George Lucas has finally announced the arrival of all 6 Star Wars films on Blu-ray, to be available as a box set and set for a fall 2011 release. The good news is that there will be “extensive special features,” including deleted scenes and documentary featurettes. The bad news is that Episodes IV, V, and VI will not be the original versions. Han shoots first? Not in high def he won’t.

Speaking to the New York Times, Lucas explained his reasoning for not including the originals in the high-def set:

Mr. Lucas said that to release the original versions of these films on Blu-ray was “kind of an oxymoron because the quality of the original is not very good.”

“You have to go through and do a whole restoration on it, and you have to do that digitally,” he added. “It’s a very, very expensive process to do it. So when we did the transfer to digital, we only transferred really the upgraded version.”

Too expensive? Yeah, cause Lucas is really hurting for cash these days.

Lucas made the announcement at the Star Wars Celebration V festival, where he showed off a legendary cut scene showing Luke building a lightsaber and stowing it in R2D2:

We know what will be on a lot of Christmas lists in 2011.

Star Wars fans waiting for the movies to finally come to Blu-ray might not have to wait too much longer. The Digital Bits reports that a Lucasfilm rep at the 2010 comic con in Chicago said the company has been working on the Blu-ray versions of the disks, with one of the delays being the sheer amount of extras the company “keeps finding.” Via The Digital Bits:

Lucasfilm’s Steve Sansweet has reportedly confirmed, during a panel today at the C2E2 comic convention in Chicago, that the company is now working on a Blu-ray Disc box set of all six Star Wars films loaded with extras, for release “in the not too distant future.” We’re awaiting any kind of official statement from Lucasfilm – one MAY appear on Star Wars.com in the coming days. Nonetheless, MANY people who were in the panel began Tweeting reports of the news almost the moment the words left Sansweet’s mouth. IGN has also reported the news with an actual quote from Sansweet: “We have been at work for a couple of years working on – I won’t call it the Ultimate Set because we keep finding stuff – but, a very full set of all six movies on Blu-ray with lots of extra material. We’re finding all kinds of scenes from dailies that have never been seen before. Beyond all of those things that you know about… there are some real treasures.” There is no other official information at this time, but we’ll post additional details when and if they come in.

Wedding Singer ($9.99)

Young Guns ($9.99)

Blazing Saddles ($8.99)

Terminator ($9.99)

Unfortunately, they’ve split the sales up, so you have to search around to find some of the $9.99. Check out the links below.

Amazon $9.99 Blu-ray Sale: Link1. Link 2

Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series will be available as a Blu-ray box set on July 28, 2009 for $350 suggested retail ($209 preorder price from Amazon.com). The 20-disc box set will include all 4.5 seasons of Battlestar but unfortunately leaves out the 10 webisodes that were included on the DVD version.

Blu-ray Review has a good breakdown of the set’s extras.

Walmart has a rollback deal on the Magnavox NB530MGX Blu-ray player for only $98–the cheapest price we’ve seen yet on a Blu-ray player. The deal can only be found in-store, so you might want to call ahead to check for availability.

There’s a new entrant into the bargain Blu-ray player field. Meijer has introduced the Curtis Mathes Blu-ray player for $99 (that’s base price, not sale price). It has 1080p output, DVD upconverting, Dolby Digital audio, and an Ethernet port for service (which makes it a Profile 1.1 player since it can’t connect to the Internet).

No professional reviews yet, but the reviews at Meijer.com give it an average of 4.5 stars.

Link:

Meijer.com: Curtis Mathes Blu-ray Player for $99

If you haven’t started watching Lost, this is the way to do it. Seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4 are now available on Blu-ray. Each season features audio commentaries as well as tons of other goodies as well. Season 5 will be available in December. Each season is $50.

Link:

Lost on Blu-ray, Seasons 1-5 at Amazon.com

Not to outdone by Walmart, Best Buy is offering their entry-level Blu-ray player, the Insignia NS-2BRDVD, for $129. However, unlike Walmart’s $128 Magnavox, this is advertised as a sale price.

Link:

Insignia NS-2BRDVD Blu-ray player for $129 at Best Buy

CNET review of the Insignia BS-2BRDVD Blu-ray player

Bargain Blu-ray players just received a new record low price with Walmart selling the Magnavox NB530MGX Profile 1.1 player at $128 as the base “non-sale” price. The online store is showing it as sold out, but it’s widely available in Walmart brick and mortar stores as well. Enter your zip code into the Find a Store search box to find the nearest to you.

This new low pricing leads me to think that Blu-ray players are going to go for $99 on Black Friday for 2009.

Links:

Magnavox NB530MGX $128 at Walmart.com

Save on Rollback Electronics at Walmart.com!

CNET recently took a look at the Insignia NS-2BRDVD Blu-ray player and gave it a rating of 5.8 out of 10 (2.5 out of 4 stars). The Insignia is a bargain Profile 1.1 player with a starting price under $200. A firmware upgrade coming in March 2009 will make it a Profile 2.0 player.

Although the CNET review summary states that the NS-2BRDVD delivered a solid 1080p HD picture, in fact, it failed most of their image-quality testing. For instance, the player could not depict all the resolution of a text pattern provided by Silicon Optix’s HQV Blu-ray test suite. It also performed poorly in two other picture-quality tests.

Some other characteristics CNET did not like were poor DVD playback quality, slow Blu-ray disc loading, and lack of onboard decodng for Dolby TrueHD DTS-HD.

Links

CNET review of the Insignia NS-2BRDVD