From Letterbox to Anamorphic. Does it make any sense?

[Instant Martian]

Hi guys,
I recently bought (for the second time) the Star Wars Trilogy Boxset (6 dvd).
Being the owner of the previous box (the one with 4 discs) I had to re-buy this new one to have the original, untouched, unaltered versions of the films (Thank you so much George , hope the new wing of the Ranch is comfortable).
The fact is that the original version is 4:3 letterbox (2.35:1 Aspect Ratio).
Since I'm gonna back them up (as I do with all my DVDs) I was wondering if it could be done to make them anamorphic (from some posts I read quickly I understood it can) but does it make sense?
I mean, given a source which is letterboxed, is there any advantage in converting it to anamorphic?
BTW, my TV is 4:3.
Thanks.

[jagabo]

You can do it but, personally, I don't think it makes much sense. The only real benefit would be when playing an HDTV -- instead of a letterboxed and pillarboxed video you would have only a letterboxed video. But the larger image will be blurrier, both from the resizing from letterboxed 4:3 to anamorphic 16:9, and then the further resizing to fit the width of the HDTV. In addition, you'll have another round of MPEG compression artifacts.

Just wait a few years. Once Lucas has suckered everybody into buying the current letterboxed release he'll come out with the new anamorphic release to soak more money out of people. Remember when he said he would never release the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD? That was a tactic to get you to buy the enhanced version. It's all just scheming to maximize profits.

[Constant Gardener]

A 4:3 TV will look the same, or slightly worse, on material converted from letterbox to anamorphic. At least it did on mine.

[Instant Martian]

Thanks for replying, guys.

Just wait a few years. Once Lucas has suckered everybody into buying the current letterboxed release he'll come out with the new anamorphic release to soak more money out of people. Remember when he said he would never release the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD? That was a tactic to get you to buy the enhanced version. It's all just scheming to maximize profits.

I remember very well. He must have changed his mind moved by the fans' requests
But here comes a statement from Lucasfilm:

[...]So many fans have requested the original movies, we wanted to find a way to bring them to you. But since these movies do not represent George's artistic vision, we could not put the extraordinary time and resources into this project as we did with the Special Editions. The 1993 Laserdisc masters represented the best source for providing the original versions as DVD bonus material. Although these are non-anamorphic versions, they do preserve the original widescreen composition of the movies.
We want you to be aware that we have no plans - now or in the future - to restore the earlier versions.
We hope you will understand our decision and, again, want to let you know how much we appreciate your interest and enthusiasm.

I will save this page, just for fun.
After all... tomorrow is another day.
And there is the BR...

[jagabo]

[quote="Instant Martian"]a statement from Lucasfilm:

[...]So many fans have requested the original movies, we wanted to find a way to bring them to you. But since these movies do not represent George's artistic vision, we could not put the extraordinary time and resources into this project as we did with the Special Editions.

This is nonsense of course. 99 percent of the original footage overlaps with the updated version. Only a small amount of the original footage remains to be processed.