"“To me, it [the original Star Wars trilogy] doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it.” - George Lucas, 2004
It is insane how much George Lucas has edited the original Star Wars trilogy. I think no movies have had more edits over time than Star Wars.
I also remembered that scene and the early Jabba the Hutt scene from the novelisation. And because I knew them from the book, I initially loved it when the Special Editions added them back. Until I realised they don't really work. Well, Biggs does, but Jabba becomes much less terrifying from having Han talk to him like that and even walking over his tail. Jabba being just a feared name works so much better.
Yes!! I remember reading this book at the library as a kid, and for years afterwards I wondered if I had just hallucinated the whole thing.
I think it's a really important scene, and I'm sad that it was cut from the movie.
Side note: the (extremely well-done) Star Wars Radio Drama [0] included a great many expanded scenes on Tattoine (with quite a bit of expansoin on Tosche Station), and I think those scenes (which include the aforementioned scene with Biggs) really add to the richness and flavor of the setting.
If you're a fan of Star Wars and haven't yet listened to the radio drama, I highly recommend it!
There was also Luke looking up at the space battle and "Treadwell" the droid, which would have played just before all of the Biggs scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDPZfPe5F-w (a cleaner version is shown in How Star Wars was saved in the edit)
It doesn't affect the specific point in question here, but it's probably best to treat the RocketJump video with caution: https://youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE .
There was also a comic book that came out before the movie.
In the scene where the sand people shoot R2D2, it looked like the other way around so it was quite confusing to see them captured in the next frame. Who knew the little guy didn't have a blaster?
Another part of the story a lot of people don't know is apparently Lucas's cut of the original Star Wars was horrible, so his wife came in and redid everything and that's the version that went to theaters. And she was the editor on the remaining two of the original trilogy as well.
I think it's pretty clear to everyone now that when Lucas is flying solo his final output is... not great. He obviously imagined a universe a lot of people find compelling, but wasn't always the best person to realize the vision of that universe.
I know it's a meme at this point, but being an "idea person" is legitimately a thing. But there is also being self-aware enough to recognize what your strengths are and when you should call in reinforcements, as it were, to fill in where there's a need. Seems there's a spectrum where people fall in how readily they will recognize this and Lucas falls more towards the reluctant side perhaps.
> I think it's pretty clear to everyone now that when Lucas is flying solo his final output is... not great.
The evidence is pretty compelling that George had a lot of great ideas as well as some not-so-great ideas and his own ability to distinguish between the two was... less than ideal. Thus his best work was from those times he collaborated closely with talented people who had significant input as there was a strong, empowered curator. Positive examples include the great results on Star Wars, the fact that Empire is so good and his work on Raiders with Spielberg. A clear negative example is Phantom Menace where George was in absolute control.
A lot of fanstastically talented creators simply shouldn't have unchecked 'final cut' over their own output. It's really nothing to be ashamed of, and frankly, is more common than not.
On a similar vein, Gene Roddenberry was pretty similar with Star Trek. He had a pretty big universe imagined, got the scaffolding in for it, but all the best works under the name of Star Trek were made by other people. Anything Gene Roddenberry was directly involved in as a script writer (see: many episodes of the original and first two seasons of The Next Generation) are generally the weakest and worst parts of Star Trek.
Yeah, also I think part of that was Gene wanted to portray a more optimistic vision of the future as a principled thing, which I get, but that also made Classic and TNG feel a bit superficial and low stakes a lot of the time. DS9 is personally my favorite series, mostly because of the age I was when it came out, but also because I liked that they shifted it to be a bit less idealistic.
This is oft-repeated mythology that became popular on reddit; it's part of the campaign of feminist revisionism that's commonplace over there regardless of whether it matches reality or not. They constantly try to argue that it must have been a case of a man getting credit for work a woman did, even when the woman concerned made no such claim or even received appropriate credit.
I think it's justifiable to call out her contribution. She was an excellent editor without Star Wars, her work includes American Graffiti and Taxi Driver.
I consider her a part of what makes the original trilogy great but I don't think it diminishes Lucas' contribution. No one person is "what makes it great". Plus the internet loves the underdog or a a "TIL"
Marcia Lucas along with two other editors won the Film Editing Oscar for Star Wars/ANH/Ep. 4 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1dW6bNBzN8&t=52s ): she was no doubt a very good editor. Neither she nor the other two "saved Star Wars in the edit" in the manner often claimed. For example, Marcia Lucas fought to keep the teen-movie version of the opening with Luke meeting Biggs and others at Tosche Station in Tatooine, while George Lucas had always preferred to begin the Tatooine segment with the droids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE&t=1407s .
There’s no way to know one way or another whether her editing “saved” it. There’s no other original edit without her, so it’s an unfalsifiable claim.
I was just responding to the poster claiming it was some sort of feminist conspiracy theory to claim that she was an editor on the film and did a good job. She did edit the film, and a plurality of her peers thought the editing was a good enough job to award the most prestigious award in the industry for the work.
I have the original trilogy's original version on VHS still, and just recently watched them. I would say they hold up very well and weren't really in need of any post release changes or updates. The effects look great today compared to some other movies that actually came out later, probably because Star Wars used more practical effects vs some early Sci-Fi CGI that ended up not aging as well.
The changes are mostly just window dressings around the original footage, like extra CGI in transition scenes. They don't really change much of the core movie experience. It does end up causing some funny side effects though. Like when the main characters move from one place to another you'll see a splashy dinosaur like creature or fancy robot, but once they actually arrive in the scene the background falls back to the original with a lot less of that added CGI action.
Luckily, it seems like they are all being undone for the 50th next year. Most of them, anyway. We'll have to wait to see the release to be sure, but it's a definite improvement. Maybe the definitive version, finally.
I was talking to Bob Gale once about this topic and he said that him and Zemeckis had put a veto clause in their contract when they sold BTTF to Universal in the 90s giving them the power over any later fuckery with the releases, while they are alive. This was during the height of the 3D TV craze and he said Universal had asked for permission to do a 2D->3D conversion of BTTF and both Bobs had refused. So there's one franchise at least that won't get dicked with in the near future.
[I'm not totally against 2D->3D conversions if done right. The Titanic conversion looks like it was filmed 3D-native, beautifully done. The Star Wars: Episode 1 conversion is essentially unwatchable and killed the whole project.]
Few have made so much money from a trilogy or had such creative freedom. I admit I disliked the laser bolt changes of special editions. Yet otherwise loved seeing some modern CGI fleshing out those worlds.
It's pretty funny, he took something that was very much a product of its time and beloved in large part for that reasons, and slowly turned it into something even hardcore fans want nothing to do with.
Very little was really lost IMO if you look at those movies with an eye free of nostalgia, but I'm sure many MANY people would disagree with that.
I think the main series has turned to trash, but isn’t it still commercially successful? I personally adored Andor, but even my parents couldn’t sit through the first couple episodes because they’re slow moving.
Massively profitable afaik, up until the last of the new trilogy which underperformed (still made ~$300mil box office using standard metrics). Andor I agree was the first Star Wars property I'd call genuinely excellent, after 'The Empire Strikes Back', but obviously that's hugely dictated by my personal taste.
On the other hand there are signs of the brand wearing thin in places, Mandalorian vs. Grogu was a critical and commercial flop (assuming the usual 2x budget for marketing, if it was more for marketing then it might have been significantly worse than just breaking even).
The trend is really clear though, and it's not going in the right direction for Disney. Obviously they have the resources to reverse that, but the question is if they have the vision and the will.
Hahah your comment put a mental image in my head of Mando fighting Baby Yoda.
We watched it yesterday at home and it was… a strange movie. It looked like it was shot on the same stage they use for the show, the budget seemed far lower than other Star Wars movies, and the story was confusing and rambling in a way my children had a lot of difficulty following. I’m glad I didn’t see it in theaters.
The (believable) rumor is that it was originally scripted as ~5 episodes of the show when management said "We looked at our release schedule and yeah, make it a theatrical release". It's ironic, so much of what's going on now is taking movies (Cape Fear for example) and stretching them in 8-10 episode seasons; it's interesting to see someone try and fail at the opposite maneuver.
I've only barely skimmed the surface of the preservation world, but the irreverent attitude taken by the industry towards audiovisual media releases frustrates me greatly. That more accurate older releases are made unobtainable in favor of newer botched versions just adds insult to injury.
I'm grateful that diminishing returns were hit earlier with audio, though, which limits the blast radius for music releases. Most classic albums have a range of different masterings available on audio CD, many of which are available cheaply secondhand, which makes getting ahold of a good/accurate release considerably less daunting.
Movies and especially TV shows on the other hand are a mess. It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
> Movies and especially TV shows on the other hand are a mess. It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
TV shows are even worse because of the soundtrack.
Oh you watched this show with the iconic soundtrack? Too bad it's only available on the VHS release from 1995, they couldn't get the rights anymore so here is the same show but worse with different music
Even video games are not exempt from that. GTA games has tons of music removed from the radios with later digital re-releases so currently the original console disc versions are the only way to play the games as they were released back then https://www.reddit.com/r/GTATrilogy/comments/1gsqdc5/what_so...
This isn't even the worst outcome. There are hundreds of video games that are never re-released at all and have never been available for sale digitally, entirely because of soundtrack licensing.
There is a similar case with Top Gear. Aside from the popularity of Clarkson/May/Hammond and the fantastic cinematography, the show had great editors with an ear for soundtracks. Unfortunately it seems a lot of the tracks were only licensed for broadcast TV and the DVDs have some stock music where the rights were no longer available. There are also some gags which don't work any more because the audio doesn't make sense.
I believe the only place you can watch them as originally produced is iPlayer, but at least the BBC has copies somewhere.
It's a shame they never released the full series on DVD (or blu-ray). Most of it is available if you consult a chart of all the releases, but they've been cut and rearranged to fit on discs, and the soundtrack is as you say. I imagine they didn't due to problems like this at the time, but after the scandal and with how much time has passed, they'll never actually bother, unless someone straight up steals/copies the broadcast tapes from the archives and do us all a favour.
I think it’s true for a lot of BBC shows, many had great music, but the BBC also ran hugely popular radio stations and i think it was through that they were able to license a large amount of music.
And TV shows too. If they don't have the soundtrack-free version available, they have to do surgery to remove the music in postproduction somehow, or just not re-release at all.
> Oh you watched this show with the iconic soundtrack? Too bad it's only available on the VHS release from 1995, they couldn't get the rights anymore so here is the same show but worse with different music
Even slightly more modern shows I think have had that happen as well. The Drew Carry show would have been a great example.
Yup. Daria is one of the most tragic ones, given how it was an MTV show and thus featured music iconic to the era and familiar to the audience. Replaced with muzak in the DVD releases, and a bunch of pirates have cobbled together best-effort mash-ups based on audio from TV rips, which sometimes were of very low quality, but for some episodes, all that had survived in the piracy scene was like, a RealVideo file with a 64kbps audio stream.
Scrubs was another one with pretty obvious music changes, because some were part of the dialogue or a joke that just doesn't make sense after the change.
Interview With the Vampire theatrically ends with the rolling stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” playing over the final scene and end credits. When the movie was on Netflix, that was cut from the soundtrack and replaced with an acoustic cover of the song.
Daria is another example - being on MTV they used a lot of popular music from the time which clearly did not cost them much extra at the time of TV broadcast but was replaced with generic music for the DVD release.
Some anime on Netflix is affected. Off the top of my head, the iconic first ending theme for Naoki Urusawa's Monster had its haunting vocals removed leaving only the backing track, and Neon Genesis Evangelion had its similarly iconic ending theme covers of Fly Me to the Moon sung by its voice actresses removed.
Yeah, I'm in agreement with the blog post in that I don't advocate for dismantling of copyright, but there are absurdities within the system like this that are in dire need of attention.
Shortening of copyright would fix many of these issues. Games and movies make almost all of their lifetime earnings in the first few years, and the dribble that's left afterwards is less important than preservation and public access.
It's very hard to justify copyright in 2026 over music used in a 1980s TV show. Shows were aired once or twice (summer reruns), with additional syndication runs for particularly popular shows, and that was it. Nobody expected to make a dime from a show 40 years later. Copyright has grown absurdly out of proportion of the economic reality for which these works were originally produced.
> Nobody expected to make a dime from a show 40 years later.
Probably? But to devil's advocate here, I grew up watching reruns in 1990 from the 1950s on Nick at Nite or UHF stations. You could make a case that not only the actors but bands who allowed music to be used would deserve residuals, and with reruns that worked fine. The format change from TV to DVD and then to Streaming is what blew it all up.
Home video releases of whole series weren't envisioned until basically the 2000s. Most TV shows that did have releases on video would just pick a couple good episodes at a time, and sell those. A reasonable job to track down a half-dozen rights holders, and if you couldn't find them or get the rights, I assume they'd just pick a different episode.
The way the original terms were negotiated, the rights were just licensed specifically "for television" because that seemed like all that was needed, and the amount of work to locate each rightsholder to renegotiate is just astronomical. Thankfully now every show is making sure to get rights for streaming (and physical media... Right? Right?) but it's a shame what happened to everything from the 1970s-1990s. Only piracy can save us.
Honestly I think it's fine. If corps are going to make poor decisions with their IP, oh well, their choice and their loss. There's plenty to go around.
Video games sign terrible licenses even for their most core parts. Many of the millions selling Forza games disappeared from the digital stores because they couldn't use the cars anymore.[0]
It's almost unbelievable since cars and their makers are actually getting a big marketing push from those games, but studios cannot get better conditions.
It was bound to happen with Star Wars, given how big a series it is. I wish we could have the same with more, but the amount of effort is huge in many cases, and literally impossible in others.
> Movies and especially TV shows on the other hand are a mess. It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
Star Trek: TNG was a bit of a special case though, because it had to be re-cut and new digital special effects created and edited into scenes.
I think this perspective holds more true for things that were broadcast in HD but only got commercial DVD releases. That's a disappointing lapse in high quality availability where HD content was distributed, just not in a persistent form for home use. In those cases the best quality available is an HD TV or satellite recording which might not have been preserved even in online media sharing communities.
And on top of all that, sales were not what they hoped, and with that we lost any chance of an official remaster of DS9 or Voyager, since the same work would have to be done as for TNG.
> It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
Don’t get your hopes up. That release is very special. It happened at just the right time: discs were still selling and streaming had not yet taken over.
There is simply not sufficient market for such restorations any longer. They probably didn’t make back the cost of the remaster.
One thing to note, is that the library of congress has the power to create the exceptions to the DMCA. The EFF lobbies for expansion of the exact powers the article is advocating for.
https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca-rulemaking
> Spencer Draper—best known as the Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader on YouTube, where he reviews the technical and historical aspects of digital releases with a rigor usually reserved for scholarly peer review
I will occasionally think about various topics "I'm really into <thing> but is anyone else in to <thing>??"
And then I read a quote like the above and I realize that, for lack of a better phrase, "it's a big world out there" and people have many varied interests.
Plus, if folks are REALLY into <thing> then they want different perspectives about <thing> even if it's a sub-topic that has been covered before.
In other words, write blog posts and make videos. Someone will consume that content and you never know where that leads.
Kinda related, but I hate how the big studios go after old videogames and try to take them down. It looks like, in the future, this era will be called the "digital dark ages", not because all the stuff got lost to bitrot, but because all the stuff became illegal to own so that the studios could sell the new stuff again and again.
The home-computer world is especially interesting for old games. If something made it to a Nintendo or Sega console, it's probably very well-preserved, but I'd be surprised if even 1% of all video games made were released on consoles.
There's an unfathomable number of games that were released on the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, and most famously DOS that were made by one or two people, self-published, and have now completely fallen into obscurity to a point where it's not 100% clear who owns the copyright and who to give money even if you wanted to, which has led to the "probably-illegal-but-not-really-enforced" term of "Abandonware".
I honestly kind of think that Abandonware should be codified into law in the same way that trademarks are; if you're not actively giving me a legitimate way to buy your game then I don't think it should be illegal for me to get it illegitimately.
There are projects like eXoDOS that are attempting to provide a complete DOS archive. They are currently at version 6 that weighs in at just under 700GB. But they seem to be finding new stuff all the time, thus the versioning of the archive.
I played a bunch of random shareware games on our family's Apple IIgs and I'd love to find some of those again, but I was so young I can't really remember much other than like some visual images and vibes.
It should be. There are lots of good ideas of modifying copyrights so that its not the automatic 70 year after life of author (or what every it is now).
>unfathomable number of games that were released
One of the problems is that there are too many and hard to find curate to separate the good from the meh.
He intentionally samples less than 5 seconds iirc, and they still ding him, take all profits from the video, which took many many hours to create, and he cannot afford a lawsuit. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Wait til you hear it's (or at least was) possible to get dinged for 0.00 seconds.[1] That particular issue's probably solved by now, since Youtube requires claims to include a time stamp showing where the problem clip is. Nevermind the fact that wasn't a requirement to begin with. No wonder the corps ding every creator out there. It's free money with no downside to them. Nevermind the fact they're actively destroying culture.
That kind of works with smaller players (a random thai TV channel dinging people incorrectly is probably going to get some sort of time-out, and even if not, going to court against a smaller player like that is probably within the realm of possibility), but the big players have too much leverage. If Sony gets threatened with even minor punishments, they can simply say 'Fine. But then you have to remove all videos featuring gameplay from Sony Interactive Entertainment's games, or else we'll sue you for copyright infringement'. Even that example is fairly narrow and something that Sony is clearly allowed to do within the current bounds of copyright. They could go full nuclear and demand anything even vaguely related to Sony and its cultural hoard be taken of Youtube, and Youtube would have to comply, if nothing else, while the fight in court goes on.
Youtube has very little leverage, and Google/Youtube is very invested in not ending up in court over this kind of disputes, and the corps making claims know that.
The only actual fix is reforming or abolishing copyright.
I’d love to see a similar three strikes enforcement of bogus claims. N strikes and the copyright immediately enters the public domain. Pick your battles very carefully.
Seems intuitively difficult to implement changes to the law to get this, but I can dream.
Agreed, and it was already like this in the 2000's (when I got involved in the abandonware scene). I remember the owner of Home of the Underdogs getting constantly in battles with takedown notices for games she only intended to preserve. Not piracy in the sense of "losing tons of money", nobody but enthusiasts cared about these games anymore.
Isn't that one of the whole points of copyright? So the authors can print new copies and not have to compete with other people releasing copies they made?
Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
The original game might be stopping people. It's not like games have a good track record of continuing to work for decades. DRM of all kinds poses a huge problem in this regard, but so does garden variety technological change. The GOG preservation team has quite a few videos about deeply technical work they needed to do to make e.g. Prince of Persia run properly on modern PCs. Sure I can just pirate a copy for PS2 and run it with PCSX2, but thats “piracy" (even though I still have a working original disc!).
So, no: there's a lot stopping people, especially copyright law, from keeping around working copies of their games.
> copyright expires
Not in your lifetime. 70 years after death if the author brings us out into centuries. Books written 60 years before my kids were born won't be out if copyright until they are in their 40s, for example.
A fun way to frame the copyright lifetime absurdity is to point out that in a few years there will be books published on the 1900s that will be copyright protected until the 2100s.
> Isn't that one of the whole points of copyright? So the authors can print new copies and not have to compete with other people releasing copies they made?
The more important point of copyright is 'to promote the progress of the useful arts'. The 'securing for a limited time to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their writings and inventions' is just the means. Do the means in this case seem to work well in achieving that goal?
> Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
Except the 70+ years it takes before you're legally allowed to publish it, or even just adapt it. If I'm going to play things by the book, even if I archive it when I'm 10 years old, sales stop on day two of the copyright period, and the rights expire the day after it's 70 years years old, I will be 80+ years old when I'm legally allowed to let people download it, or I myself can publish an adaptation (or more likely, I'll have died and my archive version will be lost in the estate sale).
> Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
Which people? In the case of abandonware, the original software is often not in the hands of the copyright holder anymore, due to neglect or lack of interest. Sometimes all or most relevant physical copies have become damaged. All that remains is a (cracked) file download in an abandonware website. Thanks to the abandonware community it gets preserved.
Besides, a piece of software history only serves its purpose if you can experience it. With no way of legally experiencing it (you cannot buy it) how do you propose to experience it? You cannot always wait it out, you might die first due to how long copyright lasts. Or is this nebulous concept of copyright more important than human experience?
I think the real tragedy of abandonware is that copyright holders aggressively pursued abandonware sites "just in case", while not actually having any plans to redistribute the games legally. The abandonware sites were cracking (or making cracks available, whatever) and making these games playable in modern devices, thus ensuring these games were preserved, but copyright holders (through ESA [1] legal action or similar) simply wanted to stop this, with not plans otherwise. These games often weren't available otherwise. We're talking games of the DOS or C64 era, with no real commercial viability (unless bundled with thousand other games, which they eventually sometimes did, often using the cracks developed by the abandonware scene!).
It is often very difficult or even impossible to locate who currently owns the rights to some intellectual property in order to re-release it legally.[0]
Yeah, that's part of the copyright mess. It's partly described by Lawrence Lessig in his book "Free Culture" [1].
It seems petty to me that copyright holders (or their legal proxies) aggressively sought to shut down abandonware sites without any plan to make the software available in any shape. I mean, these were marginal pieces of software, no longer money earners, and the abandonware sites served as digital museums.
I refuse to believe this train of logic. By the time copyright expires AI will be able to handle removing copyright protection and making it able to run on modern hardware. The only point of doing it now instead of later is so that people commit copyright infringement.
> I refuse to believe this train of logic. By the time copyright expires AI will be able to handle removing copyright protection and making it able to run on modern hardware. The only point of doing it now instead of later is so that people commit copyright infringement.
This must be some powerful combination of magical thinking plus a lack of awareness of the context. In the early 2000's, the time I'm recounting, nobody thought of AI. And it wasn't about copyright infringement since the people in the abandonware community I'm talking about owned the goddamn games, they were trying to digitally preserve them and make them available to others. You really need to be familiar with these people and their goals before you "refuse to believe" anything; uninformed opinions just won't do.
It helps to get a perspective about both the time and the type of games we're discussing. In fact, if you were at all a participant of the community back then, you'd know in which little regard warez kiddies were held.
Even without AI the time it takes to break DRM is not decades and many schemes are trivial to break. And a lot of pirates who share copyrighted material had that material originate from a legal purchase. That doesn't make it any less worse.
Copyright law is about finding a balance between, on one side, incentivizing creators via granting them a legal monopoly on publishing, and on the other side, the philosophical notion of freedom of speech, which would allow anyone to republish, remix, and repurpose any preexisting work. The original formulation of this legal monopoly was that it was supposed to be short enough that it would expire well within the average person's lifetime, a notion which has long been gutted via regulatory capture.
Thanks for posting. I almost missed this, but it's really important to me.
I respect that creators, like Lucas, do want to continue working on past projects. (Art is never finished, only abandoned, or something like that.) But those of us who appreciate art surely can choose which version we prefer. Even if that changes over the course of our life. That is one of my favorite things about film archiving.
Tangentially related, I've been toying with the idea of just buying all my film and series content again rather than maintaining subscription services. My SO and I watch TV maybe once a week yet we maintain a subscription to Crave & Netflix.
I'm pretty sure it'd work out cheaper to just buy box-sets of a series when we start watching it but haven't done the deep dive yet.
I started doing this after having a child so that we could have kids movies on hand in Jellyfin, but am now having a lot of fun collecting DVDs and Blu Rays. I’ve also toyed with the idea of using ErsatzTV to have channels to bring the kids back to the old days where things weren’t always on demand.
Thrift stores are a good way to find DVDs (usually $2-4 a DVD, slightly more for Blu Ray). Estate sales are typically better (under $1 a DVD/BluRay).
The most expensive part of this so far has been obtaining storage drives.
I’ve been buying dvds and surfacing a lot of the content to Jellyfin and Tailscale, it’s a lot easier than it used to be and they even have smart TV apps on some of the platforms. Don’t even have to pirate to get use out of it.
I've been wondering this some myself, how many services I could drop and just return to a physical media budget.
One of the factors contributing to it not necessarily being cheaper to buy box sets: Target, Best Buy, and other big US chains have given up on physical media for movies. Last I heard Wal-Mart is on the fence about long term support for it. (At the moment the only chain I know that seems still in it for the long haul seems to be Barnes & Noble, but they could have one bad quarter and change their minds quickly. My local store the DVD and Blu-Ray section is somewhat obviously what used to the Music section and still has a bit left of that old focus.)
Even the manufacturing side seems to be disappearing. Sony has flirted with dropping physical media sales of movies. Warner Brothers and Paramount seem likelier to drop physical media sales if they are allowed to merge.
Netflix lets very few originals make it to physical media. Most of the exceptions I'm aware of are Sony projects. Sony Animation being one of Netflix's last exclusive deals from a studio that isn't themselves. A lot of Prime Originals don't make it to physical media. It seems a mixed bag for HBO Originals and Hulu/Disney+ Originals, presumably based on some internal formulas of popularity. A lot of Apple TV Originals seem to get delayed physical output, but that's largely been because Apple TV doesn't have its own studio, but that changed relatively recently with the purchase of Red Hour (Ben Stiller's studio, of Severance and The Dink fame).
It certainly feels like physical media is dying right now. Maybe more reason to switch to investing in it over streaming services, not that an individual's budget decisions in this vein will affect the company's bottom lines enough that they will notice.
I'm not sure this makes sense for most people who watch a series once and then never again. Physical media makes sense for movies and shows that you'll watch multiple times. So you might buy Firefly, but not Reacher (please, not Reacher). With kids it makes particular sense - kids love watching the same thing over and over (I'm not sure why). If Wreck It Ralph was on VHS it'd be worn out by now...
I'm not saying I disagree, but very interesting how this contrasts with attitudes people have towards books. People keep physical books around just for kicks. Often times they haven't even read half the books on their shelves.
I am in this camp, my office (and overflowing to the living room) have a lot of physical books in them. Most I only read a single time. I do think they add something 'homely' though, as if they are part of the furniture / decoration.
Also, when I notice a particular book it can spark a memory (even about the surrounding context of when I read the book) which are small but nice moments.
I'm not sure I'd feel the same about DVD / Blu Ray boxes though. I'm pretty sure the VCR boxes I used to have were just kept in a closed-door cabinet and I barely looked at them unless I wanted to watch a particular film.
As others have said, it's certainly justifiable for anything with rewatchability. You can find 1080p Bluray players at thrift stores for under $20 (it took some patience for me to find a relatively newer one that was more compact and didn't have a slow interface), and Blurays are usually under $5.
I've come across sealed Blurays or even the occasional former Blockbuster rental so it's actually kind of fun in a record-crate-diving sort of way, if you're into that. But of course you can always just buy new, which you'll probably have to do in some cases: the odds are against me finding Koyaanisqatsi at the thrift, let alone the Criterion Collection Qatsi Trilogy, but I'm okay with that.
There's a ton of streaming content that is stuck in streaming, so you can only "buy" it, not buy it. Oscar-winning movies that you can't get on physical media.
Have to take things into your own hands these days and grab the 2160p Dolby Vision streams and stuff them onto a BD-R, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I've thought about that too. Original content for e.g Netflix probably never sees a physical release. As my earlier post probably alluded to though, we don't really watch a lot of TV in our household so narrowing my 'options' is not per se a thing that would impact me.
But it does suck for those who want to move to more physical-based media _and_ enjoy original content from the streaming providers.
I am am an amateur recordist, I absolutely love to bootleg concerts and gigs and things, as in: make my own recordings of live music and so on. I have shared everything in the appropriate places, also. I believe it is an essential artistic expression: to record the nature of the world around you for the future.
So, I do it a bit.
I think this ethos can be applied in many ways and with different media; preservationism is a high value objective. The future needs it, kinda.
This reminds me I have some film that I need to get digitized and uploaded to IA. From what I can tell they are clips from concerts in the Chicago area in the 1980s. And I think this proves GPs point, because to be honest I personally have no interest in live music, but when I found those in a can at a thrift store for $20, you bet your ass I bought them to be preserved and not turned into someone's ill-advised art project (or something equally destructive). When I see something that I know /someone/ will value I will always do what I can to save it from destruction/the trash/someone who doesn't know the value.
Yep, definitely! I know of instances where professional archives and libraries work with specialized torrent sites to archive content directly and these days that's sometimes necessary with how content is locked down, games are dependent on a server or DRM schemes don't make archiving easy.
You frequently hear of cases where the last remaining official copy got lost and only due to some fan service (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694382) data could be recovered.
I’m absolutely obsessed with it. For me it’s driven purely from childhood nostalgia. In particular, Macintosh games. I want, and want others to have that warm excitement of nostalgia when they re-discover something forgotten.
This is true but people also use it as a magic shield to (needlessly IMO) justify their piracy, even though they are 1) only downloading things they happen to like and 2) don’t even follow a basic 3-2-1 backup protocol, let alone anything remotely resembling SOP for preservation.
I bet not even 1 in 1000 people pirating are doing it primarily as a preservation exercise.
The Library of Congress is selective about what it preserves too, as is every museum. No single entity could possibly hope to preserve every film, it takes a community.
> don’t even follow a basic 3-2-1 backup protocol
The swarm is the backup. You can't beat hundreds of hash-checked copies across the globe.
> I bet not even 1 in 1000 people pirating are doing it primarily as a preservation exercise.
I bet you're right. Isn't it wonderful, then, that those 1 in 1000 (who are overrepresented in tracker admin and release group/scene work) are able to harness those selfish impulses and turn them into the most complete, accessible, and durable distributed art preservation project in human history.
There are some preservation efforts on a couple of the big movie trackers. One is "donate Xtb of space and use this script to manage it" so you don't choose the torrents, they get assigned till your donated space is full.
In Another gives bonuses for adopting torrents where the original seeder doesn't want to/can't seed anymore.
Neither are perfect but as one of those 1 in 1000 its nice to help where I can.
> The Library of Congress is selective about what it preserves too, as is every museum. No single entity could possibly hope to preserve every film, it takes a community.
You can’t possibly compare this to yet another person downloading all of Friends to watch off their hard drive, and most of these people aren’t seeding back anyway, so they’re not even part of the swarm.
I don’t object to piracy but I do object to preservation arguments made for/by people who are in no way thinking along those lines. I can’t buy tailgating on some clearly inapplicable altruism argument.
Back in 1987, my parents had purchased a 4-head VHS recorder, and I rented another device from Video Library, and I set my mind to the monumental task of editing the entire run of Married… with Children into a single tape containing only scenes with Kelly [Christina Applegate] and I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams
My working theory to this point is that he made the movies he had to make then, as he got increasingly successful, he gradually transitioned (back?) to making movies he wanted to make. Which, as it turns out, I'm less enamored with then his post-big break efforts. Oh well.
Nobody can fight me on that because I don't know who Nolan is. Guessing he's a director, but in that case, didn't know he directed Oppenheimer. I'm part of the popcorn reviews, not the tomato ones.
The movie is bad cause nobody can tell what is going on, or they can but it's a chore without reward. "3 weeks earlier" kind of crap every 30 seconds in the movie. Even the big plot twist is, "this scene with Einstein that you thought happened early in the timeline actually happened at the end, wow." But maybe it can be fixed.
Hm, Dark Knight is a top one. Interstellar was amazing until the end with the black hole unraveling the plot, but I blocked that out and only remembered the rest until I rewatched recently. Dunkirk was good but kinda slow plot-wise. What I'm getting is his films are exceptional in a lot of ways like audio/visual but don't necessarily have good plots, which idk if that's even his fault. Those didn't have jumpy timelines, though.
Hm yeah, sounds like the majority of his movies do jump around. I don't remember Inception, saw that on release.
Interstellar's plot is about messing with universe time, but the movie isn't jumping around points in story time. There's just the astronaut and Earth storylines with a little crossover, and each mostly moves forwards only. I liked that part a lot actually.
> Of particular note is the “remux” community, dedicated to seamlessly stitching together the best video and audio streams from different releases without any generational loss of quality.
That’s not what “remux” means. A remux is the original data from, for instance, a Blu-ray disc, transferred into a new container without re-encoding. What the author is referring to would be called a “hybrid remux”.
Remux is not a community, it's a tag that pirate release groups uses to indicate that a release contains exact copies of the original video and audio streams present on the disc.
GP is correct that files with purely additive changes (like additional audio tracks) to remuxes are called hybrid remuxes.
ETA: To the author's credit, this is convention rather than a hard rule. I checked my usual sources and found the exact 89gb 4k Arrow remux the author mentions in the closing paragraph and it is indeed labelled 'remux' only. The uploader did make a note of this though: "Unfortunately, as Arrow had to pull the Italian dub due to rightsholders demands, I had to sync it from the 2017 Kino Lorber disc."
>Remux is not a community, it's a tag that pirate release groups uses to indicate that a release contains exact copies of the original video and audio streams present on the disc.
There is a community insofar as there is a relatively small group of people who sink their time into producing high quality remuxes, and this group talks to each other (on IRC and elsewhere).
>GP is correct that files with purely additive changes (like additional audio tracks) to remuxes are called hybrid remuxes.
As I corrected on a child comment to the GP, this is not correct. It is not convention either. A hybrid remux has a stream which is a hybrid of two or more sources. Simply combining tracks from different sources isn't a hybrid remux, it's just baseline good practice.
> A hybrid remux has a stream which is a hybrid of two or more sources.
This explicitly breaks the rules of multiple communities I participate in. All streams must be untouched in a remux, and a hybrid remux is a release with untouched streams from multiple sources (there are also hybrids which are not remuxes).
What even is "a stream which is a hybrid of two or more sources?" Cutting between or combining multiple audio or video streams is simply editing. You're describing a fanedit.
>This explicitly breaks the rules of multiple communities I participate in.
Probably. Not all places allow hybrid remuxes.
I promise you that I have these definitions correct as they are most commonly used, since I am actually involved in this space.
The word "Hybrid" has been used in the way you describe, most notably by FRaMeSTOR, but I would say that everyone else has coalesced on what I described and would call my definition the standard one. It's also how the "Hybrid" edition label is used on PTP.
>What even is "a stream which is a hybrid of two or more sources?" Cutting between or combining multiple audio or video streams is simply editing. You're describing a fanedit.
No I'm not. I stand by what I said. As an example you can look at Bridge.to.Terabithia.2007.Hybrid.1080p.BluRay.REMUX.AVC.TrueHD.5.1-BLURANiUM.mkv For the sake of those reading, I will copy from the release notes:
>GER has hardcoded translated movie title which is not present in other transfers so hybrid was needed to restore the original picture. Hybrid was done with USA disc since audio from same disc was used. GER video was retimed to 23.976 FPS, trimmed on valid IDR frames and merged with MKVToolnix.
In this case, two Blu-ray video streams were spliced together.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, adding audio tracks to a video track that weren't produced together often requires editing. If not for sample rate reasons, content reasons, like extra space for additional video space at the beginning or ending most basically. It seems like in any instances like that, which I would count as "nominal," it would be appropriate to identify those as "modified from" which would seemingly place you squarely into "hybrid" space within the taxonomy of this comment thread.
Right. There is some degree of transformation which is normal or necessary. For example, if one of {video, audio} is 24fps and the other is 23.976fps, the video will have its frame rate adjusted to match the audio. For basic video/audio mismatches you may need to trim audio, insert null audio, or add a mkv container delay.
These things are normally detailed in release notes. People write pretty detailed notes laying out exactly what they did.
The muxer can apply a timestamp offset to a track, so while the audio stream remains untouched it starts at some offset relative to the start of the video stream.
Agree once you're compensating for drift by scaling the audio track you've pushed yourself out of remux territory, but again these aren't hard and fast rules (evidenced by the disagreement over terminology).
There's nothing wrong with the definition you quoted. I would say it's entirely accurate (except perhaps that it neglects subtitles, which can end up being a substantial amount of work if you choose to put the effort into it).
>What the author is referring to would be called a “hybrid remux”.
No. While the "hybrid" term has been used this way, the standard definition now is for remuxes where a single stream has been created by stitching together streams from two different sources. For example, a video from source A has generally better picture quality, but has some glitch or issue that requires patching in a segment from source B to create a hybrid video stream. Doing this for the main video without re-encoding is very difficult/unlikely to work because video codecs are very hard to work with in this way (you'd have to have two sources encoded with the same codec, the same encoding settings, you have to slice things at a clean GOP boundary in both sources, etc), so most commonly hybrid remuxes refer to the Dolby Vision layer.
Source: I happen to be involved in this community.
I was watching lawrence of arabia recently, and was thinking about similar stuff.
There's a few scenes (scenes around the: "my name is for my friends" and the echoey canyon in particular) where lawrence looks almost like a photorealistic game character.
I still don't know what exactly caused this but most likely a multitude of factors are in play.
- Deserts are bright, so a bright light was used to illuminate his face, causing his eyes to sparkle.
- Streaming from Netflix and compression / decompression might have eaten away some of the high frequency detail
I also learned that they shot the movie in a bigger film stock, so the digitized version of this movie is highly regarded.
If anyone has any idea as to why these scenes in particular look off, i would love to learn more.
Cobbling together something resembling the original is a cool idea, but don't the originals still exist somewhere? Surely not all of the original prints have been destroyed? Aren't there movie archivists somewhere carefully preserving every version of every major movie?
house opened my eyes to this problem. trying to reconstruct a version with the video resolution of the bluray but the original soundtrack of the dvd turned out to be a deep rabbit hole.
One of the more annoying parts of this to me is that, surely, a high quality version of the original must exist somewhere in the archives of the publisher, right? And if not that, surely the original footage must still be there, so one can recreate the edit frame by frame, as was done with TNG?
The good stuff is out there, just behind lock and key. You can't have it, because screw you.
It could also be that it genuinely isn't. The source code of Silent Hill 2, one of the best horror games of all time, is lost. It's clear from cases like that that publishers can't be trusted to preserve their media. We have to do it ourselves.
It is regrettable that the law draws no distinction between such a situation and the sale of counterfeit goods on eBay. Section 1201 does not take intent into account, whereas the aforementioned "pirate code" essentially consists of norms developed by the community itself.
I didn't even realize that page existed, and I'm a developer. Could I have found it if I was determined enough? Sure, of course. But starting from the homepage as an impatient average user, there's nothing obvious. I found it under "Gift MUBI" (which presents entirely different pricing schemes than what you linked) but that was after putting thinking and hopeful clicks into it. It shouldn't be that hard. Why isn't RIGHT ON THE HOMEPAGE?? It gives me the "Am I gonna have to call and talk to a human to cancel?" ick.
Interesting they chose The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, probably because of the 60th anniversary?
They didn't mention that probably the Mondo release of that film is the 'best' one? Someone else did a good version count of all releases: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/id/136114
Curious what the upcoming DCP release is sourced on
I quite liked the Despecialized editions when I watched them quite a while ago, for anyone who hasn't seen them - the audio remastering is very appreciated (VHS rarely has good audio), but certainly not the poorly-fitting CGI additions.
one of my projects on the backlog is to figure out how to combine the dvd copies and the bluray copies of the x-files so that I can have 4:3 episode in hd. especially in the first couple of seasons they crop a lot of stuff to fit it into widescreen, I'm waiting until AI gets good enough that I can using the dvd quality original fill in and upscale the cropped part of the hd episodes.
Seasons 1-5 of Reno 911 were 4:3. If you stream them nowadays they've had an awful pan and scan applied that actually removes a ton of detail, results in heads being cut off, etc. All so we don't get black bars on the sides of the screen. It's so bad and makes me question whether the people that did the conversion even watched their output.
I'm not subscribed to right now, but I have been for a very long time before that. I like their curated approach a lot and it doesn't feel like you are getting drowned in crap like many other services.
It really depends what kind of films you like though, if you are looking for fast paced shows or the latest Hollywood productions you will not like it. If you enjoy going to indie cinemas, you'll like it.
They have mostly independent films. So numerous dramas and slow-burn types. I like it. I've found some great movies on there, but also have found a bunch of duds. The problem is the pricing. Right now my main services are Criterion Channel and Eternal Family.
I've been signed up a few months at a time over the years. It has tons of independent movies from the US/UK/France but also from lesser exposed countries (think Danish, Greek, Thai, Polish, Norwegian…). It's mostly films released recently or in the last 20 years. It also has some older classics (Memories of Murder, Carrie, Dogma, Obsession, Carlito's Way…) but there aren't that many and they're often only there temporarily.
It's worth doing the 30 days trial. I sign up for a month or two whenever I feel like the library has at least 10 films I'd want to watch.
I am quite happy to give Mubi my money each month, even if I don't use it a _huge_ amount. I have seen some great films on the platform, and I really do want to see them be successful.
Some content has overlap with conventional streaming services, but then films like "Do not expect much from the end of the world" probably wouldn't see a streaming release elsewhere?
Something other replies haven’t mentioned yet is that you can use a VPN on it. A service like Disney+ for example will not let you in at all with a VPN active but no problem with Mubi. You get a pretty nice selection with that.
I will say this again, and again, and again: thanks to piracy, I got to watch many amazing movies, especially those that came out before the 2000s. Eventually I bought lots of DVDs and Blu-Rays, CDs( heck I even rediscovered my music in taste).
I'm not sure which is more morally wrong: preserving works of art for future generations, or destroying them for profit.
You deserve to get compensated. You should get compensated.
But stop acting against the will of the consumers. And stop fighting the technology.
Remember when you thought VHS and DVD would kill the movie industry? You were wrong then, and you're wrong again, now.
Make a very simple website where people can search for actors, search for directors, search keywords, search awards...
And then show us torrent links for all of the content, all of the versions, all of the audio formats, all of the video resolutions, all of the languages, the director's cut, with or without subtitles baked in, theatrical release, re-release, fan edits, all of it. Make it easy for someone else to document a new version, and share the torrent. Set up Popcorn Time or whatever, if you're smart.
I download the content on my own dime. I'll even seed it for a bit, because I like it, and why not?
And then, let me buy a decryption key. Make the price reasonable. Make it Pay What You Want, if you're really smart. When you're setting that price, think real hard about the fact that the illegal option is literally one click away for anyone technically savvy. That decryption key should be shared for all of the different versions available to me. I pay once, I get all the formats, now, and forever. Let me save the key to my account, if you want to set up accounts and recommendations, and etc. Let me save the key in my Plex or Jellyfin server. Or as file metadata, or in a json in a zip file at the end of the file...
Say it's legal for me to pass that license on to one of my kids, when I die.
If you're real smart, grant me the right to legally loan that key to a friend, so they can watch the movie, and then return the key (or I get to auto-revoke it after a number of days).
Hell, tell me a price to have a private (or public?) screening of the movie at a theater that rents out screens.
Cocoon is not available on streaming. That's so dumb. It will enter the public domain in 2081. Until then, earn some reasonable money, by making a legal way for people to do what they're already doing. As frictionless as possible.
And if you're a genius, come up with a way for someone to show you their DVD, Blu-Ray, VHS copy of a movie, and give them that decryption key, for free. They already bought your movie once. Don't make them regret it. Reward them for it. Send it out to anyone who "bought" the movie on AppleTV, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Amazon, etc. But I doubt you're that smart.
I hate the way film and music pirates gatekeep everything. There are private trackers for games and software but they don't try to keep any content exclusive, you get faster downloads without random bad quality uploads and malware cluttering the site in exchange for keeping a good ratio.
I liked The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but the post-dub voice of Wallach when he was much older, did not quite fit into the movie anymore; it felt strange compared to his voice when he was younger.
As for Hollywood ruining videos: well, it is time to phase out Hollywood. The movies are cultural heritage and the best quality must be preserved (without artifical AI slop clowning it up and changing things; I see that on youtube every day, it is AWFUL. AI slop constantly lies about things. I can call it lie-slop).
It depends on what you care about. The Kino Lorber has good color choices, but far too much contrast: dark areas (including the characters) are pitch black; and you can't see the clouds in the skies.
"“To me, it [the original Star Wars trilogy] doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it.” - George Lucas, 2004
It is insane how much George Lucas has edited the original Star Wars trilogy. I think no movies have had more edits over time than Star Wars.
One of my favorite trivia items about A New Hope:
- there was a children's book (that my family had) that accompanied the movie
- there is a scene in the book where Biggs comes back to talk to Luke
- this didn't make any sense to me as a child b/c that scene isn't in the movie
- I realized years later that they cut the scene but AFTER the book was printed.
The scene in question is here btw: https://youtu.be/O7J_IZ9agRI?t=318
I also remembered that scene and the early Jabba the Hutt scene from the novelisation. And because I knew them from the book, I initially loved it when the Special Editions added them back. Until I realised they don't really work. Well, Biggs does, but Jabba becomes much less terrifying from having Han talk to him like that and even walking over his tail. Jabba being just a feared name works so much better.
Yea I think the added Biggs scenes are the one thing from the Special Edition that is a clear improvement over the original.
Yes!! I remember reading this book at the library as a kid, and for years afterwards I wondered if I had just hallucinated the whole thing.
I think it's a really important scene, and I'm sad that it was cut from the movie.
Side note: the (extremely well-done) Star Wars Radio Drama [0] included a great many expanded scenes on Tattoine (with quite a bit of expansoin on Tosche Station), and I think those scenes (which include the aforementioned scene with Biggs) really add to the richness and flavor of the setting.
If you're a fan of Star Wars and haven't yet listened to the radio drama, I highly recommend it!
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-29uKdckL4
There was also Luke looking up at the space battle and "Treadwell" the droid, which would have played just before all of the Biggs scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDPZfPe5F-w (a cleaner version is shown in How Star Wars was saved in the edit)
It doesn't affect the specific point in question here, but it's probably best to treat the RocketJump video with caution: https://youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE .
There was also a comic book that came out before the movie.
In the scene where the sand people shoot R2D2, it looked like the other way around so it was quite confusing to see them captured in the next frame. Who knew the little guy didn't have a blaster?
that scene is in the radio drama version as well (along with many others that aren't in the movie)
if you've seen this scene, does that mean that you've sailed the high seas?
Also Dune came out before star ears
Another part of the story a lot of people don't know is apparently Lucas's cut of the original Star Wars was horrible, so his wife came in and redid everything and that's the version that went to theaters. And she was the editor on the remaining two of the original trilogy as well.
I think it's pretty clear to everyone now that when Lucas is flying solo his final output is... not great. He obviously imagined a universe a lot of people find compelling, but wasn't always the best person to realize the vision of that universe.
I know it's a meme at this point, but being an "idea person" is legitimately a thing. But there is also being self-aware enough to recognize what your strengths are and when you should call in reinforcements, as it were, to fill in where there's a need. Seems there's a spectrum where people fall in how readily they will recognize this and Lucas falls more towards the reluctant side perhaps.
> I think it's pretty clear to everyone now that when Lucas is flying solo his final output is... not great.
The evidence is pretty compelling that George had a lot of great ideas as well as some not-so-great ideas and his own ability to distinguish between the two was... less than ideal. Thus his best work was from those times he collaborated closely with talented people who had significant input as there was a strong, empowered curator. Positive examples include the great results on Star Wars, the fact that Empire is so good and his work on Raiders with Spielberg. A clear negative example is Phantom Menace where George was in absolute control.
A lot of fanstastically talented creators simply shouldn't have unchecked 'final cut' over their own output. It's really nothing to be ashamed of, and frankly, is more common than not.
On a similar vein, Gene Roddenberry was pretty similar with Star Trek. He had a pretty big universe imagined, got the scaffolding in for it, but all the best works under the name of Star Trek were made by other people. Anything Gene Roddenberry was directly involved in as a script writer (see: many episodes of the original and first two seasons of The Next Generation) are generally the weakest and worst parts of Star Trek.
Yeah, also I think part of that was Gene wanted to portray a more optimistic vision of the future as a principled thing, which I get, but that also made Classic and TNG feel a bit superficial and low stakes a lot of the time. DS9 is personally my favorite series, mostly because of the age I was when it came out, but also because I liked that they shifted it to be a bit less idealistic.
I watched DS9 for the first time on streaming not too long ago, and it's really really good.
The saying was something like "Gene can make a good script out of mediocre one. He can also make a good script out of a great one."
That version of events has been disputed: https://youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE .
This is oft-repeated mythology that became popular on reddit; it's part of the campaign of feminist revisionism that's commonplace over there regardless of whether it matches reality or not. They constantly try to argue that it must have been a case of a man getting credit for work a woman did, even when the woman concerned made no such claim or even received appropriate credit.
I think it's justifiable to call out her contribution. She was an excellent editor without Star Wars, her work includes American Graffiti and Taxi Driver.
I consider her a part of what makes the original trilogy great but I don't think it diminishes Lucas' contribution. No one person is "what makes it great". Plus the internet loves the underdog or a a "TIL"
She won the Oscar for editing "A New Hope"
I don't think its mythology to claim that Marcia Lucas edited the films. It's pretty well accepted reality.
If the remasters and the episodes I-III are anything to judge by, George really does better when there is an editor that will check him.
Marcia Lucas along with two other editors won the Film Editing Oscar for Star Wars/ANH/Ep. 4 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1dW6bNBzN8&t=52s ): she was no doubt a very good editor. Neither she nor the other two "saved Star Wars in the edit" in the manner often claimed. For example, Marcia Lucas fought to keep the teen-movie version of the opening with Luke meeting Biggs and others at Tosche Station in Tatooine, while George Lucas had always preferred to begin the Tatooine segment with the droids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE&t=1407s .
There’s no way to know one way or another whether her editing “saved” it. There’s no other original edit without her, so it’s an unfalsifiable claim.
I was just responding to the poster claiming it was some sort of feminist conspiracy theory to claim that she was an editor on the film and did a good job. She did edit the film, and a plurality of her peers thought the editing was a good enough job to award the most prestigious award in the industry for the work.
Ah yes, it's always those dastardly feminists' fault...
yeah like those nags Marie Curie and Margaret Keane
I have the original trilogy's original version on VHS still, and just recently watched them. I would say they hold up very well and weren't really in need of any post release changes or updates. The effects look great today compared to some other movies that actually came out later, probably because Star Wars used more practical effects vs some early Sci-Fi CGI that ended up not aging as well.
The changes are mostly just window dressings around the original footage, like extra CGI in transition scenes. They don't really change much of the core movie experience. It does end up causing some funny side effects though. Like when the main characters move from one place to another you'll see a splashy dinosaur like creature or fancy robot, but once they actually arrive in the scene the background falls back to the original with a lot less of that added CGI action.
Luckily, it seems like they are all being undone for the 50th next year. Most of them, anyway. We'll have to wait to see the release to be sure, but it's a definite improvement. Maybe the definitive version, finally.
I was talking to Bob Gale once about this topic and he said that him and Zemeckis had put a veto clause in their contract when they sold BTTF to Universal in the 90s giving them the power over any later fuckery with the releases, while they are alive. This was during the height of the 3D TV craze and he said Universal had asked for permission to do a 2D->3D conversion of BTTF and both Bobs had refused. So there's one franchise at least that won't get dicked with in the near future.
[I'm not totally against 2D->3D conversions if done right. The Titanic conversion looks like it was filmed 3D-native, beautifully done. The Star Wars: Episode 1 conversion is essentially unwatchable and killed the whole project.]
What about Bladerunner? It also has a bunch of different versions, with some pretty big changes: with or without the voice over.
Few have made so much money from a trilogy or had such creative freedom. I admit I disliked the laser bolt changes of special editions. Yet otherwise loved seeing some modern CGI fleshing out those worlds.
Yeah, because what EVERYONE thought Star Wars needed was more poop jokes and bad CGI.
If only they could add some Jar Jar in there and sell more co-branded toothpaste?!?
https://investor.colgatepalmolive.com/news-releases/news-rel...
https://nz.pinterest.com/pin/jar-jar-toothpaste--18577355335...
And those weird ewok blinks that are half way between Jim Hensen and Bettie Boop...
Well, maybe some of Ridley Scott's.
It's pretty funny, he took something that was very much a product of its time and beloved in large part for that reasons, and slowly turned it into something even hardcore fans want nothing to do with.
Very little was really lost IMO if you look at those movies with an eye free of nostalgia, but I'm sure many MANY people would disagree with that.
> even hardcore fans want nothing to do with
I think the main series has turned to trash, but isn’t it still commercially successful? I personally adored Andor, but even my parents couldn’t sit through the first couple episodes because they’re slow moving.
Massively profitable afaik, up until the last of the new trilogy which underperformed (still made ~$300mil box office using standard metrics). Andor I agree was the first Star Wars property I'd call genuinely excellent, after 'The Empire Strikes Back', but obviously that's hugely dictated by my personal taste.
On the other hand there are signs of the brand wearing thin in places, Mandalorian vs. Grogu was a critical and commercial flop (assuming the usual 2x budget for marketing, if it was more for marketing then it might have been significantly worse than just breaking even).
The trend is really clear though, and it's not going in the right direction for Disney. Obviously they have the resources to reverse that, but the question is if they have the vision and the will.
Hahah your comment put a mental image in my head of Mando fighting Baby Yoda.
We watched it yesterday at home and it was… a strange movie. It looked like it was shot on the same stage they use for the show, the budget seemed far lower than other Star Wars movies, and the story was confusing and rambling in a way my children had a lot of difficulty following. I’m glad I didn’t see it in theaters.
The (believable) rumor is that it was originally scripted as ~5 episodes of the show when management said "We looked at our release schedule and yeah, make it a theatrical release". It's ironic, so much of what's going on now is taking movies (Cape Fear for example) and stretching them in 8-10 episode seasons; it's interesting to see someone try and fail at the opposite maneuver.
Hopefully, Disney can give JJ Abrams another chance to turn it around. /s
I've only barely skimmed the surface of the preservation world, but the irreverent attitude taken by the industry towards audiovisual media releases frustrates me greatly. That more accurate older releases are made unobtainable in favor of newer botched versions just adds insult to injury.
I'm grateful that diminishing returns were hit earlier with audio, though, which limits the blast radius for music releases. Most classic albums have a range of different masterings available on audio CD, many of which are available cheaply secondhand, which makes getting ahold of a good/accurate release considerably less daunting.
Movies and especially TV shows on the other hand are a mess. It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
> Movies and especially TV shows on the other hand are a mess. It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
TV shows are even worse because of the soundtrack.
Oh you watched this show with the iconic soundtrack? Too bad it's only available on the VHS release from 1995, they couldn't get the rights anymore so here is the same show but worse with different music
Even video games are not exempt from that. GTA games has tons of music removed from the radios with later digital re-releases so currently the original console disc versions are the only way to play the games as they were released back then https://www.reddit.com/r/GTATrilogy/comments/1gsqdc5/what_so...
This isn't even the worst outcome. There are hundreds of video games that are never re-released at all and have never been available for sale digitally, entirely because of soundtrack licensing.
There is a similar case with Top Gear. Aside from the popularity of Clarkson/May/Hammond and the fantastic cinematography, the show had great editors with an ear for soundtracks. Unfortunately it seems a lot of the tracks were only licensed for broadcast TV and the DVDs have some stock music where the rights were no longer available. There are also some gags which don't work any more because the audio doesn't make sense.
I believe the only place you can watch them as originally produced is iPlayer, but at least the BBC has copies somewhere.
It's a shame they never released the full series on DVD (or blu-ray). Most of it is available if you consult a chart of all the releases, but they've been cut and rearranged to fit on discs, and the soundtrack is as you say. I imagine they didn't due to problems like this at the time, but after the scandal and with how much time has passed, they'll never actually bother, unless someone straight up steals/copies the broadcast tapes from the archives and do us all a favour.
I assume you mean the only place you can legally watch them
I think it’s true for a lot of BBC shows, many had great music, but the BBC also ran hugely popular radio stations and i think it was through that they were able to license a large amount of music.
> the worst outcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniracers#Lawsuit
And TV shows too. If they don't have the soundtrack-free version available, they have to do surgery to remove the music in postproduction somehow, or just not re-release at all.
Or 007 GoldenEye where Microsoft for some reason bought the rights only to throw them into a paper shredder
GoldenEye was re-released for Xbox One and is available to purchase right now: https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/goldeneye-007/9n6639h...
Oh, finally
> Oh you watched this show with the iconic soundtrack? Too bad it's only available on the VHS release from 1995, they couldn't get the rights anymore so here is the same show but worse with different music
Even slightly more modern shows I think have had that happen as well. The Drew Carry show would have been a great example.
Yup. Daria is one of the most tragic ones, given how it was an MTV show and thus featured music iconic to the era and familiar to the audience. Replaced with muzak in the DVD releases, and a bunch of pirates have cobbled together best-effort mash-ups based on audio from TV rips, which sometimes were of very low quality, but for some episodes, all that had survived in the piracy scene was like, a RealVideo file with a 64kbps audio stream.
Can someone give me more examples? I didn't realize this was a thing and am kind of facinated.
Scrubs was another one with pretty obvious music changes, because some were part of the dialogue or a joke that just doesn't make sense after the change.
Malcom in the middle ran into this, it didn't have DVDs for years.
And I'm pretty sure the ones that got released were based on pirates when they were released.
Interview With the Vampire theatrically ends with the rolling stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” playing over the final scene and end credits. When the movie was on Netflix, that was cut from the soundtrack and replaced with an acoustic cover of the song.
Daria is another example - being on MTV they used a lot of popular music from the time which clearly did not cost them much extra at the time of TV broadcast but was replaced with generic music for the DVD release.
Some anime on Netflix is affected. Off the top of my head, the iconic first ending theme for Naoki Urusawa's Monster had its haunting vocals removed leaving only the backing track, and Neon Genesis Evangelion had its similarly iconic ending theme covers of Fly Me to the Moon sung by its voice actresses removed.
WKRP in Cincinnati
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKRP_in_Cincinnati#Music_licen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonder_Years#DVD_music_rep...
Yeah, I'm in agreement with the blog post in that I don't advocate for dismantling of copyright, but there are absurdities within the system like this that are in dire need of attention.
Shortening of copyright would fix many of these issues. Games and movies make almost all of their lifetime earnings in the first few years, and the dribble that's left afterwards is less important than preservation and public access.
It's very hard to justify copyright in 2026 over music used in a 1980s TV show. Shows were aired once or twice (summer reruns), with additional syndication runs for particularly popular shows, and that was it. Nobody expected to make a dime from a show 40 years later. Copyright has grown absurdly out of proportion of the economic reality for which these works were originally produced.
> Nobody expected to make a dime from a show 40 years later.
Probably? But to devil's advocate here, I grew up watching reruns in 1990 from the 1950s on Nick at Nite or UHF stations. You could make a case that not only the actors but bands who allowed music to be used would deserve residuals, and with reruns that worked fine. The format change from TV to DVD and then to Streaming is what blew it all up.
Home video releases of whole series weren't envisioned until basically the 2000s. Most TV shows that did have releases on video would just pick a couple good episodes at a time, and sell those. A reasonable job to track down a half-dozen rights holders, and if you couldn't find them or get the rights, I assume they'd just pick a different episode.
The way the original terms were negotiated, the rights were just licensed specifically "for television" because that seemed like all that was needed, and the amount of work to locate each rightsholder to renegotiate is just astronomical. Thankfully now every show is making sure to get rights for streaming (and physical media... Right? Right?) but it's a shame what happened to everything from the 1970s-1990s. Only piracy can save us.
In the UK Red Dwarf had full series on VHS from 1991, albeit a messy release and taking some years to catch up with what was currently airing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dwarf#Home_video_releases
Honestly I think it's fine. If corps are going to make poor decisions with their IP, oh well, their choice and their loss. There's plenty to go around.
For corps, yes, but destroying history seems a bit far
Video games sign terrible licenses even for their most core parts. Many of the millions selling Forza games disappeared from the digital stores because they couldn't use the cars anymore.[0] It's almost unbelievable since cars and their makers are actually getting a big marketing push from those games, but studios cannot get better conditions.
[0] https://kotaku.com/forza-horizon-4-delisted-xbox-licensing-1...
Yeah I bought GTA IV and still pirated it. As a bonus, don't have to launch that Steam shit every time I want to play it.
Movies especially with re-releases. Star Wars with Lucas tinkering and blocking old copies.
But we have this - https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k77/
"97% of project 4K77 is from a single, original 1977 35mm Technicolor release print, scanned at full 4K, cleaned at 4K, and rendered at 4K."
Opening scene comparison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1b47UP6ZGI
Doing God's work.
It was bound to happen with Star Wars, given how big a series it is. I wish we could have the same with more, but the amount of effort is huge in many cases, and literally impossible in others.
to my eye there is quite a difference .. in favor of the 4K77 remaster !
> Movies and especially TV shows on the other hand are a mess. It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
Star Trek: TNG was a bit of a special case though, because it had to be re-cut and new digital special effects created and edited into scenes.
I think this perspective holds more true for things that were broadcast in HD but only got commercial DVD releases. That's a disappointing lapse in high quality availability where HD content was distributed, just not in a persistent form for home use. In those cases the best quality available is an HD TV or satellite recording which might not have been preserved even in online media sharing communities.
And on top of all that, sales were not what they hoped, and with that we lost any chance of an official remaster of DS9 or Voyager, since the same work would have to be done as for TNG.
> It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
Don’t get your hopes up. That release is very special. It happened at just the right time: discs were still selling and streaming had not yet taken over.
There is simply not sufficient market for such restorations any longer. They probably didn’t make back the cost of the remaster.
One thing to note, is that the library of congress has the power to create the exceptions to the DMCA. The EFF lobbies for expansion of the exact powers the article is advocating for. https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca-rulemaking
> Spencer Draper—best known as the Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader on YouTube, where he reviews the technical and historical aspects of digital releases with a rigor usually reserved for scholarly peer review
I will occasionally think about various topics "I'm really into <thing> but is anyone else in to <thing>??"
And then I read a quote like the above and I realize that, for lack of a better phrase, "it's a big world out there" and people have many varied interests.
Plus, if folks are REALLY into <thing> then they want different perspectives about <thing> even if it's a sub-topic that has been covered before.
In other words, write blog posts and make videos. Someone will consume that content and you never know where that leads.
yeah QAnon is an inspirational story
Kinda related, but I hate how the big studios go after old videogames and try to take them down. It looks like, in the future, this era will be called the "digital dark ages", not because all the stuff got lost to bitrot, but because all the stuff became illegal to own so that the studios could sell the new stuff again and again.
The home-computer world is especially interesting for old games. If something made it to a Nintendo or Sega console, it's probably very well-preserved, but I'd be surprised if even 1% of all video games made were released on consoles.
There's an unfathomable number of games that were released on the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, and most famously DOS that were made by one or two people, self-published, and have now completely fallen into obscurity to a point where it's not 100% clear who owns the copyright and who to give money even if you wanted to, which has led to the "probably-illegal-but-not-really-enforced" term of "Abandonware".
I honestly kind of think that Abandonware should be codified into law in the same way that trademarks are; if you're not actively giving me a legitimate way to buy your game then I don't think it should be illegal for me to get it illegitimately.
There are projects like eXoDOS that are attempting to provide a complete DOS archive. They are currently at version 6 that weighs in at just under 700GB. But they seem to be finding new stuff all the time, thus the versioning of the archive.
I played a bunch of random shareware games on our family's Apple IIgs and I'd love to find some of those again, but I was so young I can't really remember much other than like some visual images and vibes.
It should be. There are lots of good ideas of modifying copyrights so that its not the automatic 70 year after life of author (or what every it is now).
>unfathomable number of games that were released
One of the problems is that there are too many and hard to find curate to separate the good from the meh.
Not just that, but some fair use youtube channels like Digging the Greats:
https://www.youtube.com/@diggingthegreats/videos
He intentionally samples less than 5 seconds iirc, and they still ding him, take all profits from the video, which took many many hours to create, and he cannot afford a lawsuit. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Wait til you hear it's (or at least was) possible to get dinged for 0.00 seconds.[1] That particular issue's probably solved by now, since Youtube requires claims to include a time stamp showing where the problem clip is. Nevermind the fact that wasn't a requirement to begin with. No wonder the corps ding every creator out there. It's free money with no downside to them. Nevermind the fact they're actively destroying culture.
[1] https://youtu.be/VvFGumd_esg?&t=685
Honestly there should be penalties if you ding someone incorrectly, including paying their lawyer fees and an additional fee, plus all revenue stolen.
That kind of works with smaller players (a random thai TV channel dinging people incorrectly is probably going to get some sort of time-out, and even if not, going to court against a smaller player like that is probably within the realm of possibility), but the big players have too much leverage. If Sony gets threatened with even minor punishments, they can simply say 'Fine. But then you have to remove all videos featuring gameplay from Sony Interactive Entertainment's games, or else we'll sue you for copyright infringement'. Even that example is fairly narrow and something that Sony is clearly allowed to do within the current bounds of copyright. They could go full nuclear and demand anything even vaguely related to Sony and its cultural hoard be taken of Youtube, and Youtube would have to comply, if nothing else, while the fight in court goes on.
Youtube has very little leverage, and Google/Youtube is very invested in not ending up in court over this kind of disputes, and the corps making claims know that.
The only actual fix is reforming or abolishing copyright.
I’d love to see a similar three strikes enforcement of bogus claims. N strikes and the copyright immediately enters the public domain. Pick your battles very carefully.
Seems intuitively difficult to implement changes to the law to get this, but I can dream.
Agreed, and it was already like this in the 2000's (when I got involved in the abandonware scene). I remember the owner of Home of the Underdogs getting constantly in battles with takedown notices for games she only intended to preserve. Not piracy in the sense of "losing tons of money", nobody but enthusiasts cared about these games anymore.
The old video games aren't illegal to own.
They may be illegal to run if they are made to depend on servers, even for single player, and those servers are taken offline.
On top of the shenanigans we have seen recently about revoking paid licenses to watch movies.
That's not illegal, it's just... you can't play the game. Or you can but it's hard. But it's not all that common of an occurrence.
Isn't that one of the whole points of copyright? So the authors can print new copies and not have to compete with other people releasing copies they made?
Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
> Nothing is stopping people
The original game might be stopping people. It's not like games have a good track record of continuing to work for decades. DRM of all kinds poses a huge problem in this regard, but so does garden variety technological change. The GOG preservation team has quite a few videos about deeply technical work they needed to do to make e.g. Prince of Persia run properly on modern PCs. Sure I can just pirate a copy for PS2 and run it with PCSX2, but thats “piracy" (even though I still have a working original disc!).
So, no: there's a lot stopping people, especially copyright law, from keeping around working copies of their games.
> copyright expires
Not in your lifetime. 70 years after death if the author brings us out into centuries. Books written 60 years before my kids were born won't be out if copyright until they are in their 40s, for example.
A fun way to frame the copyright lifetime absurdity is to point out that in a few years there will be books published on the 1900s that will be copyright protected until the 2100s.
> Isn't that one of the whole points of copyright? So the authors can print new copies and not have to compete with other people releasing copies they made?
The more important point of copyright is 'to promote the progress of the useful arts'. The 'securing for a limited time to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their writings and inventions' is just the means. Do the means in this case seem to work well in achieving that goal?
> Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
Except the 70+ years it takes before you're legally allowed to publish it, or even just adapt it. If I'm going to play things by the book, even if I archive it when I'm 10 years old, sales stop on day two of the copyright period, and the rights expire the day after it's 70 years years old, I will be 80+ years old when I'm legally allowed to let people download it, or I myself can publish an adaptation (or more likely, I'll have died and my archive version will be lost in the estate sale).
> Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
Which people? In the case of abandonware, the original software is often not in the hands of the copyright holder anymore, due to neglect or lack of interest. Sometimes all or most relevant physical copies have become damaged. All that remains is a (cracked) file download in an abandonware website. Thanks to the abandonware community it gets preserved.
Besides, a piece of software history only serves its purpose if you can experience it. With no way of legally experiencing it (you cannot buy it) how do you propose to experience it? You cannot always wait it out, you might die first due to how long copyright lasts. Or is this nebulous concept of copyright more important than human experience?
I think the real tragedy of abandonware is that copyright holders aggressively pursued abandonware sites "just in case", while not actually having any plans to redistribute the games legally. The abandonware sites were cracking (or making cracks available, whatever) and making these games playable in modern devices, thus ensuring these games were preserved, but copyright holders (through ESA [1] legal action or similar) simply wanted to stop this, with not plans otherwise. These games often weren't available otherwise. We're talking games of the DOS or C64 era, with no real commercial viability (unless bundled with thousand other games, which they eventually sometimes did, often using the cracks developed by the abandonware scene!).
----
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Software_Associa...
It is often very difficult or even impossible to locate who currently owns the rights to some intellectual property in order to re-release it legally.[0]
[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/3053050/how-one-company-is-bring...
Yeah, that's part of the copyright mess. It's partly described by Lawrence Lessig in his book "Free Culture" [1].
It seems petty to me that copyright holders (or their legal proxies) aggressively sought to shut down abandonware sites without any plan to make the software available in any shape. I mean, these were marginal pieces of software, no longer money earners, and the abandonware sites served as digital museums.
----
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)
>thus ensuring these games were preserved
I refuse to believe this train of logic. By the time copyright expires AI will be able to handle removing copyright protection and making it able to run on modern hardware. The only point of doing it now instead of later is so that people commit copyright infringement.
> I refuse to believe this train of logic. By the time copyright expires AI will be able to handle removing copyright protection and making it able to run on modern hardware. The only point of doing it now instead of later is so that people commit copyright infringement.
This must be some powerful combination of magical thinking plus a lack of awareness of the context. In the early 2000's, the time I'm recounting, nobody thought of AI. And it wasn't about copyright infringement since the people in the abandonware community I'm talking about owned the goddamn games, they were trying to digitally preserve them and make them available to others. You really need to be familiar with these people and their goals before you "refuse to believe" anything; uninformed opinions just won't do.
It helps to get a perspective about both the time and the type of games we're discussing. In fact, if you were at all a participant of the community back then, you'd know in which little regard warez kiddies were held.
Even without AI the time it takes to break DRM is not decades and many schemes are trivial to break. And a lot of pirates who share copyrighted material had that material originate from a legal purchase. That doesn't make it any less worse.
Copyright law is about finding a balance between, on one side, incentivizing creators via granting them a legal monopoly on publishing, and on the other side, the philosophical notion of freedom of speech, which would allow anyone to republish, remix, and repurpose any preexisting work. The original formulation of this legal monopoly was that it was supposed to be short enough that it would expire well within the average person's lifetime, a notion which has long been gutted via regulatory capture.
Thanks for posting. I almost missed this, but it's really important to me.
I respect that creators, like Lucas, do want to continue working on past projects. (Art is never finished, only abandoned, or something like that.) But those of us who appreciate art surely can choose which version we prefer. Even if that changes over the course of our life. That is one of my favorite things about film archiving.
Tangentially related, I've been toying with the idea of just buying all my film and series content again rather than maintaining subscription services. My SO and I watch TV maybe once a week yet we maintain a subscription to Crave & Netflix.
I'm pretty sure it'd work out cheaper to just buy box-sets of a series when we start watching it but haven't done the deep dive yet.
I started doing this after having a child so that we could have kids movies on hand in Jellyfin, but am now having a lot of fun collecting DVDs and Blu Rays. I’ve also toyed with the idea of using ErsatzTV to have channels to bring the kids back to the old days where things weren’t always on demand.
Thrift stores are a good way to find DVDs (usually $2-4 a DVD, slightly more for Blu Ray). Estate sales are typically better (under $1 a DVD/BluRay).
The most expensive part of this so far has been obtaining storage drives.
It works wonders for small kids since most of the time they just want to watch the exact same thing over and over.
I’ve been buying dvds and surfacing a lot of the content to Jellyfin and Tailscale, it’s a lot easier than it used to be and they even have smart TV apps on some of the platforms. Don’t even have to pirate to get use out of it.
I've been wondering this some myself, how many services I could drop and just return to a physical media budget.
One of the factors contributing to it not necessarily being cheaper to buy box sets: Target, Best Buy, and other big US chains have given up on physical media for movies. Last I heard Wal-Mart is on the fence about long term support for it. (At the moment the only chain I know that seems still in it for the long haul seems to be Barnes & Noble, but they could have one bad quarter and change their minds quickly. My local store the DVD and Blu-Ray section is somewhat obviously what used to the Music section and still has a bit left of that old focus.)
Even the manufacturing side seems to be disappearing. Sony has flirted with dropping physical media sales of movies. Warner Brothers and Paramount seem likelier to drop physical media sales if they are allowed to merge.
Netflix lets very few originals make it to physical media. Most of the exceptions I'm aware of are Sony projects. Sony Animation being one of Netflix's last exclusive deals from a studio that isn't themselves. A lot of Prime Originals don't make it to physical media. It seems a mixed bag for HBO Originals and Hulu/Disney+ Originals, presumably based on some internal formulas of popularity. A lot of Apple TV Originals seem to get delayed physical output, but that's largely been because Apple TV doesn't have its own studio, but that changed relatively recently with the purchase of Red Hour (Ben Stiller's studio, of Severance and The Dink fame).
It certainly feels like physical media is dying right now. Maybe more reason to switch to investing in it over streaming services, not that an individual's budget decisions in this vein will affect the company's bottom lines enough that they will notice.
I'm not sure this makes sense for most people who watch a series once and then never again. Physical media makes sense for movies and shows that you'll watch multiple times. So you might buy Firefly, but not Reacher (please, not Reacher). With kids it makes particular sense - kids love watching the same thing over and over (I'm not sure why). If Wreck It Ralph was on VHS it'd be worn out by now...
I'm not saying I disagree, but very interesting how this contrasts with attitudes people have towards books. People keep physical books around just for kicks. Often times they haven't even read half the books on their shelves.
I am in this camp, my office (and overflowing to the living room) have a lot of physical books in them. Most I only read a single time. I do think they add something 'homely' though, as if they are part of the furniture / decoration.
Also, when I notice a particular book it can spark a memory (even about the surrounding context of when I read the book) which are small but nice moments.
I'm not sure I'd feel the same about DVD / Blu Ray boxes though. I'm pretty sure the VCR boxes I used to have were just kept in a closed-door cabinet and I barely looked at them unless I wanted to watch a particular film.
Books are a signal
We could share physical media with others. Like a library of sorts.
As others have said, it's certainly justifiable for anything with rewatchability. You can find 1080p Bluray players at thrift stores for under $20 (it took some patience for me to find a relatively newer one that was more compact and didn't have a slow interface), and Blurays are usually under $5.
I've come across sealed Blurays or even the occasional former Blockbuster rental so it's actually kind of fun in a record-crate-diving sort of way, if you're into that. But of course you can always just buy new, which you'll probably have to do in some cases: the odds are against me finding Koyaanisqatsi at the thrift, let alone the Criterion Collection Qatsi Trilogy, but I'm okay with that.
There's a ton of streaming content that is stuck in streaming, so you can only "buy" it, not buy it. Oscar-winning movies that you can't get on physical media.
Have to take things into your own hands these days and grab the 2160p Dolby Vision streams and stuff them onto a BD-R, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I've thought about that too. Original content for e.g Netflix probably never sees a physical release. As my earlier post probably alluded to though, we don't really watch a lot of TV in our household so narrowing my 'options' is not per se a thing that would impact me.
But it does suck for those who want to move to more physical-based media _and_ enjoy original content from the streaming providers.
> When I came to work for Arrow, I was bringing a lot of awareness of the methods of fan preservationists on the torrent sites
Very smooth way of using your torrenting skills on your CV.
I know this is the easy take, but there really are people who are passionate about preservation beyond just acquiring things for their own use.
I'm not one of those people. :D But I do know one; he's a professional librarian.
I am am an amateur recordist, I absolutely love to bootleg concerts and gigs and things, as in: make my own recordings of live music and so on. I have shared everything in the appropriate places, also. I believe it is an essential artistic expression: to record the nature of the world around you for the future.
So, I do it a bit.
I think this ethos can be applied in many ways and with different media; preservationism is a high value objective. The future needs it, kinda.
This reminds me I have some film that I need to get digitized and uploaded to IA. From what I can tell they are clips from concerts in the Chicago area in the 1980s. And I think this proves GPs point, because to be honest I personally have no interest in live music, but when I found those in a can at a thrift store for $20, you bet your ass I bought them to be preserved and not turned into someone's ill-advised art project (or something equally destructive). When I see something that I know /someone/ will value I will always do what I can to save it from destruction/the trash/someone who doesn't know the value.
> to record the nature of the world around you for the future
That's cool.
> The future needs it, kinda.
Agreed but we seem to be in the minority seeing that most people nowadays seem to be speed running to make Asimov's Foundation into a documentary.
Yep, definitely! I know of instances where professional archives and libraries work with specialized torrent sites to archive content directly and these days that's sometimes necessary with how content is locked down, games are dependent on a server or DRM schemes don't make archiving easy.
You frequently hear of cases where the last remaining official copy got lost and only due to some fan service (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694382) data could be recovered.
I’m absolutely obsessed with it. For me it’s driven purely from childhood nostalgia. In particular, Macintosh games. I want, and want others to have that warm excitement of nostalgia when they re-discover something forgotten.
This is true but people also use it as a magic shield to (needlessly IMO) justify their piracy, even though they are 1) only downloading things they happen to like and 2) don’t even follow a basic 3-2-1 backup protocol, let alone anything remotely resembling SOP for preservation.
I bet not even 1 in 1000 people pirating are doing it primarily as a preservation exercise.
> only downloading things they happen to like
The Library of Congress is selective about what it preserves too, as is every museum. No single entity could possibly hope to preserve every film, it takes a community.
> don’t even follow a basic 3-2-1 backup protocol
The swarm is the backup. You can't beat hundreds of hash-checked copies across the globe.
> I bet not even 1 in 1000 people pirating are doing it primarily as a preservation exercise.
I bet you're right. Isn't it wonderful, then, that those 1 in 1000 (who are overrepresented in tracker admin and release group/scene work) are able to harness those selfish impulses and turn them into the most complete, accessible, and durable distributed art preservation project in human history.
There are some preservation efforts on a couple of the big movie trackers. One is "donate Xtb of space and use this script to manage it" so you don't choose the torrents, they get assigned till your donated space is full.
In Another gives bonuses for adopting torrents where the original seeder doesn't want to/can't seed anymore.
Neither are perfect but as one of those 1 in 1000 its nice to help where I can.
> The Library of Congress is selective about what it preserves too, as is every museum. No single entity could possibly hope to preserve every film, it takes a community.
You can’t possibly compare this to yet another person downloading all of Friends to watch off their hard drive, and most of these people aren’t seeding back anyway, so they’re not even part of the swarm.
I don’t object to piracy but I do object to preservation arguments made for/by people who are in no way thinking along those lines. I can’t buy tailgating on some clearly inapplicable altruism argument.
> Beyond Star Wars, an illicit cottage industry has sprung up to patch the holes in any given film’s digital representation.
I've thought about making an Oppenheimer except all scenes are in chronological order and the cringe ones are gone Edition
Back in 1987, my parents had purchased a 4-head VHS recorder, and I rented another device from Video Library, and I set my mind to the monumental task of editing the entire run of Married… with Children into a single tape containing only scenes with Kelly [Christina Applegate] and I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams
Saying “Nolan was wrong” is begging for a fight.
But his weird sound mixing philosophy (experience over clear dialog / dialog as sound effects) makes me nuts. So fix those too, please.
My working theory to this point is that he made the movies he had to make then, as he got increasingly successful, he gradually transitioned (back?) to making movies he wanted to make. Which, as it turns out, I'm less enamored with then his post-big break efforts. Oh well.
Yeah I'm pretty sure he has the juice to kinda do whatever he thinks is best.
Nobody can fight me on that because I don't know who Nolan is. Guessing he's a director, but in that case, didn't know he directed Oppenheimer. I'm part of the popcorn reviews, not the tomato ones.
The movie is bad cause nobody can tell what is going on, or they can but it's a chore without reward. "3 weeks earlier" kind of crap every 30 seconds in the movie. Even the big plot twist is, "this scene with Einstein that you thought happened early in the timeline actually happened at the end, wow." But maybe it can be fixed.
Yeah. One of the more celebrated filmmakers out there. If you google him you’ll see familiar stuff.
I personally liked Oppenheimer fine as it was (except the crappy explosion), but I can see why others might not.
I also enjoyed that old Paul Newman, John Cusack, etc one that focused less on Oppenheimer. Fat Man and Little Boy.
Hm, Dark Knight is a top one. Interstellar was amazing until the end with the black hole unraveling the plot, but I blocked that out and only remembered the rest until I rewatched recently. Dunkirk was good but kinda slow plot-wise. What I'm getting is his films are exceptional in a lot of ways like audio/visual but don't necessarily have good plots, which idk if that's even his fault. Those didn't have jumpy timelines, though.
Messing with time is certainly a thing he does. Momento, Inception, Interstellar, Oppenheimer, Tenet... probably others I wouldn't remember.
Hm yeah, sounds like the majority of his movies do jump around. I don't remember Inception, saw that on release.
Interstellar's plot is about messing with universe time, but the movie isn't jumping around points in story time. There's just the astronaut and Earth storylines with a little crossover, and each mostly moves forwards only. I liked that part a lot actually.
Memento was his peak and he hit new highs with inception ... its been all downhill after that ...
Sadly, some of the greatest treasures in the world can only be obtained in questionable ways.
> Of particular note is the “remux” community, dedicated to seamlessly stitching together the best video and audio streams from different releases without any generational loss of quality.
That’s not what “remux” means. A remux is the original data from, for instance, a Blu-ray disc, transferred into a new container without re-encoding. What the author is referring to would be called a “hybrid remux”.
Is there an actual non-hybrid "remux" community?
Every high quality remux release group I know of does both normal and hybrid remuxes.
Are you speaking purely of the technical difference, or do you know what that particular community calls itself?
Remux is not a community, it's a tag that pirate release groups uses to indicate that a release contains exact copies of the original video and audio streams present on the disc.
GP is correct that files with purely additive changes (like additional audio tracks) to remuxes are called hybrid remuxes.
ETA: To the author's credit, this is convention rather than a hard rule. I checked my usual sources and found the exact 89gb 4k Arrow remux the author mentions in the closing paragraph and it is indeed labelled 'remux' only. The uploader did make a note of this though: "Unfortunately, as Arrow had to pull the Italian dub due to rightsholders demands, I had to sync it from the 2017 Kino Lorber disc."
>Remux is not a community, it's a tag that pirate release groups uses to indicate that a release contains exact copies of the original video and audio streams present on the disc.
There is a community insofar as there is a relatively small group of people who sink their time into producing high quality remuxes, and this group talks to each other (on IRC and elsewhere).
>GP is correct that files with purely additive changes (like additional audio tracks) to remuxes are called hybrid remuxes.
As I corrected on a child comment to the GP, this is not correct. It is not convention either. A hybrid remux has a stream which is a hybrid of two or more sources. Simply combining tracks from different sources isn't a hybrid remux, it's just baseline good practice.
> A hybrid remux has a stream which is a hybrid of two or more sources.
This explicitly breaks the rules of multiple communities I participate in. All streams must be untouched in a remux, and a hybrid remux is a release with untouched streams from multiple sources (there are also hybrids which are not remuxes).
What even is "a stream which is a hybrid of two or more sources?" Cutting between or combining multiple audio or video streams is simply editing. You're describing a fanedit.
>This explicitly breaks the rules of multiple communities I participate in.
Probably. Not all places allow hybrid remuxes.
I promise you that I have these definitions correct as they are most commonly used, since I am actually involved in this space.
The word "Hybrid" has been used in the way you describe, most notably by FRaMeSTOR, but I would say that everyone else has coalesced on what I described and would call my definition the standard one. It's also how the "Hybrid" edition label is used on PTP.
>What even is "a stream which is a hybrid of two or more sources?" Cutting between or combining multiple audio or video streams is simply editing. You're describing a fanedit.
No I'm not. I stand by what I said. As an example you can look at Bridge.to.Terabithia.2007.Hybrid.1080p.BluRay.REMUX.AVC.TrueHD.5.1-BLURANiUM.mkv For the sake of those reading, I will copy from the release notes:
>GER has hardcoded translated movie title which is not present in other transfers so hybrid was needed to restore the original picture. Hybrid was done with USA disc since audio from same disc was used. GER video was retimed to 23.976 FPS, trimmed on valid IDR frames and merged with MKVToolnix.
In this case, two Blu-ray video streams were spliced together.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, adding audio tracks to a video track that weren't produced together often requires editing. If not for sample rate reasons, content reasons, like extra space for additional video space at the beginning or ending most basically. It seems like in any instances like that, which I would count as "nominal," it would be appropriate to identify those as "modified from" which would seemingly place you squarely into "hybrid" space within the taxonomy of this comment thread.
Right. There is some degree of transformation which is normal or necessary. For example, if one of {video, audio} is 24fps and the other is 23.976fps, the video will have its frame rate adjusted to match the audio. For basic video/audio mismatches you may need to trim audio, insert null audio, or add a mkv container delay.
These things are normally detailed in release notes. People write pretty detailed notes laying out exactly what they did.
The muxer can apply a timestamp offset to a track, so while the audio stream remains untouched it starts at some offset relative to the start of the video stream.
Agree once you're compensating for drift by scaling the audio track you've pushed yourself out of remux territory, but again these aren't hard and fast rules (evidenced by the disagreement over terminology).
There's nothing wrong with the definition you quoted. I would say it's entirely accurate (except perhaps that it neglects subtitles, which can end up being a substantial amount of work if you choose to put the effort into it).
>What the author is referring to would be called a “hybrid remux”.
No. While the "hybrid" term has been used this way, the standard definition now is for remuxes where a single stream has been created by stitching together streams from two different sources. For example, a video from source A has generally better picture quality, but has some glitch or issue that requires patching in a segment from source B to create a hybrid video stream. Doing this for the main video without re-encoding is very difficult/unlikely to work because video codecs are very hard to work with in this way (you'd have to have two sources encoded with the same codec, the same encoding settings, you have to slice things at a clean GOP boundary in both sources, etc), so most commonly hybrid remuxes refer to the Dolby Vision layer.
Source: I happen to be involved in this community.
If the article gets something like that wrong, I’ll have a hard time taking any of it seriously. Pass for me.
The Art of Internet Pedantry™
I was watching lawrence of arabia recently, and was thinking about similar stuff. There's a few scenes (scenes around the: "my name is for my friends" and the echoey canyon in particular) where lawrence looks almost like a photorealistic game character.
I still don't know what exactly caused this but most likely a multitude of factors are in play. - Deserts are bright, so a bright light was used to illuminate his face, causing his eyes to sparkle. - Streaming from Netflix and compression / decompression might have eaten away some of the high frequency detail
I also learned that they shot the movie in a bigger film stock, so the digitized version of this movie is highly regarded.
If anyone has any idea as to why these scenes in particular look off, i would love to learn more.
Cobbling together something resembling the original is a cool idea, but don't the originals still exist somewhere? Surely not all of the original prints have been destroyed? Aren't there movie archivists somewhere carefully preserving every version of every major movie?
Unfortunately not. Film suffers from “vinegar syndrome”, an autocatalytic reaction that can only be slowed down but never fully stopped.
It gets worse:
https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2181751/dvds-with-t...
house opened my eyes to this problem. trying to reconstruct a version with the video resolution of the bluray but the original soundtrack of the dvd turned out to be a deep rabbit hole.
One of the more annoying parts of this to me is that, surely, a high quality version of the original must exist somewhere in the archives of the publisher, right? And if not that, surely the original footage must still be there, so one can recreate the edit frame by frame, as was done with TNG?
The good stuff is out there, just behind lock and key. You can't have it, because screw you.
It could also be that it genuinely isn't. The source code of Silent Hill 2, one of the best horror games of all time, is lost. It's clear from cases like that that publishers can't be trusted to preserve their media. We have to do it ourselves.
It is regrettable that the law draws no distinction between such a situation and the sale of counterfeit goods on eBay. Section 1201 does not take intent into account, whereas the aforementioned "pirate code" essentially consists of norms developed by the community itself.
As a side note/game: imagine you're not particularly tech savvy. Now figure how much Mubi costs using only their website.
(Why? Why do companies do that??)
https://mubi.com/en/us/memberships
This shows the price, what am I missing?
I didn't even realize that page existed, and I'm a developer. Could I have found it if I was determined enough? Sure, of course. But starting from the homepage as an impatient average user, there's nothing obvious. I found it under "Gift MUBI" (which presents entirely different pricing schemes than what you linked) but that was after putting thinking and hopeful clicks into it. It shouldn't be that hard. Why isn't RIGHT ON THE HOMEPAGE?? It gives me the "Am I gonna have to call and talk to a human to cancel?" ick.
The price comes up after you click the "Try 7 days for free" button (also labelled "Get Started" on some loads).
Interesting they chose The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, probably because of the 60th anniversary?
They didn't mention that probably the Mondo release of that film is the 'best' one? Someone else did a good version count of all releases: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/id/136114
Curious what the upcoming DCP release is sourced on
GoodBadUgly_FTR_S-235_EN-XX_10_4K_20140330_DLA_IOP_OV
GoodBadUgly_FTR_S-235_EN-XX_10_4K_PRKC_20160613_MPS_IOP_VF
I quite liked the Despecialized editions when I watched them quite a while ago, for anyone who hasn't seen them - the audio remastering is very appreciated (VHS rarely has good audio), but certainly not the poorly-fitting CGI additions.
I laughed out loud when I saw the George Lucas quote. He is the master of defiling his own work.
Does it mean that the Sergio Leone's movies in Mubi are these restoration? It wasn't clear for me.
Leone is one the greatest directors of all time. I've been nagging my sons to watch this trilogy for years.
one of my projects on the backlog is to figure out how to combine the dvd copies and the bluray copies of the x-files so that I can have 4:3 episode in hd. especially in the first couple of seasons they crop a lot of stuff to fit it into widescreen, I'm waiting until AI gets good enough that I can using the dvd quality original fill in and upscale the cropped part of the hd episodes.
Seasons 1-5 of Reno 911 were 4:3. If you stream them nowadays they've had an awful pan and scan applied that actually removes a ton of detail, results in heads being cut off, etc. All so we don't get black bars on the sides of the screen. It's so bad and makes me question whether the people that did the conversion even watched their output.
Reminds me of Ben Hur, it had that green sky tinge to it as well.
Anyone here subscribed to Mubi? Would you recommend it? How different are the films compared to mainstream cinema?
I'm not subscribed to right now, but I have been for a very long time before that. I like their curated approach a lot and it doesn't feel like you are getting drowned in crap like many other services.
It really depends what kind of films you like though, if you are looking for fast paced shows or the latest Hollywood productions you will not like it. If you enjoy going to indie cinemas, you'll like it.
They have mostly independent films. So numerous dramas and slow-burn types. I like it. I've found some great movies on there, but also have found a bunch of duds. The problem is the pricing. Right now my main services are Criterion Channel and Eternal Family.
I've had justwatch.com tell me things are on Mubi with ads, so I've watched films on it, but can't remember which ones and not enough to subscribe.
I've been signed up a few months at a time over the years. It has tons of independent movies from the US/UK/France but also from lesser exposed countries (think Danish, Greek, Thai, Polish, Norwegian…). It's mostly films released recently or in the last 20 years. It also has some older classics (Memories of Murder, Carrie, Dogma, Obsession, Carlito's Way…) but there aren't that many and they're often only there temporarily.
It's worth doing the 30 days trial. I sign up for a month or two whenever I feel like the library has at least 10 films I'd want to watch.
I am quite happy to give Mubi my money each month, even if I don't use it a _huge_ amount. I have seen some great films on the platform, and I really do want to see them be successful.
Some content has overlap with conventional streaming services, but then films like "Do not expect much from the end of the world" probably wouldn't see a streaming release elsewhere?
Something other replies haven’t mentioned yet is that you can use a VPN on it. A service like Disney+ for example will not let you in at all with a VPN active but no problem with Mubi. You get a pretty nice selection with that.
Nothing really special about it, it costs 15.99 EUR/month, Blu-Ray lots are very cheap now. DVDs are even cheaper, plus you get to own them forever.
Of interest, another painstaking fan recreation... Alien 3: The Legacy cut
https://youtu.be/eCIXkBEoqeM?si=Ts0enOPy3z9fVBg6
(Link is just to a review of it, you need to torrent it if u want to watch it (its 41GB lol))
Everything is a Remix
I will say this again, and again, and again: thanks to piracy, I got to watch many amazing movies, especially those that came out before the 2000s. Eventually I bought lots of DVDs and Blu-Rays, CDs( heck I even rediscovered my music in taste).
I'm not sure which is more morally wrong: preserving works of art for future generations, or destroying them for profit.
Are you missing a 'not' in your second paragraph?
Dear copyright holders,
You deserve to get compensated. You should get compensated.
But stop acting against the will of the consumers. And stop fighting the technology.
Remember when you thought VHS and DVD would kill the movie industry? You were wrong then, and you're wrong again, now.
Make a very simple website where people can search for actors, search for directors, search keywords, search awards...
And then show us torrent links for all of the content, all of the versions, all of the audio formats, all of the video resolutions, all of the languages, the director's cut, with or without subtitles baked in, theatrical release, re-release, fan edits, all of it. Make it easy for someone else to document a new version, and share the torrent. Set up Popcorn Time or whatever, if you're smart.
I download the content on my own dime. I'll even seed it for a bit, because I like it, and why not?
And then, let me buy a decryption key. Make the price reasonable. Make it Pay What You Want, if you're really smart. When you're setting that price, think real hard about the fact that the illegal option is literally one click away for anyone technically savvy. That decryption key should be shared for all of the different versions available to me. I pay once, I get all the formats, now, and forever. Let me save the key to my account, if you want to set up accounts and recommendations, and etc. Let me save the key in my Plex or Jellyfin server. Or as file metadata, or in a json in a zip file at the end of the file...
Say it's legal for me to pass that license on to one of my kids, when I die.
If you're real smart, grant me the right to legally loan that key to a friend, so they can watch the movie, and then return the key (or I get to auto-revoke it after a number of days).
Hell, tell me a price to have a private (or public?) screening of the movie at a theater that rents out screens.
Cocoon is not available on streaming. That's so dumb. It will enter the public domain in 2081. Until then, earn some reasonable money, by making a legal way for people to do what they're already doing. As frictionless as possible.
And if you're a genius, come up with a way for someone to show you their DVD, Blu-Ray, VHS copy of a movie, and give them that decryption key, for free. They already bought your movie once. Don't make them regret it. Reward them for it. Send it out to anyone who "bought" the movie on AppleTV, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Amazon, etc. But I doubt you're that smart.
A praise for forensics, maybe? EN01 or raw data, that is the question.
I hate the way film and music pirates gatekeep everything. There are private trackers for games and software but they don't try to keep any content exclusive, you get faster downloads without random bad quality uploads and malware cluttering the site in exchange for keeping a good ratio.
As far as I can see none of the content mentioned in the post is under an exclusivity rule (it can all be shared in other places).
Whether a 90GB file will still have anyone seeding it on a small or public tracker at the point you want to download it is another question of course.
Surprise, piracy isn't activism, it's just people wanting free stuff or even paying some discounted rate for it
That is obviously false: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_copyright>
You could just as well say that political protest is not a thing, that it’s just vandals looking for reasons to break stuff.
Yeah it’s rough not to be able to get whatever you want without paying anyone or experiencing any downsides
Can we use AI to get better lip syncing of the Dollars trilogy yet? I would love to see this.
I liked The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but the post-dub voice of Wallach when he was much older, did not quite fit into the movie anymore; it felt strange compared to his voice when he was younger.
As for Hollywood ruining videos: well, it is time to phase out Hollywood. The movies are cultural heritage and the best quality must be preserved (without artifical AI slop clowning it up and changing things; I see that on youtube every day, it is AWFUL. AI slop constantly lies about things. I can call it lie-slop).
Is it just me or is the Lorber version the only one with correct colors?
It depends on what you care about. The Kino Lorber has good color choices, but far too much contrast: dark areas (including the characters) are pitch black; and you can't see the clouds in the skies.
Isn't the article explaining that it is supposed to be the "better" version?