The original unaltered Star Wars trilogy is coming out on Blu Ray!

[Faust]

It was just announced by Disney today! awesome news

http://http://www.jedinews.co.uk/new...edium=facebook

[CountOrlok]

Hope it's not just a rumour. Will be good to have them on blu-ray.

[Primetimeloser]

It would be nice not to feel like I NEED to buy it each time I see certain VHS releases of it that are unaltered. A bunch of fans did make a Blu-ray quality cut of A New Hope from VHS and laserdisc releases. It is possible even though Lucus claims that it was lost.

[BurnetRhoades]

The link seems busted but I've been seeing this passed around all over today but it's still only rumors from what I've read. It has also been pointed out that Disney can't release Star Wars because FOX has distribution rights for some time yet and even when the rights for Empire and Jedi revert to Lucasfilm, and therefore Disney, they retain Star Wars in perpetuity.

Perhaps this is simply a matter of folks oversimplifying something happening, like Lucasfilm doing the heavy lifting for an eventual FOX release. As it's been pointed out though, if they don't acknowledge the true ownership of the films right now, FOX and not Disney, it's hard to put much faith in the rumors. But then again, entertainment press don't really understand how things actually work and so it could be one person's mistake/assumption/misleading-simplification that's then just repeated wholesale by others upping their ad and click exposure.

[CountOrlok]

Rights issues won't stop this happening. Look at the Batman tv show, that was held up due to rights issues. These properties are a license to print money. It's inevitable.

But I'll be torrenting these anyway.

[BurnetRhoades]

Rights issues won't stop this happening.

Dude, seriously.

It doesn't matter who owns the negative for a film, the distributor of a film is the de facto "owner" of a film and nobody else can do a thing with it. Can't show it, can't do alternate versions, nothing. Not Lucas, not Disney. FOX controls when, how, by whom and what form the original trilogy will be shown or released for several more years and forever for Star Wars.

That said, the 4K remaster of the original trilogy is done. The company that did it has already gone public. Worst case scenario, however, is this was done for preservation given the age of the negative and reports that it was in bad shape. The Special Editions were quickly and cheaply produced and archival quality work was not part of the plan (and who knows if additional damage was done in this process, hopefully not). They could have done their job so that a proper archival negative could be recorded and then put in a vault. With Lucas the Hut out of the equation, however, it makes sense for both FOX and Disney to make money off releasing versions they know will sell. FOX, ultimately, is the deciding factor though.

[chetrog]

Wonder what things would be different then something else we already have?

[BurnetRhoades]

Wonder what things would be different then something else we already have?

The best version available of the original trilogy came out on laserdisc in the 1990s, isn't 16:9 enhanced and only so-so quality for the laserdisc format (CLV instead of CAV). Better than VHS but lower than average DVD quality even.

Them going back to the negative for this restored version will mean the potential for the best presentation of the original trilogy that anyone has ever seen besides Lucas and his post production team, better than if you were in a theater for a totally fresh release print in 1977 because of all the optical steps between Answer Print and Release Print. 4K digital will be roughly 1/2 of the quality that is on the original camera negative rather than about 1/8th in a typical 35mm release print.

That's IF they actually put it back out to theaters. It would make sense to but we'll have to wait and see. Any BD release from this remastering should look incredible and they'll have the necessary material to do an eventual 4K home release as well. That would likely sell some 4K players and TVs to naive consumers.

[herecomesanewchallenger]

If you want a good quality copy of the original and have about 18Gb and a metric shitton of time for downloading, just google "42A67CC6" to get the 1080p despecialized version of Episode 1. Jdownloader will probably help.

checksums for double checking
MD5: E52CC005E48931EF3DF336361DD1A142
SHA-1: 6CA73976E347CD6791DC31B4FCC758F0E5AD265E
SHA-256: 31C4BA98D4A14A71B6DA13830F1C3C508CBF93C89A348D382F76070 A23588D6B

edit: password should be "harmy" if there is one.