Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[phansson]

Originally Posted by nmycon

What makes you say this?

Because I would bet that "the phantom menace" was "re-scanned" because they are prepping it for 3D (probably at 4k). AoTC and RoTS were both shot via hdcam and will not need to be "scanned" at all, so they will look as good as possible.

The OT has 7 year old "scans" which were insufficient to get enough information to keep the grain consistent. So the grain will be removed. Which will cause the detail to be scrubbed away. They will look marginally better than the SD DVD release.

You know this is only my opinion, right? Just check back in 3 weeks and see if I am right.

I am the biggest Star Wars fan on this forum. I love the movies, they just needed a little more love from the Lucasfilm camp.

[nmycon]

Originally Posted by phansson

You know this is only my opinion, right? Just check back in 3 weeks and see if I am right.

I am the biggest Star Wars fan on this forum. I love the movies, they just needed a little more love from the Lucasfilm camp.

Perhaps I'm not making the right connections, but I don't see why the OT should be at a disadvantage

AOTC and ROTS were shot at 1080p resolution. OK.

Now, if the OT was scanned at 1080p, thats essentially "taking a 1080p picture" of something that is much higher than even 4K "resolution" I don't see how that would be detrimental to the picture quality. Look at the SkyHD screencaps I linked to earlier, thats only a TV broadcast from the 2004 HD master, and I'm impressed.

[phansson]

Originally Posted by nmycon

Perhaps I'm not making the right connections, but I don't see why the OT should be at a disadvantage

AOTC and ROTS were shot at 1080p resolution. OK.

Now, if the OT was scanned at 1080p, thats essentially "taking a 1080p picture" of something that is much higher than even 4K "resolution" I don't see how that would be detrimental to the picture quality. Look at the SkyHD screencaps I linked to earlier, thats only a TV broadcast from the 2004 HD master, and I'm impressed.

We will see in 3 weeks. I hope to high heaven you are right and I am totally wrong, but I am setting myself up for the worst. It wouldn't be the first time.

The SkyHD links I can't find. Can you help me out?

Take out your SD DVD's of the OT and compare them to episode II and III. They are not even close in quality are they? That is enough to validate my argument.

[nmycon]

Originally Posted by phansson

We will see in 3 weeks. I hope to high heaven you are right and I am totally wrong, but I am setting myself up for the worst. It wouldn't be the first time.

The SkyHD links I can't find. Can you help me out?

Take out your SD DVD's of the OT and compare them to episode II and III. They are not even close in quality are they? That is enough to validate my argument.

Sky TV Comparison

Also, TPM is the only prequel I have in Widescreen so it's hard to compare.

I will say that TPM looks worse than the OT. Any time you can see a blue sky (or other light areas during a dark scene), the area is riddled with coloured noise. It's very distracting.

[HeavyHitter]

Really sucks they are not doing new scans for the originals! Such equipment has also really improved from what they used in 2003.

[JasonWard]

Originally Posted by aiman04

Good info Jumpman! Thanks!



So as expected the clip shown at Comic-Con was not from the blu-ray at all. I think most of the clips we've seen so far were not from the blu-ray as well (except the crossed-lightsaber-in-front-emperor shot and select few others maybe).

It seems that they intentionally keep thing under wraps. I have a good feeling that we're in for a big surprise on Sept 16th!

The Comic Con presentation was a room. Inside the room was a presentation. That's where I saw the black boxes around the Tie Fighters still. The footage was in 1080p and they claimed it from the Blu-ray. But the footage used in that presentation was from all over the place and even featured footage not used in the films. So which footage was from the Blu-ray and which was not was very open ended.

However, outside that room was a TV that was playing clips from the Blu-ray and it was undoubtedly from the Blu-ray. The quality was superior to anything we've ever seen outside the theater.

[Maggot]

Originally Posted by nmycon

Sky TV Comparison

Also, TPM is the only prequel I have in Widescreen so it's hard to compare.

I will say that TPM looks worse than the OT. Any time you can see a blue sky (or other light areas during a dark scene), the area is riddled with coloured noise. It's very distracting.

WOW! The grabs from Sky TV look horrific! What happened to a little essentail thing called "CONTRAST"? Sure, there's an increase in sharpness, be it somewhat on the small side, but the bigger story is where the F did the contrast go? I hope this is not what we get on the Blu-ray.

[nmycon]

Originally Posted by Maggot

WOW! The grabs from Sky TV look horrific! What happened to a little essentail thing called "CONTRAST"? Sure, there's an increase in sharpness, be it somewhat on the small side, but the bigger story is where the F did the contrast go? I hope this is not what we get on the Blu-ray.

I think it's an improvement. There is no black crush, plus the skintones look a lot more natural. On the DVD screens, the skintones are bordering on orange IMO. There is also quite a bit of detail revealed now that that the black crush has been alleviated. The Yoda pic may need to be a bit darker.

The Leia screen is the best IMO. A significant increase in sharpness. Look at all of the detail that is revealed in Leia's hair and on the Stormtroopers' guns. The HD image does not appear washed out either.

The increase in sharpness is rather large, you can click on the image to get a full-size 1920x817 image, which allows you to see the difference.

[Show spoiler]

[Maggot]

Originally Posted by nmycon

I think it's an improvement. There is no black crush, plus the skintones look a lot more natural. On the DVD screens, the skintones are too orange IMO. There is also quite a bit of detail revealed now that that the black crush has been alleviated.

The problem is there's a fine line in raising black levels and it looks like they have gone past that line. You see this in Photoshop, when people attempt to pull out details in shadows and overdo it. You end up with an image that's lacking in punch. Dear Lord, I hope they haven't butchered this. Look at something like the transfer for Braveheart or any of the Pirates of the Caribbean stuff. Or even the classic The Ten Commandments. They all are very punchy and look spectacular! I tell beginners on the photography forums to not fall for this "everything has to be light and have detail" craze or fad. So many have tried to pull detail out of shadows and you end up with a lackluster image. Shadow is just as much an essential part of an image as light is.

[nmycon]

Originally Posted by Maggot

The problem is there's a fine line in raising black levels and it looks like they have gone past that line. You see this in Photoshop, when people attempt to pull out details in shadows and overdo it. You end up with an image that's lacking in punch. Dear Lord, I hope they haven't butchered this. Look at something like the transfer for Braveheart or any of the Pirates of the Caribbean stuff. Or even the classic The Ten Commandments. They all are very punchy and look spectacular! I tell beginners on the photography forums to not fall for this "everything has to be light and have detail" craze or fad. So many have tried to pull detail out of shadows and you end up with a lackluster image. Shadow is just as much an essential part of an image as light is.

If anything, I'll bet it was the Sky. I've found movies always look worse on TV than on a DVD or blu-ray with the same picture settings. Not in terms of sharpness (it's a given than cable will look worse than BD ) but color and contrast like you said.

I'm optimistic, but I do agree that some of the images are a bit over-bright.

[aiman04]

I don't understand this. How can you guys be so negative? Have you actually seen the blu-ray?

I thought the news that they've been working to fix the issues (lightsaber, color timing, etc) would actually give some confidence. It's not like they use an SD master and upscale to 1080p. Doing the fix is not free, it also costs money so I don't think Lucas is being cheap.

PS: Baraka was shot on 70mm so it makes more sense to scan at 8k. Only recently that it has become standard to scan 35mm film at 4k. I'm sure Lucas will scan the movies at 4k now if he don't already have a 2k scan of the movies.

[42041]

Originally Posted by nmycon

Now, if the OT was scanned at 1080p, thats essentially "taking a 1080p picture" of something that is much higher than even 4K "resolution" I don't see how that would be detrimental to the picture quality. Look at the SkyHD screencaps I linked to earlier, thats only a TV broadcast from the 2004 HD master, and I'm impressed.

If you scan a negative at pure 1080p resolution you're going to introduce aliasing, which is not good for things like grain... unless you have some kind of optical low-pass filter or something, which would decrease detail. This is why oversampling at 4K is desirable for 2k or hd film images.
Also scanners don't necessarily produce full HD resolution from all film formats. I've read that the Spirit Datacine for example only outputs full HD for the full width of the negative. For an academy-sized frame like Star Wars it would be 1714 pixels across (and upsampled to 1920 from that), less than full HD.

[gregmasciola]

Originally Posted by nmycon

Sky TV Comparison

Also, TPM is the only prequel I have in Widescreen so it's hard to compare.

I will say that TPM looks worse than the OT. Any time you can see a blue sky (or other light areas during a dark scene), the area is riddled with coloured noise. It's very distracting.

I must say, those images look great! This one especially:

[Show spoiler]

[srinivas1015]

But I think they increased the brightness too much as the death star II in the trailer looks 'illuminated'. The blacks or areas which are not supposed to be visible are brown.. Also, won't this be corrected if we turn down the brightness and gamma of our displays?

[wildphantom]

For those of you worried by the Sky Tv screenshots.

I am as finicky as most of you on here about transfers and particularly when it comes to these three movies.
However, I watched Sky's HD broadcasts of the original trilogy multiple times and they look fantastic. I didn't dissect them to the degree some of you inevitably would have, but ive been watching Star Wars for 30 years and know when it looks good. Colours are fabulous, plenty of detail - i'm expecting the blurays to be better again.

They easily looked as good as the HD broadcasts of the Raiders trilogy imo.

Let's just relax and wait for some actual reviews now. Won't be long.

[Merlinpants]

Originally Posted by Merlinpants

I go back to my original post many moons ago, have we actually seen any BD footage yet? All of this marketing material could have been culled from any number of sources,the OOT negative, the HD transfer in 2004, documentary footage, 1997 SE. All of these flaws should not exist on the BD, but the marketing material we keep getting alludes to it being there. But the issues we are seeing are all from different sources are they not? The see through cockpits were eliminated back in '97, but the pink lightsabre emerges on '04. It looks like we are not getting a true picture of what the BD will look like until someone gets it and shoves it in their drive.

Only then, at the end will we understand!

Ahem........I thank you! LOL

[octagon]

Originally Posted by gregmasciola

I must say, those images look great! This one especially:

[Show spoiler]

Spoiler tags around a huge image - pray the maker this catches on by release week.

[Vincent89]

Originally Posted by phansson

"the phantom menace" was "re-scanned" because they are prepping it for 3D (probably at 4k).

For TPM LucasFilm create a new HD master from original 2k digital file (like the Fellowship of the Ring).

[IndyMLVC]

Originally Posted by Maggot

WOW! The grabs from Sky TV look horrific! What happened to a little essentail thing called "CONTRAST"? Sure, there's an increase in sharpness, be it somewhat on the small side, but the bigger story is where the F did the contrast go? I hope this is not what we get on the Blu-ray.

Agreed. Not impressed at all. The Brightness is far too high.

[Irrob]

Originally Posted by Boone_Carlyle

I think some of you are addicted to anxiety.

Agreed. wish I didn't have to wade through that cesspool to get to real information. Speaking of information, any find out what spoofs are included?