SNG ROTS DVD sighted!

At gramophone. Code 1. S$48.90. Got some unsightly spanish words below the title, but quality's same as always.

 

Spanish? I thought its French.
Any how, $48.95 is awfully expensive :/
I'm buying mine from Australia, total $41, including shipping.

 

Thanks for posting this information!

I'd prefer to buy it locally, if I can though... even if it is a little more costly... at least this way, it won't be so troublesome... 'cos if anything's wrong with it, just bring it back to the shop with the receipt and exchange for a new one... instead of having to contact the seller by email, then spending money on shipping to return it and to have the seller send a new one, if he even has a new one to replace it with in the first place.

Just sharing my experience with online shopping, that's all.

 

I'll check on my side this weekend...will probably buy one too. Time to complete the saga!

 

Oh! Don't get me wrong. I'm getting it from there because its the only nearest country that I can get the PAL version DVD. And Australia is the nearest which I can import from.

 

Hey, no worries mate!

Just giving a different perspective, so that readers can make up their own minds about whether they'd prefer to get it online, or in the shops locally, that's all

BTW, I got my AOTC DVD from Australia too... at the time, I had a friend studying there, and he helped me to get it... I could have gotten the movie locally, but the local version didn't come with the Yoda box cover that the Australian version had, making it a kind of "limited edition" DVD.

 

Heh, and my reasons are very technical. My friends all think I'm crazy when I told them what it was.

 

OK, now you got me really curious... pls share that "very technical" reason leh...

 

Oh well, here goes.

I guess its the same for all who watched at Digital Theaters. The picture quality was amazing, isn't it?
George Lucas and ROTS is the first to use the spanking new Sony HDW-F950, which is an insanely expensive, and first ever RGB 4:4:4 uncompressed High Definition camera.

If there were HD-DVDs now, I would definitely have gotten that, even if I dont have any player or TV to play it back.

Anyway, for Films and Movies in general, they are shot in 24 Frame Per Second (FPS from here on)
The trouble with NTSC DVDs is, because it is played back at 30 FPS (or 29.97FPS to be exact, which is 30 frames but played slightly slower), 6 additional frames have to be inserted in between the 24 Frames to make compatible for playback on NTSC TVs. (Search for 2:3 Pulldown on google or wikipedia)

Now to compress the movie (the video portion) has to spread the compression bitrate across together with the additional 6 frames, which is actually redundant. So that results in a slightly lower image quality. (Whether that is easily spotted by the naked eye is yet to be seen of course =p)

Why I chose PAL? Its because PAL plays back at 25 FPS. And how the movie is brought over to PAL, is just by simply speeding up the frame rate by 4% from 24 to 25. So there is a better compression bitrate, since there is no additional frames to compress unlike NTSC. And because it is speed up, this is the exact reason why PAL always seem to have shorter runtime, which led to people thinking that portions of the movie is being cut, when actually it isn't. The only sad downside to this problem is the audio. Because it is played faster, the audio will have a higher pitch than their NTSC counterparts. (Watch any of our VCDs. I dont know about you, but I can instantly tell the higher pitch the moment I watch VCDs.)

That is one reason.

The other reason is resolution.
ROTS was shot in 1920x1080 resolution (okay, so its really 1920x800, since George cropped off the top and bottom to get the 2.39 Aspect Ratio), I thought the bigger the picture, the better.

NTSC has 480 lines of vertical resolution. (Does 640x480 or 720x480 ring a bell?)
When we think pixels, we think its square. Video uses rectangular pixels. Fortunately, for Widescreen DVDs, less pixels are used to represent the image.
So to present the full 16:9 frame with 480 lines, in square pixels equivilant, the resolution of NTSC Widescreen is roughtly 852x480.

While for PAL, it has 576 lines, so to present the full 16:9 frame, its roughly 1024x576, which is a LOT of difference between if you draw it out on your PC.

The third reason why I decided to avoid Code 1 is because it included foreign soundtracks, namely French or Spanish (cant remember which), and the Australian version only has English. I'm not sure about Code 3 yet, it may only hae Enligsh or it might include Mandarin inside. But in any case, the more soundtracks there is, the more space is consumes on the DVD. And really, I think its just pure stupid to watch any movie dubbed in any other language. Dont get me wrong, I'm not calling anyone stupid about watching anything else in a foreign language. But to me, I really prefer watching Japanese Animated Features in their original Japanese soundtrack with English subtitles, then to listen to it dubbed in English. Its just completely out of place and it doesn't fit the mood and nature of the movie itself. That and most of us don't understand French or Spanish, unless you take foreign classes and which to learn a bit more, which I dont mind. But I have no use for those as far as I'm concern =P

Fourth reason: I know many people are concerned about Code 3 being re-compressed from Code 1 DVDs. I've come across those and yeah, they are really disgusting. But as far as I know, Star Wars comes directly from Lucasfilms, and not its distributors, so I have no worries about the compression between the various regions.

There could be a fifth reason, and that is colourspace compression, but as far as I know, when it comes to DVDs, it has no difference. (The big

 

Alright, so has anyone got their Code 3 DVDs yet?
I've seen the VCDs in Mustafa Centre. So tempted to get it :/

 

Oh wow! That was really technical alright, but then again... I did ask for it... LOL!

At the same time though, it was pretty educational, and it kinda blew me away... hmmm, now I'm wondering if I ought to go back and have another view of my PAL vs NTSC DVDs and pay a little more attention to the technical details?

BTW, probably a silly question here, but are our Code 3 DVDs PAL as well? If so, then what would be the difference between an Australian PAL DVD and a Code 3 PAL DVD?

 

Nope. Code 3 was meant to be released in Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan and they are using NTSC (only the boxart is different if I'm not mistaken, when it comes to Singapore). Most Code 3 DVDs are NTSC, except for a very few that are PAL. And Star Wars isn't one of them. So I had to get mine from Australia.

 

Oh by the way, not that many people should know, but its important to note nontheless someone's read this: George Lucas used the HDC-F950 and not the HDW-F950 (there is no such model)

There is however, the HDW-F900, which is the first HD camera ever manufactured. George used a modified prototype (by Sony and Panavision) to shoot AOTC.

Many other movies after AOTC was using a release model of the F900. A good example is Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow.

 

Thanks for sharing all that info, JediBoo... for a somewhat non-techie person like me, it's really something new... great to be learning something new everyday

 

Hey everyone,

I'm sure some of you know this, but Wal-Mart has an exclusive DVD package for ROTS. Apparently, along with the DVD, you can purchase an extra 60 mins DVD of R2D2 and C3PO chronicling the lives of Anakin and Luke.

I'm probably gonna head down to Wal-Mart to get this, so if anyone is interested in getting one, pls let me know so that I can buy for you. If you didn't click on the link, it costs US$20 (with the bonus dvd) just to let u know.

Now the problem is that you won't be able to get it straight away (until I come back to Singapore for holiday) unless you are willing to pay extra for shipping, which could be substantial enough to make the total cost as high as buying a normal ROTS dvd in Singapore (around S$45)?

Anyway, I'll get mine is about a week's time, so let me know before then, okay?

 

From what I read from the main ROTS forum, it seems that DVD is rubbish.
It was created even before AOTC and the real title is "Star Wars Connections".
Many expressed disappointment when they thought the DVD was not worth the extra money. You can read all about it in the Wal-Mart thread.
Sorry, I didn't mean to rain on your party. Just want to let everyone know that DVD may not be worth anybody's effort to buy or ship or whatever.

 

Jediboo - It's alright. I didn't know it myself, but I'll still get one, and I'll help anyone get a copy too if they want it.

 

Of course. I won't stop anyone from doing just that.

 

Just got info from my mom, who just came home from Suntec CarreFour.
They will be selling the Code 3 NTSC DVD at $29.90.

Now here's the catch - ... its not here yet. Bummer

 

A good friend of mine spotted R3 DVDs!
At VideoEzy. $29.90

And by the way, my R4 PAL DVD has finally arrived! I could post up smacking uncompressed screenshots if anybody's interested.

 

Just so you guys know...music junction at Parkway Parade is selling at $29.90

And, oh yes, JediBoo, please do! Some screenshots of the opening battle and some of Vader screaming 'noooo' ,please. Thanx

 

I will post the screenshots tomorrow.
Meanwhile, here's something I realised. The Asian DVD Release (the one with the Thai soundtrack) has NO region code on it. Its not even R3. So it will play on any hardware.

And the NTSC version's quality is indeed quite noticeable to me.
I strongly believe the R1 and the Canadian version will be worse. Especially those who bought it from Gramaphone, those were from Canada, or so I read from the main ROTS board here.

Reason is because there is not only the English Dobly Digital EX 5.1 soundtrack, it included English 2.0, French 5.1, Spanish 2.0 AND Director's commentary. While the Asian version had English 5.1, Thai 5.1 and D Commentary. So there is quite a lot of compromise on video quality.

The only upside why NTSC over PAL is the menu transitions and documentary. It is smoother than on PAL, because they were shot using NTSC cameras, rendered more for NTSC (although may not be true) and transcoded for PAL, so they are better on NTSC.

Anyway, I "rented" it and Palpatine's Thai Voice Actor has a GREAT laugh (really good one, no kidding). But otherwise, all other acting sucked =P