There were several widescreen and fullscreen VHS tapes available, but due to the limited resolution of VHS tapes and the lack of digital stereo or surround sound tracks, I opted not to include them.

For this breakdown, we will only be looking at Laserdiscs, DVDs, and Blu Rays. Now, onto the official home video releases. Uncompressed, they look excellent, and for those who have no drive to own copies of the Original Trilogy, these are likely to be the best looking copies of the original, unaltered movies for the near future. In this article, I will break down each cut of the trilogy, and take a look at each version that is available to purchase on home video, weighing the pros and cons of each one.īecause this article is about owning, and collecting the various releases of the Star Wars films, I will only discuss Harmy’s Despecialized Editions of the original three movies very briefly – his work in recreating the unaltered original trilogy is astounding, although limited by the combination of 1993 standard definition material, and various other sources which limits the final product to a resolution of 720p.

There are essentially 4 different cuts of the original Star Wars trilogy that are available to you as a consumer. The Best Way to Own the Original Star Wars Trilogy: