Site created 12/15/97.		page created: 5/22/00 Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Version B) Back to the Bootleg Index If you thought Version A of this film was bad, this bootleg's even worse. Once again, it was mastered prior to the Japanese laserdisc, but this time from a source of much higher quality. What makes it bad, is that the letterboxed widescreen video is sped up to about twice normal speed, making the picture jitter and jump and the audio sound like chipmunks in space. The disc opens with the Dolby Digital "City" trailer (in 5.1), which seems to be standard fare for pirates. Then the movie starts right up from the Fox fanfare... albeit at twice normal speed. There are 6 chapter stops (selectable from the static menus you see below). And although the disc lets you select 5.1 or 2.0 surround sound... all you get is 2.0. There is no 5.1 on the disc. To me, this looks like it was mastered using a very good quality Asian exhibition print of the film. Chinese subtitles are burned onto the print, but there are none in the bars. As you can see above, the disc's surface printing is based on that of the soundtrack CD. You can see screen shots from the disc below. Keep in mind that when resizing them for the Internet, Photoshop tends to minimize imperfections in the picture, so the images may make the video look better than it is. The video is twice normal speed and is completely unwatchable. Back to the Bootleg Index
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