I apologize for starting another Star Wars thread - but I just want to focus on their transfers here.

Now, don't get me wrong, these transfers are awesome - incredible detail, rich colors, crystal clear image, deep deep blacks... and that's the thing - the blacks are so deep that the transfers seem a lot darker than they should be. This darkness goes away and everything looks fine when I turn up the brightness/picture on my set, but since my set is properly calibrated, I shouldn't have to do this. I even tried the THX optimizer thingy on the discs and that didn't really do anything.

Again, this is not too big a deal - it just seems darker than it should.

(BTW, yes, I do feel like an ass complaining about this - I just want to see if other people noticed this, as the reviews don't mention it.)

Might get a better discussion going when the official date hits and more people actually have the discs.

I thought the same thing about the transfers. A little too dark.

Is it just me, or is this a barely disguised bragging thread?

they are a tad dark...I suspect its just that the black levels have finally been corrected...they still look amazing...

Maybe your previous viewings were too light

LOL!

It would be best to wait until those of us without "connections" IE people breaking street date agreements to get our sets.

Thx

Its just you.

I'll wait for Dalvin's official reveiw of the transfers, since he's had the set for a few days now

Yeah, my set seems kinda dark too. This must be a trend, because I noticed the same thing on my Van Helsing, Troy, and Shaun Of The Dead DVDs.

I compared them to episodes 1 & 2 and those are far lighter than 4-6, literally and figuratively.

I would think the darkness would add to the atmosphere of the films, but I will have to actually see how dark myself to know for sure.

I'm planning on watching the new versions and then looking at the 97 and original version to do some comparisons. I'll try to see how much darker this transfer is from the previous versions.

Outer space is, in my limited opinion, rather dark.

I'll do one better...

That's my answer right there.

I thought the same thing when I got my set 3 months ago, but after a couple months of viewing you'll get used to it.

The ones on the internet were apparently too dark. The ones that i've been watching, however, are NOT.

Bingo! The previous VHS and LD editions were always artificially too bright.

braggart

Maybe the compression of the bootleg DVDs you downloaded has reduced the quality of the image. I know the ones released are barely over 3000kbps, which is very poor.

sounds like it to me.

But to answer your question, dark? no. the vhs were always just to bright. And the whites are much nicer now then they were before if you ask me.

How am I bragging?

And what the hell am I bragging about?

And yes, the whites are very nice - but there's plenty of detail that is lost to extra darkness - the asteroid chase in ESB is good example of this.

The old tapes you've watched and the old transfers brought up the brightness of the film. This new transfer has crisper blacks if you ask me. That is how you get good whites. It doesn't have the white wash on it.

as for bragging.. Seems like you are asking a question that 90% of the readers here can't answer simply because you asked it to early. Asking this again on tuesday on release day would bring in a whole lot more folks who could actually answer your question.

Now here's a man with "connections"...