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posted by
LaminatorX
on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:44PM
from the Ches-ko-ba-tuta-creesta-crenko-ya-kolska! dept.
from the Ches-ko-ba-tuta-creesta-crenko-ya-kolska! dept.
mechanicjay writes:
While a bit pop-culture and light hearted, it's an indelible part of every geek's soul, so perhaps it's worthy of a front page discussion:
Over at Movie Pilot, Alex Rosenhiem puts forth a compelling argument for preservation of art and of shared cultural experience and why that matters. He couches it in the context of revisionism as applied to the Han/Greedo Cantina scene, long a source of nerd rage, countless arguments and is even it's own meme. The moment is a pivotal one for the development of the Han Solo character, but more importantly Rosenhiem argues that Art, Star Wars included, gives us access to the past and where we were at a certain point in time when we first experienced it.
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belief, n:
Something you do not believe.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dpp on Tuesday March 25 2014, @09:09PM
I also have a laserdisc copy. As others responded, the Definitive Collection is outstanding quality. CAV, excellent audio.
I purchased this new, when it came out, for about $250. As I understand the history of the production, as they were readying the "new" versions of the films (re-release at theatre with updates such as CGI Jabba & other f/x added), they went through a thorough process of cleaning up original prints (grain/noise), re-processed/re-created the multi-channel audio, to make a *perfect* copy (print) of the original film, including digital form. Those new "masters" were used for producing the source for the updated films.
However, fortunately for us (who have/have watched the Definitive version) the best release of the original film was created.
According to Lucas, the story goes that after those original edit masters were made, used for the laserdisc production, some were inadvertently destroyed during the process...so only the "new edition" masters exist now? Sounded like a made-up story to give an excuse why they won't re-produce the original edits, used for the laserdisc Definitive production.
Regarding new master copies -
Being a Star Wars buff, I even purchased a laserdisc copy (Japanese import, as it came out in Japan long before US release) of The Phantom Menace. I'd edited together the (best, imho) fight scene with Darth Maul - just the fight, editing out the other scenes occurring concurrently, and was able to make an outstanding digital copy. I used a old digital-8 camera which allowed me to input from the laserdisc & stream over firewire to my PC.
Anyhow...I'm only mentioning the "new master copy" idea, as I've been able to get fantastic quality from my Pioneer laserdisc player, using component out (no s-video, not composite-ugh), directly into a projector with a video processing (component analog-to-dvi/hdmi, processing onboard cleans up further).
If Disney/Lucas never give us a clean original release, I might just have to hook-up the video editing PC again & make a clean 5-channel digital copy from those laserdiscs.
I just popped the Pioneer laserdisc (best audio&video chip version, last release), after 6yrs in storage, to watch another film I'd not seen released on DVD/digital download yet...so the equipment still works great. Here's hoping there's no laser-rot on the Star Wars discs.
(Score: 1) by willie3204 on Wednesday March 26 2014, @12:41AM
Excellent post. :p
I have just, to my complete and total dismay, discovered my laser disc is in fact not a laser disc at all. It is a CED disc [wikipedia.org]. How sad. It does however explain the incredibly POOR video quality. Oh well I'll just wait for the re-re-re-release of the original film ripped from laser to bluray
(Score: 1) by dpp on Wednesday March 26 2014, @08:50PM
You know it's funny (not "haha"...but "odd/sad way"), when the CED discs came out MANY people purchased them after seeing great press on laserdisc quality. My uncle, a tech+audio+video buff picked one up. Later he purchased a laserdisc and of course we immediately compared/contrasted the tech.
It's interesting to see how companies do the "knock off"/"ride coattails" and succeed to some degree, often to the extreme detriment of the consumers.
Thanks for reminding me of that competing large disc format.