planned. Instead it was visible around the eyes and was revealing it's all just a make-up. I've never seen any set photos o that though.

The direction behind Jedi is obviously the most lackluster of the original trilogy. That this scene of the Emperor had some glaring makeup flaw that they decided to cumbersomely paint blobs over is proof of this.

I saw the trench scene today! It looked good not having a hd rip to compare it too a few things I noticed:

A green flare/glow around R2 in some shots.

The lasers fired toward the camera looked new or touched up

Death star explosion was the same

Couldn't hear the sound clearly but the fanfare to my ears sounded ok when it cuts to the troopers firing guns the fx were loud not sure how that compares (I'm in a hotel so can't compare)

The engines were still pink.

Very noticeable green flame when the TIE hits Vader (flame on the wing) it's always been there but never noticed it as green?

Hopefully I get to talk to ILM 2nrw and I can ask them if they did any changes.

When the Death Star blows up in the DVD version, there's this like blue digital artifacting effect. That looked pretty crappy. What did that look like since I'm simply curious if it was just a defect on DVD?

So Vader goes Pink now?

Verboten - yes, you are because they're not talking about original effects work, they're talking about the design aesthetic.

PJVader - see, everyone is flipping out about the pink engines. Honestly, and take this from someone who saw the film a dozen times as a wee toddler to five year old starting in '77, they've ALWAYS been pink in my mind. I remember having an inflatable 747 toy at the time which loved because the back of its engines was a transparent pink that reminded me of the rebel fighters.

bearvomit - yeah, what the hell? I noticed that on my first time through the trailers; ALL of Vader's saber shots look like that. Someone facetiously said that," yeah, ILM has altered some lightsaber shots. Now they ALL look like shit."

Hopefully this is something weird in the trailer only, because surely, SURELY, if they know fans were pissed about the colours enough to go back and fix them in some shots, that LFL hasn't been so stupid as to let THAT colour gem out the door.

Not now. Ever since 2004.

X-Wing engines have always been pink. As for Vader's lightsaber... Clearly you're seeing it as it was originally intended.

Any news?