This posted on Rebelscum.com:

The "Star Wars" universe is about to make the jump to high-definition. Cinemax has made a deal with Lucasfilm to offer all six "Star Wars" movies in HD for the first time. The Time Warner-owned, premium movie cable channel plans to premiere the films in November and launch a national marketing campaign.


And of course...my TWC doesn't carry Cinemax HD. *sigh*

GREAT news!

I'm guessing Episodes 4-6 will be the 2004 DVD SE versions.

I saw Episode 3 on HBO HD recently. Great image, crappy film. Still, the film was shown in 2.35:1, which is a rarity on HBO HD, so there's reason to think all the films will be in OAR 2.35:1 on Cinemax as well.

Also, HBO and Cinemax trade a lot of films back and forth between them. So maybe the films will premeire on Cinemax, then eventually migrate over to HBO for a while as well.

i gotta find someone who lives near me that has cinemax!

Stupid. I have Starz, Showtime, and HBO in HD but not Cinemax. Cinemax is actually the last premium channel I would have thought would get this. Emmanuelle in Space in HD would be more their style.

I'll probably sign up for Cinemax HD just for that month (and then drop it). Thanks for the heads-up!

I have 4 premium HD stations, but can't remember if one if them is Cinemax. Sure hope so!

I have Cinemax HD. Guess I'm a lucky bastard.

Let's hope it looks better than this

No HD cimemax yet, just all the others. Maybe it will be available down the road...say November?

This is one of the few channels that I have in HD, thanks Charter.

odds that they will be OAR?
I doubt it, this way Lucasfilm has a reason for you to buy the Hd versions when they're released.

Yeah, DirecTV doesn't offer Cinemax in HD. Stupid.

Episode II was cropped. Episode III wasn't. So who the hell knows.

Was it cropped, or could it have been open-matte? I think Ep2 was shot with 16:9 cameras and cropped to 2.35:1. The LOTR films I know had all the post-production and effects done in 16:9, so it's possible Ep2 was as well, but I don't know.

It could have been 16:9 open matte, but I doubt it, since the special effects wouldn't have extended past the mattes.

Episode III, as mentioned, played on HBO HD in proper 2.35:1.

I only saw Episode II on Fox (don't know if it played in HD on any of the premiums), but the 1.78:1 ratio was a definite crop. We didn't see 'more', we saw less.


As to what they will do, I echo the "who knows" comment. I would think that 2.35:1 would make sense and there'd be no reason to crop, but given how Episode II was treated, I hesitate to predict. But, in terms of eventual resale on HD formats (HD-DVD/Blu-ray), I don't think this will have any impact one way or the other. The market is pretty small in general at this point, and no one is going to avoid buying a legit HD product of the series because they recorded a proper aspect ratio off Cinemax in 2006.

None of the star wars movies have ever been "open matte."

Ep2 was on HBO as 1.78:1 as well. It's never been shown AFAIK at it's proper aspect ratio in HD.

Star Wars Eps 2 and 3 were shot on digital cameras with an aspect ratio of 16:9, and the image was cropped to 2.35:1:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDW-F900

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=53225

...but they were hard-matted in-camera, yes? That would preclude an open matte presentation.

Who said they were hard-matted in-camera? Once Upon a Time in Mexico used the same cameras and was released open-matte on DVD.

Doesn't matter. This is star wars.

Watch any of the documentaries. I don't remember ANY of the artists working in a 1.78:1 frame

I'm not sure what that means. It may be "Star Wars," but Ep 2 and 3 were shot on 16:9 digital cameras, and Ep 2 was shown in HD in 16:9. So it's not like the films are "above" 16:9 framing: Hell, they all have cropped 4:3 releases as well.

Fair enough. I don't own any of the DVDs, so I was merely posing the question based on my knowledge of the cameras used.

That's one small piece of the puzzle.

If you do care that much, I can post screenshots of the two if you'd like to see the difference. :P

Okay, just went to starwars.com and viewed the first web doc which covers the digital cameras. In the last half of the doc you can clearly see the crew looking at 16:9 images with frame lines on them for the 2.35:1 ratio.
http://www.starwars.com/episode-ii/bts/me2/1.html

Between the 16:9 HD presentation and the 2.35:1 DVD presentation, I'm assuming? Sure, I'd love to see them.