Snowmaker

Cheapest I've seen it. Thought it might be worth mentioning

Its $19.99 in-store, so you have to match their website.

masetodd

Thanks for the post - but check the online reviews before you buy. Apparently, the picture quality is not that great. I'll be keeping my DVD until they release a (most-likely-never-gonna-happen) remaster.

darkhawk

BJs has this in the Blu-ray/DVD combo in 2 separate cases for $14.99. Also saw with the 2-case combos are:

Rundown
End of Days
8 Mile (BD is Uncensored / DVD is Censored)

Pizza

I picked this up on HD-DVD and it looked the way I remember it in the theater. I doubt they'll ever do anything more for it.

Snowmaker

Has to be better than the DVD

kenichi tanaka

I wouldn't trust many of those Blu-ray reviews. Most of those reviews are posted by people who either hate the movie or who have reviewed the DVD version and posted it as a Blu-ray review.

I just picked up a copy for myself.

Sides, you need to remember that these older movies from the 80's are going to have artifacts in the video. I noticed this problem with Blu-ray releases of Grumpy Old Men/Grumpier Old Men, Dirty Harry/Magnum Force, Above the Law and many other movies from the 80's and early 90's. There bound to be artifacts. Magnum Force contains a very bad transfer, which I plan on exchanging for a better copy. Only Magnum Force was a bad transfer.

The Last Starfighter was a movie produced back in the mid-80's so, it's not going to be a perfect HD transfer. If you cannot accept that, then you shouldn't be buying any Blu-ray movies that were originally made pre-2000's. Otherwise, you're going to complain about every release.

rwsharpjr

I saw the same ones this morning at Walmart (plus a couple/few more that I can't remember right now).

Jon2

This appears to be a myth that will not die, as it has been discussed in many threads already.

Digital artifacts or a bad transfer can have many causes, but neither has anything to do with when a movie was filmed.

The Last Starfighter is a bit unique in that it's the first movie that relied solely on CGI for it's visual effects, but the CGI only had a resolution of about one tenth (if that much) of the resolution of today's CGI. That's not a defect, however, just the limits of the technology of the times.

The effects on the LS BR release might look better than the DVD, but HD won't make the CGI look as photo realistic as today's CGI because the resolution isn't there to begin with.

On the other hand, the live action (shot on film) should look as good as anything done today... depending on the quality of the source material used for the transfer. A bad quality master print for the source will produce a bad quality transfer.

From a strictly technical standpoint, they could to go back and re-render the CGI at today's higher resolutions and probably for much less than what the original CGI effects cost. If I remember correctly, the LS CGI effects were output directly to film from a Cray supercomputer connected to a laser. Cutting edge and expensive.

If they did, it would offer the possibility of LS being theatrically re-released with enhanced CGI effects. This wouldn't be difficult. As I recall, there were very few (if any) scenes in LS where CGI was used in a shot with live action. Scenes were either live action entirely or CGI entirely.

This would also allow for LS to be re-released in 3D... which could be even more interesting if they only did the CGI sequences in 3D and left the live action "flat."

However, none of this speculation is even remotely likely to happen.

Besides the money issues involved, the data files for the LS CGI sequences either don't exist anymore (like those of Babylon 5), or are on some obsolete medium that can't be accessed by today's equipment.

Shame though. I'd pay to see LS with high quality, enhanced CGI in 3D.

Pizza

And that will become the norm more and more. Wait until you can't play your mp3s anymore.

Snowmaker

I thought Tron was.

b2net

don't forget the $5 facebook universal coupon. then the price is $9.99 at BB.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

A lot of the effects weren't CGI. It only contained 15-20 minutes of it.

Instead, they used a lot of backlit animation.

Blu-ray-collect

I think the sale is over. I went to BB tonight, and a price check came up $19.99, plus the $5 facebook coupon was not allowed for use on sale prices.

Snowmaker

I got it for $10 yesterday with the coupon. Had to match their website price of $14.99 first. I didn't realize it was only $14.99 on the website until I went to buy it.

Blu-ray-collect

I guess that the BB I go to is just anal about reading the fine print on coupons. Win some, lose some.

Jon2

I think that will be some considerable time.

However, while I was referring to the LS CGI data files being stored on something like tape (or whatever those old Crays used for data storage), there's also the possibility of them existing in some proprietary file format (that was never used for anything else) developed by those who did the effects.

P.S. FWIW, if your local BB stores price match the BB website, it still shows LS (BR only) for $14.99.

TheBang

It's only $14.99 on their website. It's $19.99 in store. You have to get them to match the online price (which is their policy). But then, sometimes you have issues getting them to apply the $5 coupon after that. I was able to get them to. YMMV.