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It is worth mentioning that The Industry is once again falling behind The Piracy. All that warpsharping and filtering was a fad more than a decade ago, when peo
by ogurechny 3y ago
It is worth mentioning that The Industry is once again falling behind The Piracy. All that warpsharping and filtering was a fad more than a decade ago, when people got big high resolution screens, but lacked new content. After a while, it was decided that mods should use their powers to stop that crap.
The answer is quite simple: any presentation is an artistic decision of “how it should look like”. Each time you put some image on screen you make choices (or someone chooses for you, and sets the defaults). Artistic decisions need taste. Many people just don't have any. Commoners who played with interesting toys, and made over-filtered rips probably thought that they really look cool, and did not understand what was lost. Commoners on this page who don't understand why objects shouldn't look like they went under a steamroller then got plastic edge embossing, and ask for comparisons probably really can't see the difference. If it sits like a duck… And the business knows well that “taste” is not important, “art” is not important, “quality” is not important — what is important is attention to the product. If it sells, it sells, no matter what it is.
The secret is that lot of people will watch 8-camrips-on-1-DVD content, and be just as happy. (You probably know a couple of such persons. You know, horrible streaming sites with more ads on screen than you can count, almost-dialup bitrates for “FullHD” and so on. “Why should I bother with all the other options”, etc.) However, there is an incentive to make them buy 4K-8K-3D-HDR-whatever TVs (which they don't even use in any new fashion), grab “newer and better” releases, subscribe to “newer and better” streaming services. Brainwashing about “new technologies” simply makes them believe that they acquired some enormous riches. When you tell them it's really crappy, you don't just argue about that specific quality, you question their life choices and beliefs.
- hedora 3y agoThe other day, I was thinking the kids are just about old enough to watch Star Wars episodes 4-6, and it occurred to me I don’t know how to obtain a decent (original plot and visual effects) copy, legally or otherwise. I almost wish I still had that old VHS box set laying around.
- sho 3y agoLegally? Old VHS or laserdisk, so not really an option unless you're a fanatic. Somewhat less clear cut legally? "Despecialized edition" is the keyword you're looking for on the torrent sites. Theres's even a wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Editio...
- qingcharles 3y agoThat's actually a really good summary of the whole fan restoration situation.
- wharvle 3y agoBest available restoration, legal or otherwise, is 4k77 / 4k80 /4k83 (4k + the year of the film’s release). A bunch of absolute lunatics acquired multiple 35mm prints of each movie in its original form (the Star Wars text crawl is just titled “Star Wars”, no episode IV), scanned them at ultra-high-quality, then used various references, including vintage stills, to hand-repair damage and color correct / regrade to compensate for fading. Available on any torrent search (maybe even on an Internet Archive torrent? Not sure). They released two official (well, “official”) versions of each: one with the film grain intact as-scanned (it’s rather aggressive, especially on the first film) and another with it cautiously denoised so it looks more like folks are used to on modern films. None of the official releases come close, if you want to watch the closest practically-obtainable version to what people saw in the theaters on opening day—even a remarkably-good 35mm print on your own cinema projector wouldn’t look as close, because it’d be guaranteed to have noticeable scratches and fading. [edit] oh and they have multiple audio mixes to suit most preferences. Can’t remember exactly what’s on them all, but Star Wars has both the original stereo and mono mixes (these feature some different ADR takes, between them—it’s not just a difference in audio channels) as well as at least one surround track.
- Mr_Minderbinder 3y agoI'd be happy to help point you in the right direction for this. Maybe send me a PM on Reddit, I am there under the same username.