moving up for the cheap seats...../\.........
my set should arrive in the mail any day now.

My set arrived yesterday. I haven't had time to watch them all yet, but I did watch quite a bit of ANH, and I did some "spot checks" of ESB (mostly to see how bad the lipsync problem is). My initial observations pretty much concur with those that have already been posted, with a few exceptions.

The video does appear soft, but it never appeared as soft as VHS appears on my RPTV, and, as has been noted, it is considerably more stable than VHS. And, there are many scenes that are noticeably sharper than VHS. I checked the bitrate of the discs, and it rarely goes higher than 3 Mbit/sec, which could account for some of the detail problems, or it could be that the people who mastered the disc deliberately softened it so that a lower bit rate could be used (remember, these are all single-layered discs).

The audio is generally quite clean, but it does sound a trifle thin at times. The lipsync problem on ESB was definitely noticeable, but it wasn't really too distracting for me.

One last thing I observed. There is an authoring error on ANH that no one else has apparently noticed yet. When I play it in my Panasonic player, it works fine, but in my Sony (DVP-S360), if I select "Play Movie" from the menu, it plays the THX intro, followed by... the THX intro, over and over and over... The only way to stop it is to manually enter the title number for the movie itself, which then plays. If I start the movie from the scene selection menu, everything is OK (since it skips the THX intro), but then the intro plays at the end of the movie, over and over and over... A minor glitch, but worth noting. The other discs don't exhibit this behavior.

All in all, I am very pleased to have a copy of these rare movies on DVD, and consider it well worth the price, especially since I received my copies in just four daysfrom the time I ordered them!

Got my set from a dutch auction about 2 weeks ago. It was mailed from Houston and got it in a couple of days. The picture is soft and the surround effects could be better. I picked them up for $45.00(set). I have not watched Return of the Jedi but, overall I am happy with what I got for now.

Ian B.

are those the new original SWT or the Special Editions? I thought i saw that same auction a couple weeks ago. If they are the original ones, great price for a US shipment. i think it's worth it not to have to wait for a 3 week shipment from god knows where. I wonder what kind of risks these US sellers are taking, though, by distributing these?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Pasolini
[B]are those the new original SWT or the Special Editions? I thought i saw that same auction a couple weeks ago. If they are the original ones, great price for a US shipment. i think it's worth it not to have to wait for a 3 week shipment from god knows where. I wonder what kind of risks these US sellers are taking, though, by distributing these?

How can you tell which ones they are? The covers are in English and there are no subtitles on them.


Ian B.

YES! Finally got them in the mail just now. Will report back in 8 hours what i think of them!!

One thing kind of odd that i didn't see anyone else mention - they came in a small 5x7 envelope. At first I was rather taken aback as I was signing for it, but after opening it a note said 'plastic cases are not included - It's a safety measure step to avoid any custom problems, theft, tax, lost mail, damage, etc.' Guess it makes sense -anyone else experience this?

I hate to say it but you got ripped off. Please E-Mail me the seller's name so I can remove it from my list... and avoid in the future. I have been ordering VCDs and DVDs from Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong for sometime now and have only seen this happen once (Indiana Jones VCDs).

I'm sorry this happened to you. Did the seller at least include the DVD Covers so you can put them in your own cases? If not, please post here to let everyone know. I am sure someone can scan these awful covers for you.

Again, I am sorry to hear you had such a bad experience. The seller must be very paranoid.

yes, i got the covers, and upon inspection the covers & dvd's are in perfect condition. Really i don't think i'd go so far as to say it was a rip off - i have one aol dvd case, so just need to get 3 more. I think there is a thread around somewhere listing places to buy these...

odd, though, since he had a really really high ebay rating (higher than any other seller i could find), speaks & writes great english, yet he didn't mention this little detail b4! just another expense to add on top of the rest.

Oh, one last question - i have the covers & the dvds. Am I missing anything else, i.e. is there an insert or booklet inside the case usually?

I am going to put them in my dvd player now (i am half expecting my panasonic a310 to not recognize the disc now!)

[Edited by Pasolini on 05-10-01 at 11:04 AM]

I had a great shipping time:

Sent money via PayPal on Thur the 3rd. The discs shipped on Fri the 4th, and I got them on Wed the 9th.

Excellent reviews BadAsh, and thank you very much.

Now, I can't wait until ckolchak gets those new covers up to download!!

You definitely got the shaft on that deal. Even the cheesiest bootleggers send the cover art. I'd send them back if you can. If you email me, I help you out with better selers. Good luck.

sorry for the typos on my last post, I'm really not illiterate.

WOW!!! I'm happy to start page 5 of this awesome thread.

Well, since he did send you the covers that is pretty good. Cases are cheap. Sears has had an AOL display in their Electronics section where you could pick up AOL discs in a nice Amaray DVD case for FREE. But, if you don't want to have to deal with all the stickers, check these guys out:

http://www.inetdvd.com

They sell all kinds of cases including single and double Amaray and Alpha cases as well as colored cases. There prices are pretty good too. I stocked up from them a while back. Give'em a shot... or stop buy your local Sears and see if they still have the AOL display.

If you got the DVDs and the Covers then you got everything. There were no inserts in this or any DVD released by this company. I guess the only thing you missed is the groovy "M" style DVD case they use. If you aren't familiar with this, there is this slightly pointy football shaped piece on the spindle and when you press it down it sort of pops up in a "V" shape... I think they call this an "M" style case because of the logo imprinted inside the case. Very nice though... sorry to rub it in... you can't buy these in the states. drats!

They're crappy movies to begin with and the fact that these boots are nonanamorphic makes them all the more worthless. A fool and his money are soon departed.

are you sure?

At least one person put a whole lot of work into this thread. Check page one.

Four other pages are full of people who DO care about this very much, thank you.

I'll resist the urge to go further with this, and say what I really think of someone pissing on the thread here, since I don't want to jeopardize its closure. BadAsh deserves better.

I thought April Fools Day already passed.

I just got mine this evening. I ordered it on April 17. Just short of a month. I noticed that the envelope was opened and resealed (customs?).

Unlike the others they come in crappy knock off cases with an unusual spindle. It's kinda like a "lock". No matter, I quickly pulled the covers and discs out and stuck them into Amarays. Ahhh... that's better.

Got kinda worried for a while as they did not come within the advertised "7-10" business days. I wrote back once and they responded fairly quickly to ease my worries. Sure enough they showed up in good order. Shrunk wrapped for that "official" feeling. Packed in a bubble pack, the good 'ol mailman placed in into our mailbox and it hit the garage floor dislodging one of the discs out of the case. Luckily no damage though.

Watched a little bit of each disc and the picture (as described by others on this thread)is a bit soft. I'll need to watch it when it gets dark. I also noticed the audio delay. Make no mistake, it's not DVD quality but it sure beats the heck out of the VHS set I passed along to mom and dad.

Can't complain about the price or quality and it'll have to do while we wait (endlessly) for George to get off his butt and put his version out.

Hey George.... you snooze you lose, buddy. Bite me!

haven't finished any of them yet, but watched the first 20 minutes of Ep. 1 & Ep. 4. I am a sound freak, so for me, the most important asset of these dvds is sound. Ep. 1 is amazing, sounds like true 5.1 to me (although my JBL sub is still in the shop so i am using a passive sub w/ a spare amp powering it - so i can't comment on the accuracy of the .1 channel since i am not really using it the same way).

Ep. 4's sound is definitely matrixed, or simulated, or whatever you want to call it. Front channels are in stereo & the rears are an 'echo' of it. The first couple minutes sound pretty crappy, but once the music subsides & the action starts it really isn't too bad. It does provide a more pleasing soundscape than any vhs copy i've heard, even if just slighly hollow & artificial sounding.

Ep. 1's image quality is suprisingly low. I don't mean it's as bad as vhs, but i am surprised that it doesn't look better. There seems to be a problem not only with soft image and low bitrate, but with color & fleshtone, especially red. Any object w/ a large amount of red (such as the handmaidens dresses) just bled and halo'ed all over the screen. Ironically, this type of soft image actually helps out the computer generated shots, if you can believe it. It helps set them back in the overall image & improves believability for me. It is only the human closeups, especially indoors (see Anakin learning he is freed inside his house for one of the worst examples) that you have a real problem with the image being too soft or imbalanced colorwise.

I'm sure it will surprise you to learn that i am more impressed with the image quality for Ep 4 so far! At first, during the title scroll & space battle, i thought i was going to be disappointed. The stars just crawl all over the screen like ants & image is really shaky. But things settle down and the interior spaceship shots & the Tatooine shots all look surpisingly good. Of course they are still soft, but IMHO for it's age looks better than Ep. 1.

Ok, sorry to blah blah so much - i really should finish watching them b4 i review them, or else i will end up doing this twice.

One last comment - i don't know much about laserdiscs, but is it possible that the image quality can vary from the beginning of the side to the middle? I swear the beginning of each side of the disc looks worse, then a minute or two later the picture improves. Maybe it's just psychological, as i get into the plot & forget about the image...

p.s. 35" RCA s-video input from Panasonic a310 (not a widescreen tv obviously). Kenwood receiver, Klipsh speakers, Cerwin Vega front center speaker (great front center sound in Ep 1 by the way).

just wanted to add that it will be really interesting when TPM is released in an official dvd, (re: my comments above on the digital effects in the bootleg). I truly think they are going to look horrible on a perfect dvd transfer. Of course, i am a digital effects hater, so my opinion is very biased. But, i think the digital characters are just going to pop right off the screen in the December release, way more than in the theater. Anyone want to set me straight?

Has anyone found new covers for the boots?
I know about the SE covers, which are very
nice, but I'd like to find non-SE covers.

Star Wars (ANH) Jacket Designs

These aren't up to be downloaded yet but ckolchak has made some BEAUTIFUL covers and this thread discusses them and when they will be available (hopefully soon )

sorry, I just looked through that thread and noticed that he took the pics of the covers down, but click on his link and you should be able to find them easily.

Yeah, I've been worried about this too. Though I have to say, the movie has probably the best cgi I've seen. When I was in the theater, I don't think I ever once thought, "oh that looks so fake!" I just kept thinking, "oh I hate that character!" But when I saw clips on tv, I thought it looked really false & distracting. Still haven't rented it on VHS or seen more than a few seconds at a time. Seeing that spider thing at the end of Wild Wild West really made me appreciate the snow walkers in Empire even more than I had before. I was hoping for more old fashioned fx & puppetry in Episode I, but was disappointed - especially by the lack of articulation & bad mime of the non-digital creatures.

ok, i am thru w/ 4,5 and 1/2 thru 6.

4 is a gem. a real wonderful thing to have. The picture (for the age of the movie) is great, and the sound, though not perfect, is certainly functionable. It is wonderful to have the original version.

5 has an improved picture over 4 on my system, and an incremental improvement in sound (not a lot, but a little).
Unfortunately, I notice way more sync problems than others seemingly have. There is a slight sync error during the Asteroid interior sequence for about 5 or 10 minutes on either side of the scene, and again for about 5 minutes as the Falcon first lands on the Sky City. Just a millisecond or two, but noticable. Then of course there is the 1/4 second sync error at the end. BE WARNED: although i did not time it, i feel it is longer than 10 minutes. It is the entire last 'side' of whatever laserdisc this is from - from the point where luke enters the carbon freezer staging area on to the end. Doesn't bother me too much though - again i am happy to have it.

6: i haven't seen a single person note this yet: the beginning 30 minutes of RETURN OF THE JEDI ALSO HAS AUDIO SYNC PROBLEMS! Though not nearly as bad as the 1/4 second delay in ESB, the entire first 'side' of the source material is consistantly delayed by a few milliseconds - all the way from the beginning of the movie up through the Jabba barge scenes, until getting better at the 'flip point'. This is not a fluxuating sync problem - it is constant and unwavering. While most may not be annoyed, or even notice, it is there. For example or comparison: if you have ever seen a dubbed film -- not a foreign film dubbed into a different language but a film totally re-dubbed, instead of using location sound, into it's original language using the original actors -- that is exactly what it looks/sounds like. Not glaring, but just slightly off. Watch carefully especially during dialogue with many rapid syllables. Of course, most of the first 20 minutes of the film has dialogue from characters w/out mouths (or w/ masks on) so it doesn't matter that much (another spot to look is when Solo is defrosted & leia is unmasked). I also noticed it when the emperor arrives & speaks to Vader at the Death Star - although i think that is after the side switch.

Otherwise, picture and sound are incrementally better than the previous two. I will report any other sound probs once i am done.

[Edited by Pasolini on 05-17-01 at 04:14 AM]