Two weeks ago, I mentioned that the original pre-Special Edition versions of the original Star Wars trilogy were finally going to come out on DVD. That sounded rather exciting to me at the time.
But now, TheDigitalBits.com reports (here, here, and here) that the new DVDs will be transferred from outdated letterboxed masters that were originally created for the laserdisc and VHS editions way, way back in 1993.
In fact, this has been public knowledge since as far back as May 3, when Lucasfilm’s Jim Ward told USA Today:
The original films’ video quality will not match up to that of the restored versions. “It is state of the art, as of 1993, and that’s not as good as state of the art 2006,” Ward says.
In other words, since a lot of Star Wars fans are already copying the laserdiscs to bootleg DVDs anyway, Lucasfilm has figured that it will make the bootlegs for us, without any real improvements, and then charge us about US$30 per official bootleg.
And those who want to see the original movies in their original versions in anamorphic widescreen are still, as ever, SOL.
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