It's actually interesting to see the movie with those colors, having been conditioned with the poor quality GOUT and seeing the badly colored DVD & Blu-Ray for so long.

I watched this using the Movie viewer that comes with Microsoft's latest gift to the world, Windows 10, and noticed there are 21 audio tracks. The one named "untitled" is the music score by itself. No level adjustments, just the music at full volume.

If you've watched every variation of A New Hope a gazillion times like me, you might try watching it again with just this audio track. It's a different experience. What I found most interesting are the scenes for which there is no music. You can imagine the task of John Williams and George Lucas at the spotting session deciding which scenes needed music and which did not. And you can imagine given the full volume of the music score in this track how it sounded during the recording session as John Williams would glance at the movie playback to synchronize his conducting the London Symphony Orchestra for each scene.

Interestingly what would at first seem an obvious place to have dramatic music would be during the lightsaber duel. But music is only at the very beginning at the very end. But it's appropriate - so the audience focuses on the action and the dialog. There is no need for music to augment those scenes.

And transitioning from that period of musical silence, Ben's "death" is made all the more dramatic, harkened by a single pluck of a string, into a soaring musical crescendo in perhaps the movie's most emotional moment. Luke's "No!!!" and Leia's "Luke it's too late!" just wouldn't have been as dramatic without the music backing it.

Good stuff! Looking forward to hear what Johnny has prepared for us in the new TFA score.

Would be interesting to get this on Blu-Ray (for the sound) or even just DVD so I can view it on my TV instead of on my computer. Though I still wish Disney and Fox would decide to release the original movies like this - similar to what Ridley Scott does with his movies. Makes no sense not to.

I believe it was Ben Burtt who gave the suggestion of not having music during the lightsaber duel due to the sound of the sabers being so "melodic" and creating a sense of drama that could be drowned out by adding music. Don't remember if it was in the feature Empire of Dreams that's on the special disc in the dvd box release from some years back or some other interview or audio commentary.

The Team Negative1 35mm restoration effort has concluded and now they are working on the final tweaks and additions such as potentially adding multiple audio and subtitle options. They have a downloadable .mkv file out already, but I can't seem to find the link.

Cool, let us know when you find the link.

By the way the VIDEO_TS files can be burned to a DVD, just Google search a how-to. I plan to do that at some point to be able to watch it on HDTV.

Needless to say I wish we can get the theatrical versions of the original Star Wars trilogy on Blu-ray. Some people got their hands on an original 35MM print of Star Wars and they're cleaning it up and releasing it as a "silver screen edition". I just wish that we didn't have to download it because it takes forever.

Was this "silver screen edition" released? I've never even heard about something like this becoming available.

Yes, but you must do your own research about the various restoration projects. Some older projects went silent a couple of years ago due to too much attention.