Star Wars: Project 4K80 (Empire) Beta is out!
The last part of the original trilogy has been completed! For those unaware, the 4K## project from Team Negative 1 is a full remastering of the original trilogy from 35mm negatives. Around September of 2018 4K77 (A New Hope) was released. Under a year later, 4K83 (Return of the Jedi) was released.
A few years later and the first release of 4K80 (The Empire Strikes Back) is out! Its pretty grainy and does need some work, but this is definitely a project worth keeping an eye on if you're into the OT.
If you want a copy, you can join the forum and use Resilio Sync to get them. 77 and 83 are available on most file sharing platforms, too.
Once 4K80 is a few versions deep, it'll completely unseat the Despecialized version as the purest OT experience, at least in my opinion :)
I watched 4K77 (the one without de-noising) a few years ago with some friends. It was a distinctly different experience than how I remembered A New Hope. Everything felt a little hokey and rough. It felt much closer to how you'd think a 70s Sci-Fi movie should look. I think it's great that these projects exist so everyone can get an authentic experience. "It's 1977 and you just walked into the theater, sitting down for whatever it is that just came out this weekend". Star Wars is a cultural monolith and can be viewed in that context. But "A New Hope" didn't release to theaters with any of that. It clearly stood on its own - well enough to get cleared for a trilogy. It's a shame that Disney and Lucas are in agreement that the original cut should be stripped from existence.
Also a word of warning - I recall my gaming computer at the time (which was a bit dated to be fair) really struggled to play the movie. It's something like 80GB.
Honestly, the way that Lucas and Disney have as a whole handled Star Wars feels very inauthentic to me. I used to be REALLY into Star Wars as a kid because it was probably the most fleshed out and easily accessible sci-fi universe out there, hell it probably still is. But I can't stand the constant whiplash caused by reversing previously established content. And learning that it's kind of always been this way...makes me feel worse about it. As just one example, Lucas sanctioned a completely different explanation for what The Clone Wars were before the prequels came out. What really did it for me though were all the snafu's that happened while I was a young adult: the cancelling of the EU, the sequel handling, the EA exclusivity. It just feels like a massive disservice to the original material.
Since then, I've really just fallen out of love with the franchise. I view it much more like Marvel now. It's hit or miss content that's mostly enjoyable, but all very same-y, and I don't have any deeper feelings about it.
That might be an HEVC / x265 issue. I run the 1080p (x264, ~40gb) on the crappiest NUC over wireless using NFS without any issues.
There's a 1.4 version of no DNR 4K77 that has some better color correction (or so they say -- I'm getting it right now.), but it'd be nice to have a minimal DNR copy like they did with 4K83.
I would love to check it out but you need an invite code to register. Can I get one?
Check this thread for a code. It uses resilio for the downloads, which sucks, but isn't too bad. Once you're in, go to the downloads and then get the code for the folder and open it with the app.
Thank you.