Yeah, I was going to pop back in and say that after I posted I stumbled on a transfer of the THX WOW! disc and, yup, I wasn't imagining things - engines always were pink.

Here's how I watched Star Wars until age 9. (Note the engines, lightsabers and Obi-Wan dangerously close to decapitation)




Engines were pink. Hell - lightsabers were pink. I think just making the color consistent from shot to shot and deciding on what shade of red/pink would be nice. These debates remind me of the Louis CK bit on "everything is amazing and nobody's happy." Watch it here if you want.

Edit: Of course we all know Y-Wing engines are red.

I am willing to be the sabers were shades of pink in the original prints and people are just forgetting they were and are pissed off to see them in the Blu-Ray set.

I think it's a pretty obvious mistake. It never looked like that.

Now we're arguing that Vader's saber was always pink? Hell, I could maybe buy that if it was actually consistently pink, but it's not. How about the crossed sabers in front of the emperor? Was it always like that?

Some old magazine scans aren't going to be an accurate representation of the original film's color timing.

The 97 SE was pretty accurate to the original releases color timing since George used his personal copies of the films for reference.

The 2004 transfer seems to be more about modernizing the look of the films, but the more they fuck with things the worse it seems to get.

They said yes to new changes but couldn't specify what

Saw the opening sequence def best quality ive ever seen it (I've seen it a few times on every format going!)

No groundbreaking news came from it few fun things though

AT-AT that falls to the left - check out the back right foot (never spotted that)

You can see the seam on the Rancor's legs

In the naboo gardens there is a lawnmower hidden somewhere

Pod Race will now be back as the ultimate hone theatre demo scene! Picture quality was stunning and the colour correction was spot on

This the ANH opening? If so did you notice if the Star Destroyer's lasers were green again since on the 04 version they were pretty much desaturated.

I can't see how the SE's were accurate to the original colors, but then, maybe the older home video versions were all wrong. I really don't know. All I do know is that the movies have looked different each time I've owned them. Now at least they'll be in 1080p.

YES!

Has ILM gone back and re-retoscoped the blasters in the opening shot?! It was stunning when I first sat down to watch the DVDs and found that the very first shot, which has always been so powerful, lacked any punch or excitement becuase of the damage Lowry did to it.

Hoping we get a screenshot of Luke training on The Millennium Falcon in ANH soon, that green lightsaber shot better be fixed!



Don't know how that got through the final edit in 2004 editions.

It's from the improper color timing.

I have also hoped for years that they would smooth out the jump-cut when Luke turns the lightsaber on in that same scene. If they can mess with Han's head in the Greedo shootout, they can certainly digitally clean up that jump cut.

That, the scene where he turns the lightsaber on Ben's hut, the scene where a door is open in the Death Star, and the scene when the hatch closes behind Luke during his duel in TESB.

I hate to turn this into a "What's wrong with the OT" thread full of changes I'd like to see, but I hate Luke's fall on Cloud City. The intense fight and revelation is almost ruined with the really cheesy blue screened Luke falling into the vacuum chute...

I really don't think it could have been done any better. Well, outside of fixing the ghostly appearance of Luke in the original composite, which they did for the SE.

I think LFL just does this shit to see how pissed off fans get.

Some new concept art - behind-the-scenes and stills on the Official Site.

I don't think I have ever noticed the veins on the butt-face alien dude's butt-face before.

One of the new German youtube clips shows the opening and the Lasers do indeed appear green.

We are getting the 2004 transfer with a nicer HD encode. The lasers are the same.

Right, except that we've already seen that there has been some new effects work in terms of rotoscoping over stuff that the Lowry clean up butchered. So, thanks for playing but unless you've seen it.

Basically there's no telling what has been done on top of the 2004 scan (if that is what we're getting-no confirmation or denial on that except for guesses by cranky sheep at OT.com as far as I know, and since no one here has actually seen the raw scan, who knows what it looks like).

Upon looking at the German video, I will say the the opening flyover still looks like poo however

Lasers

Here's the video. Make sure to watch in 720.

[align=center]EPISODE IV OPENING SEQUENCE[/align]
[spoil]
[flash width=640 height=385]http://www.youtube.com/v/0IUDtDV0r1E&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash]
[/spoil]

or even better in 1080p

[align=center]EPISODE IV OPENING SEQUENCE[/align]
[spoil]
[flash width=640 height=385]http://www.youtube.com/v/d3DoCxPwHsE&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash]
[/spoil]

Personally I think it looks great, picture wise. I'm glad the audio issue has been corrected for Star Wars (ANH). You can hear the music again like in the 97' Special Editions.

In the 2004 DVD version when the Stormtroopers broke through the door the music was barely heard at all but this time it's back to how it was before the 2007 version.

Maybe they didn't consult with Ben Burtt on this since I still blame him for the 2004 DVD audio issues.

I won't be able to judge how good it looks until it's on a bigger screen, at least 46".

remember that its the german soundtrack you are hearing the english track could bet altogether different! ive flicked through a few movies and noticed inconsistencies on different languages! cant be too long now before a rip appears! iirc the rip releases for 5th september are showing up tas of the last few days

No, that's the reverse angle of the opening flyover, which (apart from an insane boost to the red saturation) has been fine since the DVD. The problem is in the flyover, the very first shot of the movie. Look at the lasers, both red and green, as the SD makes its loooonnnng pass overhead; the glow is completely gone from all of the bolts, leaving a single-colour dull streak of either brick-red or olive-y green, or in some of the worst cases, just plain grey.

It's exactly the same issue that the digital clean-up caused to the sabers - the algorithm Lowry used averaged out the white cores and glows around lasers and sabers, and left a flat, dull mess in their place. Incidentally, it also ate the starfields, but that's almost pales in comparison.

Was hoping, since ILM has gone back and re-roto'd some of the lightsaber mess, that perhaps they'd also fixed the lasers in this shot (hell, I did it years ago on the DVD footage, Adywan did it for ANH:R, and MVerta apparently did it on his private restoration as well. It takes a few nights of work, but it's not rocket science, and it would have been nice to see).

However I am at work and can't access the HD clips, so maybe someone can make my day and tell me it all looks like it should there, but I'm kinda doubting it now...

It looks exactly the same as the DVD version.

Here's a few comparisons of the blasts in the shot people are talking about...










I've included the shitty VHS stills just to illustrate how much those bolts used to glow in my recollection of watching the films as a kid. Not necessarily suggesting this is how they are supposed to look, this is probably enhanced by the generall fuzziness of the picture quality, but still, the 2004 version looks a pretty weedy by comparison - there's no glow, or sense or transparency at all.
And, yeah, as Inv8r mentioned, the starfield looks pretty underwhelming compared to the GOUT version too...

Thanks, Treadwell!

Yeah, that's pretty much it right there (also, the T4s engine glow is GONE, the fine detail in the edges of the animated flashes of laser hits is GONE, the stars are GONE.

Basically, anything that the algorithm might have thought was dust or a scratch gets averaged out with colour from the surrounding pixels. There's NO explaining the strange overkill blinding lens flare(s!) from the SDs engines at the end of that shot that begins to be present with the '97 print - wtf were they thinking there?.

I wouldn't worry about hedging your bets though; that is CLEARLY how the shot is supposed to look. Just check out the reverse angle - the bolts glow brilliantly in that shot on all versions of the film from VHS through to the Blu release, and match the earlier itterations of the first shot.

Ah well, maybe Lucas felt that the new version would give people a muted- dark feeling about - the oppression of the - empire? Yes, we have a "deliberate creative descision"! Score!

I will say that it looks as if the candy-apple red saturation boost has been knocked back a bit, as the T4's markings are looking more marroon now than it did on the DVD.

The OUT version is far and away the most superior version. It's not just the laser blasts and the star field; it's the colour of the moon, which has been washed to grey from its natural blue.

We need some answers from LFL based on these comparisons. Is this a technical issue or are they just lazy and have a poor eye for quality? There is no way this version is story decision-related. I refuse to listen to a "the master is too deteriorated" argument because that's not an excuse.

"The OUT version is far and away the most superior version"

Which is fucking SAD but true.

Nope, you're right, it doesn't matter how bad the master is (and it's not bad, the detail preserved in the rest of the shot is pretty impressive, it's just the damn automated dirt and scratch removal), that shot can be salvaged with minimal effort. The foundation is there to rotoscope matching lasers and to fix the T4s engines with a travelling matte and even a simple saturation boost (even if you don't want to redo the glow, which they certainly could).

As I said before, I've done it to my satisfaction on the DVD material, Adywan's done it (despite my feelings about his obsessive changes to the visuals and pacing of the film to the contrary, the opening shot he rotoscoped looks pretty good), as have others - if you can do it in photoshop, or after effects or Vegas (which you can) then ILM, even a "C" team, could do it for this release.

For fucks' sake the original matte painting is in the archives and all it would take is for someone to look at the damn thing and realize the colour is screwed up on the moon and on the damn planet. It's the opening visual in the damn movie, it needs to make a massive impact, and as is it doesn't.

I believe the OUT version of that opening shot was a reconstruction?

The LaserDisc versions didn't have the original opening titles without Episode IV: A New Hope. It definitely looks different from the rest of the movie on the GOUT. Where the hell did that come from?

I'd be willing to bet it's an authentic element, actually. I know there was all kinds of conspiracy theories about the original crawl (and to be clear, the crawl is all we're talking about being spliced into the shot - the rest is all original footage).

Here's my thinking; we know Lucas keeps EVERYTHING, he had all of the original optical elements for stuff put into the archives, which is how they were able to do the new digital comps in the first place. I'm sure he kept the original crawl inthere too somewhere ( also for me at least puts a great big hole in the notion that they destroyed the O negs to make the SE - it would be totally out of character for the guy).

The original crawl also shows up on Empire of Dreams. Yes it's crisper looking than the rest of the Gout, but I chalk that up to the fact that it would have been captured a decade or two later on better hardware which introduced less gate wobble, and the result was not subjected to that bull-in-a-china-shop DNR that the rest of the LD transfers were. Anyhow, just my logic on it.

What is that thing crawling over the rock side left.

Is that a McQuarrie Sandcrawler concept?

Neat. So the footage we've seen released is not a clear indication of what the BD's will look like (though the screenshots indicate Empire is not "color-corrected" and retains the blue cast). The Emperor's slugs have been totally CGI'd over in that shot. What other things will be "corrected" on these discs, I wonder?

I think that's from the Droids cartoon.

It's interesting how they pick and choose things to correct, yet overall the picture suffers from the Lowry work.

The ANH and ESB videos match almost perfectly to the 1080p broadcast version in both levels and color balance. Youtube compression does not provide the greatest reference to compare, and there is always the chance that old clips are being used to market this BD set. Given LucasFilm's history I'm keeping my expectations low.

I am impressed that The Phantom Menace received the look it deserves.

There are a lot of (small) screenshots and clips here.

Nice, in the still Yoda looks even better than he did in ROTS.. and definitely better than AOTC... wish they redid Yoda for that film too.. might as well!

Ah, now Yoda has a bug in the eyes because of copyright ...

Could the original scene be restored for the BR release? Greedo’s blaster shot markings are gone from over Han’s shoulder and the name of the slide being ”Who shoots first?"





Here are the Force ghosts:

It would be cool if they did restore the Greedo and Han scene.

Regarding Hayden at the end of Jedi, AGAIN I saw that earlier too. FUCKING SHIT!

Creepy ass Christensen in that shot.. one of the worst "creative" decisions by George post-release..

Were there blaster marks on the wall? I don't recall that.



George would never change it back. It was not that hard to see it coming.

I just went through that pic of Han at the "moments" site, and if the scene hasn't been restored then that's a horrendous tease; you've got Han looking straight out at the camera with a pretty grim look and with that caption?

It seems like way too much to expect, but man that's intriguing. If it's true I hope there's some way to avoid knowing about it until I pop the discs in.

• http://starwars.com/news/saga_bluray_restoration



hu'fuckin'rrah!!! lukes saber is back to blue on the falcon!

we can still only hope for vaders pink saber and a better fix on the ben-vader duel

I actually just got through skimming through that page myself and after reading the entry on the touch-up to the TIE attack, I find myself starting to wonder if in fact we may see the lasers fixed for the opening shot. Hell, if they're being THAT picky about stuff, and obviously have figured out how to duplicate the rotoscoped lasers from ANH, then...why stop there with laser problems?

What I'm wondering is how reliable was the German Youtube video clip of the opening? To me it looks EXACTLY like the HD broadcast, and actually looks darker than the DVD comparison shots I honestly didn't buy the German shots as being the Blu-Ra. ,

Time will tell if I'm totally wrong here, but really, three QC levels and they catch stuff like the falcon's lasers not extending all the way to the edge of the frame, what are the odds someone looked at the opening and said "yeah, that looks good, let's move on."? Despite all of my good sense I am begining to be impressed by what LFL has done to prepare the films for this release.

Nice to see that fixed. Seeing the ugly green ass saber before made me cringe every time.

I'm going to be the one to nitpick that Luke's blade there is not quite blue, at least blue as it appears in The Empire Strikes Back and the prequels (not that I care about that). It's still more of a mint. I mean, what the hell?

Also, you can still see some of the rod sticking out in the corner of the Wampa shot. I mean, yeah. Just how it is. Okay, I actually like that Luke's sword is that shade since it's closer to the older versions of the movie and I'd rather they just left the Wampa's rod in there.

I feel like we'll be saying goodbye to the rod that pops out of the ground to knock over Luke's bombed AT-AT.

Those "reviewers" at Amazon need this link shoved in their faces.