DVDs are 480i, the parent comment described far higher quality than DVD.

DVDs support progressive scan and most movies were encoded in 480p; the player then just sent half the picture on one field and the other half on the other field.

Your point still stand though, these modern 4k editions are far higher quality.

The DVD releases of the original theatrical versions of Star Wars were encoded in 480i non-anamorphic, drawn from analog video masters intended for Laserdisc, which employed an early version of DNR that created a bunch of ugly temporal ghosting artifacts. Blown up onto a modern display it looks really bad.

I watched the PAL edition and I don't remember those artifacts, but it was a million years ago so my memory could be wrong xD

The PAL release was an NTSC>PAL conversion, so throw upscaling artifacts onto the pile as well. e: Actually thinking back on it, it may not even have been PAL at all, but 480i/60hz Region 2/4.

There's a good chance you watched it on a CRT given that even on a flat panel LCD fom the late 2000s the low vertical resolution was quite noticeable (effectively ~272p, not counting deinterlacing artifacts from it being sourced from a video master). It looked somewhat acceptable in that context but aged very quickly once CRTs started becoming obsolete.

I remembered that I borrowed the collection from my uncle and he still has it. I will ask him for pictures of the box, maybe it was the "updated" editions.

The re-issues used the same masters.

Yes, there was the official DVD release that included the original versions as a bonus. But the quality can not compare to 4K77.