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Lucas Gives With One Hand and Takes Away With The Other! Star Wars fans rejoiced when the announcement of the unaltered original SW films being released on DVD was made. Finally Lucas had decided to pay heed to the unending laments from fans. All seems well at last in that far away galaxy but wait! What’s this? A disturbance has been sensed in the Force! It seems Lucas has managed to pervert this joyous occasion.
For those Home Theater afficiandos, the name Bill Hunt from The Digital Bits website is a trusted source. This latest tidbit is sure to spark up many light sabres! Read the following that Bill posted in his daily column for May 17th:
“Well details on the specs of the DVDs are starting to come out and contains a big shock. The movies will be not be enhanced for widescreen presentation. That means no anamorphic enhancement – a standard feature for DVDs today.
We’ve confirmed something that we’d begun to suspect… and it’s probably going to disappoint a lot of you. It certainly disappoints us here at The Bits. Those new DVD editions of the Star Wars films? The original theatrical versions of the films are going to be non-anamorphic (our original post on this indicated otherwise, but we have confirmed that the widescreen versions will be letterboxed only). What this likely means is that Lucasfilm has simply re-purposed the non-anamorphic transfers that were done for previous laserdisc and VHS releases of the “original” versions of the films. And with that, our enthusiasm for this DVD release has just dropped through the floor. Anamorphic-enhanced versions of the theatrical editions, we’d buy in a heartbeat. But what we’re going to get instead is little better than a ported-over laserdisc. In this day and age, releasing a widescreen film without anamorphic enhancement on DVD is just unacceptable. Does Lucasfilm really think fans want those versions of the films on DVD so badly that people just won’t care? Yes Virginia, they do. How many versions of these films do you suppose Lucasfilm will try to get fans to buy in high-def over the coming years? And think about it… you just know the studio has to be prepping yet another standard DVD release for next year’s 30th Anniversary of the original Star Wars. Do you suppose this means that the theatrical editions won’t be included in the superdupber box set of all six films? Probably. Ugh.”
So there you have it. Buyer beware. Looks like Lucasfilm is poised to release multiple versions of the unaltered films as well. Save those pennies.
