Trevor

The holiday special is wonderful in its awfulness. I only discovered it a few years ago, but it will likely keep a place in my holiday rotation every year or two.

Ky-Fi

I'm not much of a computer whiz, but through a near miracle, I followed the official online instructions, downloaded the damned programs and the friggin' 37 parts (over two days), and used some other consarned program to put it all together--and low and behold, it somehow all worked.

I now own the Despecialized Edition of Star Wars. Put it on a flash drive and watched it last night. A journey back to 1977. Pretty awesome.

I may go for the other two if I get around to it.

kefrank

The Despecialized of all three are definitely worth the effort.

If you haven't already, I'd also recommend you grab the Team Negative 1 35mm print version. It's much more straightforward to obtain over at the internet archive...

rocket1312

I downloaded it and took a peek this afternoon. Detail isn't much different from the official blu-rays, but everything just looks so much more organic. And even with no real color correction beyond white balancing the individual reels, the colors are worlds better. The colors are probably even better than the Despecialized versions simply due to the fact that there's no need to correct all of the damage that was done on the official blu-ray, although it's still a bit contrasty due to the nature of the Tech IB prints. Also, there is A LOT of grain, especially in conjunction with any of the optical effects. Some people might be off put by that. Don't expect this thing to look like a commercial release. There will be a de-grained version down the road, and I know folks are already hard at work on a more intentional color correction, so hopefully the best is still yet to come. As it is though, this is pretty great. It blows the door off the silver screen edition.

Ranger

Just heard the 1080p and 4k versions of Project 4k77 is out.

4k version is 83 GB I think. Too big for me right now. I'll probably try to get the 1080p version one later.

I don't understand why there needed to be so much color correction. Because the film prints are so old?

Jay G.

Well, the 4K77 team did pretty minimal color correction. Also, they state that the film prints aren't graded for home viewing.
http://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/page/Project-4K77

Ranger

What's the file size of the originals?

Checked torrents:
4K - 92 GB x264
1080p - 38 GB x264

Usenet:
4k - 104 GB x265
1080p - 38 GB x265
1080p - 44 GB x264

I'm confused how he said the original was 83GB but it looks to be 104GB and the non-original is 92GB.

Jay G.

For Usenet, are you adding up the size of multiple part posts? Because the encoding of the files into posts adds overhead. UUencode adds 30-40%, and yEnc adds 1-2%
http://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-...e-handled.html

The 92GB torrent file I found was actually a re-encoding:

Ranger

Yeah, you're right, looks like overhead with yEnc.

They said to avoid the 92 GB torrent because it encoded with variable frame rate so every third frame is a duplicate.

38 GB x264 1080p should be fine as color correction done by TN1. And the x265 versions are the originals.

Was just curious. Not getting them right now.

Boba Fett

This really puts Disney to shame when fans are doing a near commercial level restoration job on their own.

GoldenJCJ

It would help if you didn’t have to be God damned Alan Turing to figure out how to download a copy of these movies! The last few posts in this thread may as well be written in Swahili!



Jesus, I suck at computers...

Jay G.

At this point, I think Disney is just waiting for their purchase of Fox to go through. Then they can release new UHD Blu-rays of all the Star Wars films in 2019 as build-up to the release of Ep 9.

Josh-da-man

I'll be shocked if Desney ever releases the original unaltered trilogy.

As a company, it seems like they treat home video as an afterthought and have shown little intetest in releasing multiple versions of their films. Age of Ultron could have used a directors cut, but nada.

It's also been speculated that they might be contractually obligated to not release the unaltered versions of ghe films.

Jay G.

This has come up before in this thread:
You're right, that's just speculation.

Ranger

FWIW, I've never used usenet so I'm still reading about how to use it. Project 4k77 tells you how to get them but doesn't post direct links. It strongly recommended getting them from usenet.

Project 4k77 said harmy himself has a copy and is working on a 1080p (v3.0?) edition so some may wait for that.

Ranger

Anyone get the 4k UHD versions for SW and ROTJ?

I'm curious how fast a PC is needed to play the UHD versions. Maybe i5 quad core with 8 GB RAM.

So far I got:
SW 1080p no-DNR 38 GB
SW 1080p DNR 40 GB
ROTJ 1080p 36 GB

Big files but x264 so an i3 with 4 GB RAM plays them fine.

ROTJ has a different FOX opening, not sure what's that about.

They all look good. DNR vs no-DNR - most say no-DNR is too grainy but colors look better. I think I like DNR better but will keep both to keep comparing.

Jay G.

If it's x264 , most CPUs in the past decade are going to use the decoding function of the integrated GPU. Or, if you have a dedicated GPU, that will likely be handling it. Keep in mind that there's tiny, low power, Chromecast, FireTV, Roku, Apple TV, etc devices that can handle UHD (4K).

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-e...support-matrix
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=232629

E Unit

I haven't downloaded it, but I may sometime soon. I'm also guessing since Episode 9 is coming this year, we'll probably see all of the films on UHD sometime in 2020.

Jay G.

You mean official releases? Because yeah, after Ep 9, and after the Fox/Disney merger completes, would be a good time to do a new "Complete Saga" set in UHD.

No telling though whether the original cuts of the original trilogy would make it into such a set though.

E Unit

Yeah, official releases. More than likely the “special editions” since Lucas probably sold only those to them.

stvn1974

If they do released the UOT in a box set there should be a blu-ray release and not just a UHD set if they want to sell more than twelve copies.

Jay G.

Umm, no. Disney owns all of the Star Wars copyrights. The only thing they're missing currently is the distribution rights to the first six movies, which Fox currently holds (until 2020 for 1-3, 5-6, and permanently for 4). Lucas didn't "hold on" to any rights.

Disney also owns the full Lucasilm archives, and could restore and re-release the original edits, at least in terms of technical capabilities and available resources.

The big question is whether Disney thinks it's worth it. Some speculate that Lucas may have "forbid" it in the contract of sale, but I doubt Disney would've agreed to any restrictions on what they could do with the resources they bought. It's more about whether Lucas would be upset if they were released, and whether Disney wants to risk upsetting Lucas. Having a happy George Lucas to trot out and endorse their products is worth something to Disney.

Personally, as long as the original edits are "supplemental," I don't think Lucas would be upset. He did, after all, agree to the bonus DVDs of the original cuts on the LE DVD releases. Those were from a decade-old Laserdisc master, but that's because Lucas didn't want to spend any money on the originals. But it's not his money anymore. So if the UHDs had both cuts, with the SE "primary," I think Lucas would be mollified.

There's also the thought that Disney doesn't do multiple cuts that often, but while they don't go out of their way to create multiple cuts of their films, the few times that's happened, they've put multiple cuts on the DVD and/or Blu-ray. Sometimes they're not perfect representations of a particular edit, but it's not something they're opposed to doing.

Finally, there's the question of whether it's of any financial or PR advantage to Disney to do it. Here it's tough to call. Certainly Star Wars has sold well on Blu-ray despite no original cuts, and the people insistent on the original cuts are a small but fervent bunch. Personally, I think it'd improve sales overall, since even people who don't necessarily care about which cut they own could view a release with two cuts as extra value, even on top of any UHD/HDR upgrade over the Blu-ray.

Ranger

They are working on Empire now - 4k80.
http://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/starwars/page/Project-4K80

Disney probably will release TFA and Rogue One on UHD later this year.

Michael Corvin

I've been wanting to rewatch Rogue One but never got around to buying the BD. I'll be down for a 4k release.

E Unit

Not much love for Rogue One, but that was the only one I really enjoyed seeing. That's the only 4K release I'd buy in a heartbeat.