Star Wars: Harmy's Despecialized Edition (MKV, AVCHD, BD-25)

Original, unmodified versions of episodes IV-VI Star Wars Despecialized Edition. Available in MKV, AVCHD, and BD-25.

Born out of frustrated fans’ failed attempts to convince George Lucas to release the unaltered theatrical versions of the Star Wars Original Trilogy films (Episodes IV, V, & VI), the online forum community built around a popular petition hosted at OriginalTrilogy.com turned to discussion of fan edits as a means to obtain their shared goal without Lucas’ help. Eventually, a fan restoration project led by Harmy as the primary video editor resulted in the what he called the Despecialized Editions.

Since the initial release of the Despecialized Edition (“DE” or “DEED”) of Star Wars [“Episode IV: A New Hope”] in 2011, Harmy has since published DE versions of The Empire Strike Back [Episode V, “ESB”] and Return of the Jedi [Episode VI, “ROTJ”], and continues to release landmark updates to each of these restored films.


Each of the DE films includes a combination of three major projects: video, audio, and subtitles.

The video itself was painstakingly restored from various sources, including the official Blu-rays, bonus DVDs, Digital TV broadcasts, film scans, and more. All these were gathered from fans around the world, then compiled and underwent massive fine-tuning by Harmy and others.

The audio features availability in numerous streams. From 5.1 DTS-HD-MA surround, to 1.0 mono mix to reproduce the feel of the original theatrical showing, to various dubs in a multitude of languages, the sound choices bundled with Harmy’s DE allows the films’ sound to accommodate any preference. Most audio work was contributed by hairy_hen and Belbucus.

Finally, Harmy’s DE also includes & supports subtitles courtesy of Project Threepio led by CatBus. This ongoing fan project provides high-quality subtitles for Star Wars films in their unaltered forms in order to broaden the appeal of fan preservation efforts beyond the English-speaking world