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French STAR WARS OOT dvds to be anamorphic

post #1 of 15
7/12/06 at 1:16pm
Thread Starter 
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#ice2

And here's a little something that's very interesting: Our friend Arnaud Calistri, who runs the DVDRama.com website in France, e-mailed me yesterday to say that Fox France has confirmed with him that the original versions of the Star Wars films to be released on DVD there will be in anamorphic widescreen (enhanced for widescreen 16x9 TVs). As many of you know, they were announced for release here in the States and elsewhere in non-anamorphic (letterboxed) widescreen only, causing a furor among fans (and rightly so). This news, if true, means one of two things: Either Lucasfilm quickly got their act together when fans complained and created new anamorphic masters for the DVD release everywhere (and it just hasn't been announced here in the States yet), or France is getting better DVDs that the rest of the world. If they DID get their act together, expect Lucasfilm's fan relations guru, Steve Sansweet, to make a massive deal about it the company's Star Wars panel at Comic-Con next week. If they DIDN'T get their act together, and France IS getting better discs, expect fans to make a massive deal about it. We'll ask all the right people to see if we can find out the truth of the matter. Of course, we'll let you know.
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post #2 of 15
7/12/06 at 1:20pm
Finally, a genuine reason to hate the French.
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post #3 of 15
7/12/06 at 1:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crow
Finally, a genuine reason to hate the French.
I think there were already quite a few floating around.
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post #4 of 15
7/12/06 at 1:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crow
Finally, a genuine reason to hate the French.
Gerard Depardieu was reason enough for me. Although the hatred has since since been counter balanced by my obsession for pixie Audrey Tautou.
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post #5 of 15
7/12/06 at 2:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Overlord
I think there were already quite a few floating around.
Example?
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post #6 of 15
7/12/06 at 3:16pm
Ragging on France is SO pre-9/11.
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post #7 of 15
7/12/06 at 3:19pm
For anyone that knows anything about the subject, is the process of making DVD's anamorphic a lenghty and/or difficult process? I would think that the proof copies of these DVD's would have been done around the time they made the release announcement. If they did decide to go back and change it to anamorphic, that obviously means it wasn't a huge deal. If that's the case, why the hell wouldn't they just have done it that way in the first place?

Edited for not knowing how to spell "anamorphic"
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post #8 of 15
7/12/06 at 3:37pm
There is absolutely no excuse for any DVD released after 2001 to not be anamorphic. It's a simple case of changing the settings while mastering the DVDs. You can do it on a home computer with a DVD burner, fer chrissakes. This is just Lucasfilm being stubborn and throwing fans a bone.
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post #9 of 15
7/12/06 at 3:40pm
Clearly Lucasfilm executives were intimidated by the suddenly very real possibility of headbutts to their chests.
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post #10 of 15
7/12/06 at 3:44pm
Not if the source in non-anamorphic. If Lucasfilm was content to use the standard-definition masters from the laserdiscs, then what would be the point in making them anamorphic? They'd have to do the same artifical blowup on the image that your tv does on non-anamporphic content. The only reason to have anamorphic is to get extra fidelity from squeezing the image down for 16:9 tv's. The only way to do that and get any real benefit from it is to do a new telecine from a film source or a HD digtial or tape master, which the LD masters are not (at least, not to my understanding).
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post #11 of 15
7/12/06 at 4:01pm
Not saying when or how, but I've seen DVD rips of the Laserdisc collection in question. The rips were in anamorphic, and they looked fine.
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post #12 of 15
7/12/06 at 4:03pm
Obviously, this means it would be a good time to purchase a good region free DVD player with comparible PAL-to-NTSC conversion. I believe they're going for less than $100 right now.

Plus, to give creedence to the French, the classic DVD sets they put out are astounding and well worth your dollars.
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post #13 of 15
7/12/06 at 4:08pm
Thread Starter 
I guarantee Lucas has the original originals somewhere in a vault and can scan the fucker at will and give us an HD anamorphic transfer. It's not like he can't afford it, what with the 13 billion he's made from this whole thing. It's obvious he was just trying to short change the originals by giving them shit treatment, so fans would shrug and just accept the butchered editions.
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post #14 of 15
7/12/06 at 5:17pm
Don't worry, the French are fucked like the rest of us.

From Digital Bits:

We've got some more interesting standard DVD news to report today, starting with a follow-up on that French Star Wars DVD controversy we mentioned the other day. We've gotten a follow-up e-mail from our friend Arnaud at DVDRama in France. He's actually had the chance to see, with his own two eyes, the new Star Wars DVDs being released there, and it turns out Fox France was wrong. Someone in marketing over there apparently still doesn't know what anamorphic means. The special edition versions of the films on Disc One of each set are anamorphic, but the original theatrical editions on Disc Two of each are definitely NOT anamorphic. They're just letterboxed widescreen as we expected. Fox France has apparently apologized for the confusion, and we definitely appreciate Arnaud's efforts in confirming the truth of the situation. So to sum up, France is getting the same sub-par Star Wars DVDs as the rest of us. 'Nuff said.
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post #15 of 15
7/12/06 at 7:34pm
Merde.
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