Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I just finally got around to watching Return of the Jedi on DVD (watched SW and Empire the first day, however).

Did anyone else notice how highly noticeable the matte paintings were? The contrast was so glaring that it totally took me out of the movie. The scenes with the Falcon in the background are horrendus as are any scene on Endor with the Shield Generator in the background.

Either they didn't spend the money on a good enough artist for this movie OR the DVD transfer is so clean, you can see detail you weren't meant to originally.

Didn't notice it at all.

Stunning transfer though.

For a 22 year old movie, ROTJ has some of the best FX ever captured on film.

I noticed that the hanger scene looked bad but I think it's always looked bad so I didn't really take any additional notice.

This reminds me of an episode of the original Battlestar Galactica, the one where the ship is on fire and Apollo and Starbuck go outside the ship to place explosive charges. With the clarity of the DVD, you can see the wires they're hanging by.

Didn't notice it either, but yeah, the transfers are pretty good.

Actually, I thought the shield generator shots were pretty good. I haven't watched the movie since September, so I don't remember everything about the transfer, but I didn't notice anything that "took me out of the movie".

The hanger scene was the only one i noticed, it was terrible.

Same here. I watched the first two when I got it. I still haven't watched Jedi.

I thought Jedi had a great transfer. Some have said that it is a little soft, but I didn't notice it.

I only noticed the blocks in ANH in the Falcon/Tie fighter scene.

Same here. Considering how anal Lucas has been as of late, and with all the digital technology at his fingertips now, I'm surprised he didn't clean this up for the DVD transfer.

No, it is virtually impossible for the DVD transfer to include something which wasn't in the original. [I say virtually because there are specific examples of filmmakers who used to hide things in the grain, Chaplin being the prime example (Kubrick has been mentioned, at least as far as '2001'), but I've never heard of Lucas being somebody who would do this and, at any rate, it couldn't work that way with matte paintings.] It could possibly be that the transfer is so clean that the difference between the bad mattes and the rest of it is more jarring and noticeable, but DVD can not make a picture more detailed than film. Completely impossible.

Blame Lucas, since he supervised the transfer and made sure *everything* was how he wanted it. He didn't bother to fix the matte paintings which, if you don't remember, *never* looked good. There were a lot of little things when the special editions came out that bothered me, I kept thinking, "If you're gonna CGI up parts that don't need it and make them bad, why not CGI up effects that never looked good and possibly make them better?"

I was thinking the same thing. Maybe the HD version will have this corrected.

the hangar scene has always looked bad. even when i was young i noticed it looking weird. it's as if they were trying to use shadow to cover up the matte edges, but the contrast between the live footage and the painting was too different. Lucas will probably "fix" this down the road.

Try turning down the bright on your monitor, maybe that will help make it less noticeable.

Yeah some of the mattes ,especially the hangar, look fake but they always did. As for the transfers, they did one hell of a fantastic job for all three of the films. When I first popped in Star Wars and saw the Tantive scene my mouth dropped. Could not believe I was watching a 25-year old movie

I didn't notice this either, but I find it hard to believe that a transfer is too good

Would you have them reduce the quality of it?

The "blocks" in ANH were my biggest "notice"