Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga 4K UHD (1977-2019)

[Donl1282]

Originally Posted by TheBrightKnight

Nope. Best Buy is probably it. And considering how many copies are still unsold at my local one, that might be the nail in the coffin. Wish they'd have Dolby Vision and a better remaster but that's all we're getting.

It should be selling well, it’s Star Wars!

[Buckster666]

Originally Posted by sa5150

are we any closer to a simple 4k box set of all 9 movies ?

Would be good if they released 3 boxsets. Original, prequels and Disney trilogy, that way fans can choose which trilogies they want

[Gold Ranger]

The problems with the set were
1- that there was no exclusive content.
2- It was, is and will again be cheaper to get the movies individually.
3- That box doesn't fit properly on shelves.
4- it doesn't have all the movies. Vader is in Rogue One, Leia is too.

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by TheBrightKnight

Nope. Best Buy is probably it. And considering how many copies are still unsold at my local one, that might be the nail in the coffin. Wish they'd have Dolby Vision and a better remaster but that's all we're getting.

I had several at my store as well. Nobody is buying them.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by sfmarine

I had several at my store as well. Nobody is buying them.

my local store is down to 1 copy left
had 3 a couple weeks ago

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW

my local store is down to 1 copy left
had 3 a couple weeks ago

I haven't been to my local store in a few months. They had roughly 3 copies and I believe it was on sale for $200.

[happydood]

I bought the first 6 in the single releases. Finally stepped foot in a Best Buy after being half-way to fully vaccinated and saw the big box in person. It's ungainly. I kept telling myself I'd get the individual release of all the Disney titles, but the more time passes, I think I'm fine with the blu-rays on those.

[GiorgioV]

Originally Posted by Gold Ranger

The problems with the set were
1- that there was no exclusive content.
2- It was, is and will again be cheaper to get the movies individually.
3- That box doesn't fit properly on shelves.
4- it doesn't have all the movies. Vader is in Rogue One, Leia is too.

1- It was, is and will again be cheaper to get the movies individually.
2- That box doesn't fit properly on shelves.
3- it doesn't have all the movies.
4- that there was no exclusive content.

I took the liberty of rearranging that, but you got it right

[rexcrk]

Originally Posted by Gold Ranger

The problems with the set were
1- that there was no exclusive content.
2- It was, is and will again be cheaper to get the movies individually.
3- That box doesn't fit properly on shelves.
4- it doesn't have all the movies. Vader is in Rogue One, Leia is too.

You’re correct about every point except #4. The set is called the Skywalker Saga, meaning just the numbered movies (A New Hope through Rise of Skywalker) as opposed to the “every Star Wars movie that’s been made up to this point” box set.

I know you’re going to argue that but it’s not wrong. They call Episodes 1-9 the Skywalker Saga, while Rogue One and Solo (and any future movies, most likely) are “spin-off” movies.

Yes, it would’ve been nice if they were included, but that’s not what they were going for with this set unfortunately.

[KidSqueek]

I've been holding off on buying the 4K Star Wars movies in hopes of Best Buy getting the Zavvi steelbooks one day. But I'm losing faith each passing day

[50strat54]

Originally Posted by Gold Ranger

The problems with the set were
1- that there was no exclusive content.
2- It was, is and will again be cheaper to get the movies individually.
3- That box doesn't fit properly on shelves.
4- it doesn't have all the movies. Vader is in Rogue One, Leia is too.

Although available digitally, The Last Jedi in the box, which to my knowledge has still not been upgraded on the standalone editions, has the Meet The Porgs bonus on the Blu-ray bonus disc which I think was a Target Exclusive and on the Blu-ray movie disc the isolated score.

[Mister_Kidd]

Originally Posted by KidSqueek

I've been holding off on buying the 4K Star Wars movies in hopes of Best Buy getting the Zavvi steelbooks one day. But I'm losing faith each passing day

[steel_breeze]

There's lots of valid reasons to be disappointed in this Best Buy box, but I friggin' LOVE it. I really dig the concept art and behind-the-scenes pics, and I keep the discs in separate UHD cases so I don't have to mess with the sleeves. As collectibles go, the box itself makes a fantastic companion to my gigantic THX set of Original Trilogy Laserdiscs from the early 90's.

[dcowboy7]

In the review where its lists the extras the items that say NEW like this havent been on any disc release before ??

NEW! Conversations: Doug Chiang Looks Back (1080p, 5:23): The importance of recognizable Star Wars designs and five key elements he learned working for George Lucas: the importance of silhouettes, the importance of audience connection with a design, character and object visual personalities, believability, and design flair, a.k.a. "the geek factor."

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by dcowboy7

In the review where its lists the extras the items that say NEW like this havent been on any disc release before ??

NEW! Conversations: Doug Chiang Looks Back (1080p, 5:23): The importance of recognizable Star Wars designs and five key elements he learned working for George Lucas: the importance of silhouettes, the importance of audience connection with a design, character and object visual personalities, believability, and design flair, a.k.a. "the geek factor."

Behind the Scenes - Conversations Doug Chiang Looks Back - Star Wars The Phantom Menace 1999 - YouTube

[SpazeBlue]

Originally Posted by dcowboy7

In the review where its lists the extras the items that say NEW like this havent been on any disc release before ??

Other than maybe some of the trailers, it seems that all "NEW" supplements are either DVD ports, or from the Digital Collection: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/St...page/13#877945

[steel_breeze]

VIEWING COMPARISON: UHD vs OLD BD of RETURN OF THE JEDI

Okay, for whatever it's worth... sorry for the long post ahead...

I've been an outspoken proponent of this boxed set, and I've been a loud cheerleader that the new transfers of the Original Trilogy "may be incredibly flawed, but -- say it with me -- they're the best the movies have ever looked on home video". BUT... I rewatched the UHD of Return of the Jedi in my home theater yesterday (on my 92-inch projection screen) and was actively distracted and "thrown out" of the experience by the weirdness of the image, with all the grain removal that's been applied. Ugh... I wish the whole 3D trend had never happened, 'cuz I'm convinced these are the de-grained transfers that were being prepped for 3D, which were then lazily ported over to UHD when the 3D releases didn't materialize. It's heart-breaking. I'm sure these releases still would've been de-grained to SOME degree ('cuz Lucas), but not to THIS extent.

Anyhoo... I was so disturbed by my screening yesterday that I spent over an hour this morning A/B'ing the new UHD with the old 2011 Blu-ray release. I have two Oppo players hooked up (the old 83 and the 203), so I could literally toggle from one to the other in almost real-time.

For the purposes of this A/B experiment, I concentrated on the Bousch/Chewie scene in Jabba's palace, the Han/Luke banter on their travel to Sarlacc, the Wicket discovering Leia moment, and the first part of the Luke/Vader duel in the throne room. And I gotta say... it was a close call.

The gamma and dynamic range of the new transfer are what really stand out the most, making the old BD look flat by comparison -- but that alllmost works against the UHD if you're going by "what looks the most film-like". The UHD looks as though it could've been shot on modern digital cameras, whereas the old BD is definitely from a film source. But wow, the "pop" of the new UHD is stunning in comparison.

Then, the grain... the old BD absolutely has more grain, which I'm usually a big fan of... but the trade-off is that the grain has been "half-managed" by older technology, often creating the dreaded "forcefield effect" around a moving object or person. God I hate that. When I toggle to the UHD, the grain is utterly, heart-breakingly gone... but not as many "forcefields", and the image looks as if a veil has been lifted. In shots where there was a lot of grain originally present -- mostly in optical effects like dissolves and fades -- the old BD wins hands-down, 'cuz the detail in the new UHD has been utterly scrubbed along with the grain, fuzzing away into a painterly mess that looks lower-resolution than a DVD! (See the wide shot over-Bousch's shoulder of Jabba and Threepio, as Threepio is translating) But whenever there was finer grain in the original image, the UHD not only blows the old BD away, but it's jaw-droppingly good (See Vader ascending the stairs toward Luke with his lightsaber)

It's really a toss-up. Basically I decided that the UHD does indeed win -- and I'm happy I did this comparison so I won't be forever wondering -- but there is an argument to be made that the older BD is in many ways "more film-like".

My conclusion: at its worst, the new UHD transfer is considerably worse than the old BD, and even on par with a DVD in terms of resolution left over after de-graining. At its best, however, the UHD is head-and-shoulders better than the old BD... and I think this is the case for more than half of the shots; maybe even 2/3 of the time.

[Gold Ranger]

The Blu-rays were found to have no more than 720p video quality.It was discovered when the fan sites were ripping and editing and doing breakdowns.
The UHDs are sourced from that same master.
Star Wars has always been treated like shit on home video after the initial VHS releases!

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

VIEWING COMPARISON: UHD vs OLD BD of RETURN OF THE JEDI

Okay, for whatever it's worth... sorry for the long post ahead...

I've been an outspoken proponent of this boxed set, and I've been a loud cheerleader that the new transfers of the Original Trilogy "may be incredibly flawed, but -- say it with me -- they're the best the movies have ever looked on home video". BUT... I rewatched the UHD of Return of the Jedi in my home theater yesterday (on my 92-inch projection screen) and was actively distracted and "thrown out" of the experience by the weirdness of the image, with all the grain removal that's been applied. Ugh... I wish the whole 3D trend had never happened, 'cuz I'm convinced these are the de-grained transfers that were being prepped for 3D, which were then lazily ported over to UHD when the 3D releases didn't materialize. It's heart-breaking. I'm sure these releases still would've been de-grained to SOME degree ('cuz Lucas), but not to THIS extent.

Anyhoo... I was so disturbed by my screening yesterday that I spent over an hour this morning A/B'ing the new UHD with the old 2011 Blu-ray release. I have two Oppo players hooked up (the old 83 and the 203), so I could literally toggle from one to the other in almost real-time.

For the purposes of this A/B experiment, I concentrated on the Bousch/Chewie scene in Jabba's palace, the Han/Luke banter on their travel to Sarlacc, the Wicket discovering Leia moment, and the first part of the Luke/Vader duel in the throne room. And I gotta say... it was a close call.

The gamma and dynamic range of the new transfer are what really stand out the most, making the old BD look flat by comparison -- but that alllmost works against the UHD if you're going by "what looks the most film-like". The UHD looks as though it could've been shot on modern digital cameras, whereas the old BD is definitely from a film source. But wow, the "pop" of the new UHD is stunning in comparison.

Then, the grain... the old BD absolutely has more grain, which I'm usually a big fan of... but the trade-off is that the grain has been "half-managed" by older technology, often creating the dreaded "forcefield effect" around a moving object or person. God I hate that. When I toggle to the UHD, the grain is utterly, heart-breakingly gone... but not as many "forcefields", and the image looks as if a veil has been lifted. In shots where there was a lot of grain originally present -- mostly in optical effects like dissolves and fades -- the old BD wins hands-down, 'cuz the detail in the new UHD has been utterly scrubbed along with the grain, fuzzing away into a painterly mess that looks lower-resolution than a DVD! (See the wide shot over-Bousch's shoulder of Jabba and Threepio, as Threepio is translating) But whenever there was finer grain in the original image, the UHD not only blows the old BD away, but it's jaw-droppingly good (See Vader ascending the stairs toward Luke with his lightsaber)

It's really a toss-up. Basically I decided that the UHD does indeed win -- and I'm happy I did this comparison so I won't be forever wondering -- but there is an argument to be made that the older BD is in many ways "more film-like".

My conclusion: at its worst, the new UHD transfer is considerably worse than the old BD, and even on par with a DVD in terms of resolution left over after de-graining. At its best, however, the UHD is head-and-shoulders better than the old BD... and I think this is the case for more than half of the shots; maybe even 2/3 of the time.

Have you looked at the remastered BD? Just asking because it might be preferable not having to be tone mapped on your set-up and the lesser resolution in this case could be preferable (maybe the frozen grain is harder to see?), but I haven't directly compared any of the three discs myself.

[steel_breeze]

Originally Posted by Gold Ranger

The Blu-rays were found to have no more than 720p video quality.It was discovered when the fan sites were ripping and editing and doing breakdowns.
The UHDs are sourced from that same master.

The UHDs of the Original Trilogy are NOT sourced from the same master as the 2011 Blu-rays. That's what I was comparing.

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

Have you looked at the remastered BD? Just asking because it might be preferable not having to be tone mapped on your set-up and the lesser resolution in this case could be preferable (maybe the frozen grain is harder to see?), but I haven't directly compared any of the three discs myself.

I have indeed looked at the remastered BD, and my custom tone-mapping of the UHD is parsecs better, so that's irrelevant to this new comparison. In other words, I already know from A/B'ing the UHD and new BD a year ago that I like my tone-mapped UHD experience significantly better than the remastered BD -- and in fact I even praised the gamma of the UHD experience as a huge plus, in the post I wrote above, which would NOT apply to the new BD -- but I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the weird look of the fully-degrained UHD vs the olde timey weird look of the half-degrained 2011 BD. So that's mainly what I was going for. And those were conclusions I came to.

For me, the remastered BDs have all the negatives of the UHD but with fewer of the positives... and much less pop -- even on a down-rezzed 1080p SDR projector setup like mine. Remember, even though I'm doing a lot of tone mapping and custom converting, I'm armed with a waveform monitor built into my projector and my 25 years as a professional DP, so I'm very confident in the results I'm getting with my SDR 4K-to-1080p experience.