Watching the original versions of Star Wars on DVD is like travelling back in time- not s much to the innocence of youth but more to the days when picture quality was never much of a consideration on video releases and Fox had the reputation for the worst transfers in the business. Watching the PAL DVDs is to step back into an age of low resolution standards conversions from NTSC to PAL with all the loss of detail and blurring that that entailed: certainly if you’ve got one of the old remastered video releases you might as well hold on to that, because the quality isn’t as poor as this. The sound quality is pretty awful as well. From Lucas’ past track record it’s all too easy to imagine this is just a scam to allow him to sell a remastered version a couple of years down the line, but it’s even harder to dispel the notion that somewhere Lucas is whining “See how soft the focus is? How can you say these are better films?”

Since it looks like these haven't been transferred from the laser disc masters but are actually straight transfers from the old UK video masters, what do the NTSC releases look like and is it worth opting for them instead?

Lucas basically said in an interview that he didn't want to go back and clean up the transfers and spend the time doing so, so that's why they look the way they do. It's almost like he just threw the hard core fans a second rate product to get them off his back. I have absolutely no repsect for him.

Trevor,

Lucasfilm sent me review copies -- they're AWFUL. The grain, motion blurring, etc. makes them virtually unwatchable. I've watched DVD-Rs of the laserdiscs that looked if not as good, then better than these These are definitely derived from the LD masters but the crazy thing is that they're even grainier than the laserdiscs -- it's as if the heightened resolution of DVD brings out even more issues in the transfers than were there before. And I've seen plenty of other 4:3 letterboxed DVDs look WAY better than these transfers!

No doubt there will come a time in the future when they remaster the originals properly for HD or Blu Ray or whatever format takes off. This deal that it's the "last time" for these only applies to standard-def DVDs...after all every time Lucasfilm tells us it's "the last time," it only refers to whichever format they're coming out in (like how we heard it was "the very last time" for these when the laserdiscs came out in 1993!).

Right, so no use bothering with that, then.

Looking at the UK discs, I am wondering if a different master source was used for PAL simply because at that period (1993), Fox didn't release laserdiscs in the UK and, unlike every other studio except MGM/UA, didn't do PAL mastering at the same time as the NTSC masters because they could save a few hundred bucks going for the much cheaper and shoddier NTSC-to-PAL standards conversions, which made already bad masters look much worse - motion-blurring and colour movement a guarantee. Certainly the first half of Star Wars looks like an old video master of the worst kind, with the scenes in the desert staggeringly awful (though the second half does improve).

Having seen - but never owned - the NTSC laser disc set, this simply doesn't look comparable or even as if it was the same source. In fact, it's clearly worse than the last video release of the originals in the UK (Lucas did a last-time-ever on those before remastering them again and putting on some cringe-making interviews with Leonard Maltin where it became increasingly clear he hadn't a clue what was going to happen in the prequels to get the fanboys to buy it again - luckily at the time I was still getting review copies).

Still, judging from past experience we should only have two years to wait...

You know what these transfers (the NTSC ones) most remind me of?

The very first Anchor Bay DVDs I received for review back in 1998.

Those awful, grainy, hideous looking discs (like the first RAW DEAL) that made you think laserdisc was going to hold up as the superior format.

Yeah, they're THAT bad.

LOL! I never saw those Anchor Bay discs, but it has to be said that I've seen $5 public domain DVDs that managed better transfers than these!

Even as poor as these transfers are, I still prefer watching them to the SEs.

Monterey Jack wrote:Even as poor as these transfers are, I still prefer watching them to the SEs.

Absolutely. I did break down and buy them, and I'm not necessarily proud of that. The picture quality is poor, but it's still better than any of the previous editions I own. Also, I honestly don't expect Lucas to reissue these again. (I wouldn't be upset if he did, though.)

The great thing was that ten minutes into the first movie I forgot all about the technical issues and found myself lost in the story all over again. So sue me.

Mark

This has been a bad week. These transfers are bad, but the more I've seen of Universal's "new and improved" DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN discs, the more I'm inclined to watch the older DVDs instead!!

I may have to amend my already-mixed review...