Is “Star Wars” Available In 5.1?
Dear Gary: I would first like to thank you for establishing a magazine such as Widescreen Review! The first time I read your publication I was pleasantly surprised by the technical, yet easy to understand articles. Initially, I had little knowledge of home theatre. Today however, thanks much in part to your magazine, I have gained a whole new education that continues to grow. I understand that you must be incredibly busy, but I have a question for you that has been troubling me for some time. I am a Star Wars buff, and prior to The Phantom Menace being released in theatres, I saw the Jedi Master—George Lucas—interviewed on MSNBC’s Time & Again, in which he states that all six Star Wars films shall be released on DVD around 2005/2006. I suspect that they will then be encoded with the newer 5.1, or maybe by that time an even better surround format. I wanted to know what the present audio format is for the Star Wars: Special Edition Trilogy, now on videocassette? Nowhere on the box does it indicate how these history-making films are encoded. I can tell you from personal experience by going to see them again in the theatre, that since they have been re-mastered using the THX process, all three films sounded and looked awesome! As I said earlier however, they did not indicate what their audio tracks were encoded with (i.e., DTS®, Dolby® Digital or SDDS®), and for that matter, to the best of my recollection, neither did The Phantom Menace, and I saw that eight times.
Jeff McDermott, Staten Island, New York
Research Editor Michael Coate Comments:
The VHS editions of the Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition are encoded in Dolby Surround. They contain the matrixed Lt-Rt (Left Total-Right Total) versions of the 1997 re-mastered soundtracks. Ideally, all software should be appropriately labeled. Unfortunately, studios seem to deal with this on a title-by-title basis. Presently, the VHS format is not capable of carrying digital sound, therefore, discrete 5.1-channel versions of movie soundtracks are limited to the LaserDisc and DVD formats. One problem, however, is that none of the Star Wars films are presently available (legally) on DVD, and the LaserDisc editions have been discontinued (though you might be able to locate a set on Internet auction sites). The LaserDisc set issued in 1997 was encoded in Dolby Digital 5.1. The 1997 theatrical re-releases of the three original Star Wars films were issued in 35mm (except for a single 70mm blow-up made for Norway of Star Wars with a DTS 5.1 discrete soundtrack) and encoded with Dolby Digital, DTS and SDDS soundtracks, and each format was listed in the end credits of the movies. I’m unsure how the films were advertised across the nation, but the Los Angeles Times ads placed by 20th Century Fox did not identify specific digital sound formats, but rather, “six-track digital sound.” It is the responsibility of each theatre’s management and staff to properly advertise their presentations. The majority of the prints issued during the original theatrical releases for the three films were 35mm Dolby Stereo (Lt-Rt with A-type noise reduction). Mono prints were also made for at least the original Star Wars, as well as 70mm six-track Dolby Stereo (left, center, right, surround, plus “baby boom” LFE-format 42 in projectionists lingo) prints for all three movies. The original films were mixed more than once, and what movie-goers heard depended on what type of print they saw and when and where they saw them. Aside from the obvious sonic differences, subtle differences also existed between the 35mm and 70mm soundtracks of each movie, such as an occasional line of dialogue that floats in and out of various versions, plus different sound effects and certain music cues (a future article will detail these differences). Most of the variations are reflected in the revised, re-mastered soundtracks. The 1997 soundtracks were a re-mastering effort comprised of the existing mixes plus additional revisions made to them. As for The Phantom Menace, it was released with 35mm prints encoded with DTS, Dolby Digital and SDDS. The SDDS soundtrack was 8 channels, and all of the soundtracks were EX-encoded. The DTS, Dolby Digital and SDDS logos appeared in the end credits, though “Surround EX” was absent from the Dolby Digital logo. Most newspapers advertised specific presentations. There were also screenings in a couple of cities that ran for a few weeks utilizing digital projection. These presentations used an uncompressed discrete PCM digital soundtrack. Hopefully, the answers you were seeking were somewhere in my reply. It may be some time before any of the Star Wars movies become available on DVD. So if you are anxious to own them in 5.1-channel editions in the meantime, then I would suggest hunting down the 1997 LaserDiscs. All previous LaserDiscs and videocassettes of the Star Wars movies featured Dolby Surround soundtracks. By the way, The Phantom Menace is being made available in April on LaserDisc (complete with the Dolby Digital Surround EX soundtrack) in Japan.
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