If you’ve read my blog before then you’ll probably have seen my Star Wars rant. If you didn’t, basically, I wanted to watch Star Wars, I am a geek after all, but there was no way to watch it in HD at will, via the internet, legally and I was right pissed off.

Anyway, today marks a big day, the Star Wars Blu-rays have come out! Hell, I even held the box in my hand at lunch time in Morrisons. It’s 100% real. So why am I here blogging about why I’m NOT watching it this very second?

Well, where to start. First, I have to admit, I think I’m over physical copies. I have a huge amount of DVD’s in my living room. Several hundred, but really all they do is take up room. I probably haven’t watched any of them for years, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them haven’t been played for the best part of 10 years. So as I look at my growing blu-ray collection I feel it happening all over again. I love the blu-ray quality, but I’m over having a disc and a box. Recently having switched to Mac, having all my browser settings in the cloud, I was setup in second, having all my music with Spotify in the cloud, again, I was setup in seconds. Recently an update to the comics app on my iPad wiped all the downloads I’d already got… but they where all stored on the cloud for re-downloading and on my fast connection it was a very quick and painless process. With the iCloud coming in a few weeks, buying it on iTunes and having it re-downloadable would of been the perfect solution right?

My DVD collection, busy collecting dust.

My DVD collection, busy collecting dust.

No, for me iTunes still isn’t the answer. HD films generally cost more than the blu-ray, and are at much lower quality… and Star Wars isn’t on iTunes. The same goes for all the other big download services, maybe on Zune/Xbox the quality thing isn’t an issue, I did watch Harry Potter 7 though it recently and was pleasantly surprised by the blu-ray like 1080p quality.

But all in this isn’t why I’m not watching Star Wars. So what next?

In the last few weeks as certain press people have been given access to the blu-rays, people started to notice George Lucas has been up to his old tricks. These are “Special” “Special editions”. A CG Yoda in Episode 1, no real problem with that (that turd needs all the polishing it can get), improving the brightness of Lighsabers in Episode 6, so they don’t look like they are going through each other… fine, not a biggie. Adding dialogue to Darth Vader, in probably the most pivotable moments of cinema history? Han still shooting last?

Someone needs to tell Lucas to stop. The scene with the added dialogue is the worst for me, as it was one of my favourite scenes and being near the end of the entire saga I’m going to be transfixed on that moment coming up throughout.

So am I being a hardcore geek and boycotting these versions of the films I love because George Lucas has ruined my childhood memories?

No. The reason why I’m not watching Star Wars right now is, I’m a bit skint until the end of the month and the day I’m getting paid I’m picking up the tarnished versions, in a format I really don’t want because I’m a geek and it’s still Star Wars.

And Evil old man Lucas will probably collect from me again when a proper Digital version is available.

Ashley.