blam1 wrote:
There are actually 2 versions of the 20th Century Fox (1982) release, one in CLV and one in CAA. The CAA edition and the CBS/Fox (1983) release are the same. The later release from 1992 is the same except they added Digital Sound.
Thanks for info blam1!
When doing my comparisons, I think I found some other differences between '82 and '92 releases. The actual panning and scanning seems to differ, while some of the shots seem slightly more squeezed in the '92 release (the sequence where the droids depart in the escape pod show off both of these differences).
Apparently the movie was transferred a second time for the original CAV release (as converting the time-compressed version to CAV was causing technical issues) and I think that second transfer was later time-compressed yet again for the '92 release... it at least looks that way from the comparisons I've done. They also managed to pitch correct the sound, which may have been a fairly new thing from them to be able to do at the time in the digital domain (everyone sounds just a little Smurfy in the '82 release... and the original time-compressed release of Empire is even worse).
Either way, it looks like I'll have to eventually get the '83 CBS/Fox release. The completest in me just won't let it go.