(Cue breathtaking introduction accompanied by the Star Wars Theme...)

Q: Where do you get the holy grail of DVD, STAR WARS TRILOGY bootlegs?

A: The Force is a mysteriously thing, my young apprentice.

Though it has been relatively easy to get them online in the past (not that we'll tell you where), Hong Kong is the usual source for STAR WARS bootlegs, although the Chinese government is beginning to crack down on pirates. While you can still locate discs, it is not as easy as it has been in the past. It's important to note that a set of Star Wars DVDs, which could cost you 200$ on eBay, can be had in Hong Kong for the princely sum of $20 U.S. dollars!

Just How Many Bootlegs Are There?

Actually, quite a few. While most seem to be the same or from similar source material, the seem to share the same covers, a sample of which is seen below. Strangely though, the discs themselves often look different, meaning you won't really know what you're going to get until you buy...

The most popular covers for STAR WARS bootlegs...does the artist get a cut?

The Methods Of The Force

I viewed these movies on a Sony S-330 connected via S-Video to a Sony 27" TV, which is calibrated with Video Essentials to the best of my ability. The sound was outputted via the RCA jacks (see below on sound) to an NAD 701 powering Paradigm Mini MKIII's and a Paradigm PDR-10 dorm-shaker. To take the screenshots, I put them in my DVD player and used the crappy software that came with my video card. I can assure you that all of the artifacts discussed here showed up on both my monitor and my TV screen, so the quality of my software has not affected the analysis. The screenshots were taken with HyperSnap-DX. Oddly, the screenshots were taken at a resolution of 720x480, even though the discs aren't (and could not be) anamorphic. I simply resized them with the GIMP, an excellent (free) photo editor. While the images here are JPEGs, they are all linked to loss-less tiff files, so you can be sure that a particular artifact is not a result of JPEG compression.

Any Extra Goodies?

Surprisingly there are a couple extras on each disc. There is a one-page production note on each disc that talks about the special editions. It seems to be a simple PR page that might have come from the laserdisc (Editor: Though the bad translation certainly isn't!) In addition, there is a short featurette after the credit sequence of every movie. This also seems like it was part of the original laserdisc set, and is mostly fluff. You're not going to learn anything new here. The discs have only 6 or 8 chapter stops, which makes navigating the discs difficult. EMPIRE has an encoding error that makes it impossible to rewind a disc past a chapter stop. It will rewind to the beginning of the chapter, stop, and start playing again. The time counter will also restart.

Three discs from the same bootleg series

The Audio

These discs have two English tracks: Dolby 5.1 Surround and Dolby 2.0 Stereo. I don't have a 5.1 setup, but I think it's safe to assume that the digital information was simply copied from the laserdiscs to the DVD (for more on the 5.1 track, visit another in-depth review of A NEW HOPE.) As for the 2.0 tracks, they are also good except that stereo right and left are reversed! If you use the standard RCA plugs, just reverse the cables on one end and you'll be fine. If you normally use an optical cable, find an RCA cable instead, because there's no way to reverse the output of the digital signal. Other than the switched signals, the sound is very clean. I don't think it was digitally copied, but there are no problems with it.

The Video

Just tell me: how good do they look? That depends on which movie you're talking about. When you ask most people how they rank the three Star Wars movies, they will usually tell you that EMPIRE is the best, followed by A NEW HOPE, followed by JEDI. In a cruel trick of fate, the quality of these discs ranks exactly the opposite. JEDI is superb, A NEW HOPE is passable, and EMPIRE sucks. Sorry folks, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. There are a few different types of artifacts that manifest themselves on these discs in one degree or another. These artifacts include subtitles, dot crawl, the color red, MPEG-2 artifacts, and possible edge enhancement.

Two more discs...same covers, though!

The Source Material

Naturally, Lucas does not use bad prints for his laserdiscs, and the special editions were also restored, so they are even better than the old ones. The prints used for these DVDs are pristine, except for possibly A NEW HOPE. There aren't any nicks, cuts, or scratches that I noticed at all. A NEW HOPE is very red (see below), but I'm not sure if that was a problem with the source material or the transfer from laserdisc. I have a feeling it was the transfer that was the source of the problem.

The Subtitle Dilemma

There are two types of subtitles on the three discs. There is a set of white or yellow Chinese subtitles at the bottom of the screen (which is to be expected), but there is also English Closed Captioning at the top of the screen. There are a few problems with the English Captions. First off, they are distracting. Our eyes were constantly drifting up to the captions, even though we knew exactly what everyone was saying. We've been trained to read anything our eyes see, and it is extremely difficult not to look at them. (» View screenshot)

Of course, there is one place where the captions disappear. When Jabba (or anyone else) speaks in his own tongue, there is supposed to be subtitles on the screen so we know what he's saying. Well, we can read the Chinese characters, but there is no English at this point, so we have to guess (or remember) what he's saying. This is really irritating! (» View screenshot)

Aside from that, they are in a very large font which sometimes intrudes into the rest of the picture: On EMPIRE and JEDI, the English Captions are white, and relatively benign. On A NEW HOPE, however, they are bright, flickering red. If you read the section below about the red color, you will understand why this sucks so much. (» View screenshot)

Dot Crawl

The first thing you'll notice when you pop in your DVD is the horrific dot crawl on the FOX logo. (» View screenshot)

Don't panic! The dot crawl isn't visible in much of the movie. The dot crawl will appear on solid primary colors, like green, blue, and especially red. While you may think it's pretty difficult to see the dot crawl on the images below, the dot's movement makes them stand out against the smoother background. Sometimes it looks like the dots are part of the print, but I don't think that is the case. (» View screenshot) Yes, even our believed blue font is crawling with dots!

The Color Red

If you look closely at the picture of R2D2, you'll notice that his eye appears almost purple, when it should be red (at least in this frame). (» View screenshot) R2D2's eye is very distracting on all three discs

Careful inspection reveals that the red color has bled several pixels to the left, resulting in a misaligned image. All three movies have problems with the color red, especially STAR WARS. The reds on this disc are so pronounced that characters look flushed all of the time. (» View screenshot)

MPEG-2 Artifacts

Because these bootlegs are on single-layered, single-sided discs, there is no way to keep the bit-rate high enough to avoid MPEG artifacting. All three discs show some degree of artifacting, though some hide it better than others. While JEDI blew me away with its relative lack of problems, EMPIRE was absolute muck, as you will see. MPEG-2 artifacts will show up under the following conditions:

We'll start with the worst, and get this over with. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK takes place, for a good potion of the movie, on the planet of Dagobah. MPEG-2 hates fog. Dagobah has a permanent fog over it. As such, the fog on Dagobah is a shimmering mass of MPEG-2 squares, always trying their hardest to mimic the complex swirling shapes in the background. (» View screenshot)

All of the movies have some amount of MPEG-2 artifacts, but there arealso cases when I thought I would be seeing tons and tons of blocks and instead the picture was crystal clear. (» View screenshot) The image from A NEW HOPE, is among the worst I could find. The detail is horrible, and the nice contrast between the empty house at dawn and Luke's oppressive uncle Owen is all but lost.

By contrast that with this image (» View screenshot) also from A NEW HOPE, where two X-Wings evade blaster shots at high speed. Even though the shot is quick and full of motion, the Death Star displays a lot of fine detail, at least until it fades into the distance. Also note the decent separation between the blaster shot and the X-Wing's foil. While it's not a perfect green-gray-green edge, it's very good.

Even EMPIRE, with its ghastly fog, has its moments. (» View screenshot) The above is one of my favorite shots - which is also one of the most convincing mixes of models and live-action I've seen - came out perfectly: I don't know if this shot was touched up for the special edition, but it's beautiful. The sky's gradient isn't perfect, but the ships flying by are just right.

I had trouble finding bad MPEG-2 shots in JEDI. (» View screenshot) I don't know if you can see it, but Vader's helmet showed such bad blockiness that my non-techy friend turned and said, "Wow, I can see that!" It doesn't show up in the screenshot well, but it's there.

This picture is more representative of JEDI. I thought the forest scenes would look terrible, like Dagobah in EMPIRE, but I was surprised to see a great amount of detail. You can really see the leaves on all of the trees, even during the speeder chase. (» View screenshot)

Edge Enhancement?

The jury's still out on this one. (» View screenshot) There are some cases when there will be a slight shadow of an edge next to the edge itself. Look at the yellow trail that comes from the moon to the death star. If you look closely at the top border, there is a black shadow of the edge, and then a light shadow of the edge. Ghostly edges like this appear from time-to-time throughout the film, but I have to look closely to notice them. I'm not sure if this is "edge enhancement" or some artifact of the dubbing process.

The End

Well, we hope you enjoyed are little tour of Why Bootlegs Look So Bad. Gives one a new respect for the art of telecine, master and compression, doesn't it? While we're not to encourage or dissuade anyone from buying a bootleg, we feel it always best to equip the consumer with the best possible knowledge possible. May The Force Be With You, er, whatever!