Officially, all we know is that these versions of the films will be included as bonus material with Lucas' preferred 2004 versions and that they will feature Dolby 2.0 sound which can be decoded into surround sound. It also seems that, for the first time on a legitimate video release, we'll be getting Star Wars with its original title crawl.

What’s troubling is that in terms of the video, we know very little, officially. However, Jim Ward, the Senior Vice President of Lucasfilm, had this to say about the discs in an interview with USA Today, “It is state of the art, as of 1993, and that's not as good as state of the art 2006.” Those are not random years he picked. In September 1993, Fox Video released “The Star Wars Trilogy - The Definitive Collection”, a 13 pound box set consisting of 9 Laser Discs (the state of the art video format at the time), a program booklet and a hard cover book about George Lucas. The Laser Discs themselves featured brand new, state of the art THX certified video transfers and new Dolby Surround mixes of the Star Wars films. The response to the set, in terms of the picture and sound, was glowing.

So what did a state of the art 1993 picture transfer look like? If it was a widescreen transfer of a movie like Star Wars, it looked like this.

Non-Anamorphic Letterboxed

The most striking thing noticed is that the picture is dominated by two big thick horizontal black bars above and below the movie. In 1993, this was how widescreen movies were presented on home video. It was sometimes called "letterboxing". This was done in order to get a widescreen film to fit the almost square confines of a television set. The main problem with the letterboxed image is apparent. It’s small. It presents the full width of the movie, but details are tiny. Luke, Han and Chewbacca are indistinct blobs. This is what happens when about half of the picture is devoted to black bars.

Full Screen

If the image wasn't letterboxed, it would be presented in the full screen format pictured above. The full screen transfer offers a much bigger picture but at the loss of actual imagery. So our heroes are clearly defined, even if fewer rebels can be viewed. With full screen transfers, carefully composed shots lose their meaning. Scenes meant to show scale are reduced. Such was the state of the art in 1993.

Now, what if there was a way to transfer the full width of the movie to video while maintaining the resolution benefits of the full screen transfer? The original framing could be preserved and the image would not lose any of its detail. Welcome to the wonderful world of anamorphic video transfers!

Anamorphic

Look at the size of the black bars now. They are much smaller and yet nothing is cut off the sides of the movie! All of the rebels can be seen and the main characters are also clearly defined.

How is this done? By squeezing a wide image into the standard TV area and then unsqueezing it on playback. This is what an anamorphic transfer looks like before it is properly displayed.

The image is distorted and everything is tall and skinny, but having the television unsqueeze the image horizontally generates an even sharper picture than the full-frame transfer because the lines are closer together. Since less of the image is devoted to the black bars, more detail can be resolved in the movie. This technology has been available since the introduction of the DVD. Obviously, to gain all of the resolution benefits, a widescreen set is needed. But even without one, anamorphic transfers benefit users with older TVs because film-to-video transfers in general have improved over the years.

Anamorphic transfers have been the industry standard for several years now. Every new mainstream film that comes to the DVD market from a major studio is now anamorphic. It’s commonplace. It’s only news when a major film comes to market and the DVD isn’t anamorphic. And that is exactly what’s happening with the original editions of the Star Wars trilogy!

For viewers with older televisions, the movies will be displayed just fine. These transfers were meant for those, however they’re old and won’t look as good as today’s best DVDs. For users with new widescreen sets, these discs will present them with some problems. How can an old non-anamorphic video transfer be displayed on a widescreen set? There are several options

First, the movie can be displayed in the center of the screen, matted on all of the edges resulting in more than half of the television being devoted to black bars.

Second, the viewer could choose to stretch the image to fit the width of the widescreen monitor.

Now everything is short and stout and distorted.

The final option is to zoom in on the image.

This maintains the correct proportions, but by zooming in, deficiencies in the picture are more easily revealed and nothing is gained, it’s just a big picture filling a screen. It's the equivalent of moving your face closer to your television set. An anamorphic transfer will also fill the screen like this, but it will be much sharper and clearer because it’s meant to be shown this way. That’s the advantage.

The fact that anamorphic transfers can be displayed properly on any display is another advantage. While it’s optimized for widescreen televisions, users with standard TVs can enjoy these transfers too, because the DVD player will unsqueeze the image if the television cannot.

Here is a final comparison demonstrating the benefits of an anamorphic transfer versus a non-anamorphic transfer.

The centered image is the old transfer completely surrounded by an anamorphic transfer (intentionally dimmed for the sake of comparison). The anamorphic uses more picture area, thus it can display a sharper, clearer better picture. This is the promise of DVD, and this is what fans of the true original Star Wars films have wanted for almost 10 years and the introduction of the format.

And now with the DVD format possibly entering its twilight years, using a 13 year old video master at this stage is not only disappointing, it’s unacceptable. In 1993, Lucasfilm was setting industry standards for what a high quality video transfer could be. In 2006, they’re ignoring everything they’ve ever stood for with this one release. Let’s hope that someone at Lucasfilm understands that a mistake is being made and that it’s corrected prior to the September 12, 2006 release date.

If you want to make sure they know about this error in judgment, you can e-mail them directly at publicity@lucasfilm.com.

UPDATE: Since this article was written and published, Lucasfilm has confirmed that the source being used for the original films is the old video master created for the Laser Discs.

Special thanks to Tom Brennan, Robert Harris, and John Takis for their input and assistance in the writing of this article. Contact Neil S. Bulk.

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