A Saga on Home Video

 

The definitive guide to U.S. Star Wars home video releases has returned!

In this three-volume second edition of A Saga on Home Video, author Nathan P. Butler presents a fan’s guide to U.S. Star Wars home video releases. Each volume presents a narrative history and extensive examination of Star Wars home video releases, beginning in Vol. 1 with the live action, theatrical films in their home formats through 2015, followed by exploring the live action, theatrical films in the Disney era (2016 – 2021) in Vol. 2, and concluding with coverage of content beyond the live action, theatrical films (e.g. animated series, streaming series, behind-the-scenes material, etc.) in Vol. 3. Featuring over 1,500 color images across the three volumes, this is the definitive guide to American Star Wars home video releases.

A Saga on Home Video is a labor of love, born from my own interest in collecting Star Wars home video releases, primarily from the United States but often also from elsewhere in the world when foreign releases might shed light on differences in how the U.S. market and other markets vary in their approach to home media.

The book’s first edition launched in 2017 in time for the 40th anniversary of the original film’s theatrical release. That early version of the book covered releases through the home video launch of Rogue One in 2017 and included over 300 grayscale pictures (to keep production costs down) from my own collection to provide an extensive narrative history of the Star Wars home video genre in the U.S.

Of course, the saga didn’t just come to a dead stop in mid-2017. Releases kept coming, and I kept finding exceptionally obscure variants and items from the U.S. market (e.g. the Force Tech Training mini-DVD). As such, work on a second edition began. After years of work, this new edition, released in paperback (with  Kindle and hardcover to follow), launched in Nov. 2021 as a massive, three-volume set with approximately 1,000 pages total and an astounding 1,500+ images, now all in full color.

ASOHV presents a narrative history of Star Wars home video releases in America. It is not a simple product guide, nor a catalog. Instead, its nearly 1,000 combined pages tells the story of how the saga developed over time from its initial first dips into home viewing with Super 8 film reels and the Kenner Star Wars Movie Viewer all the way through releases on Ultra HD Blu-ray.

The three-volume guide is now available as a print replica eBook on Kindle, in paperback (with standard color interior), and in “luxury option” hardback (with premium color interior and a printed, case laminate cover).

If you would care to join in the discussion of Star Wars home media releases, be sure to join Justin Berger’s Facebook group (Star Wars Home Video), where I also act as a moderator.

Note: With any work this enormous, there are bound to be typos or other minor errata, despite having gone through to proof the text many, many times. See the bottom section of this page for any known errata.

1st Edition (2017)

The 1st Edition of the guide, published May 2, 2017, is no longer in print.

2nd Edition Errata

Volume I

  • There’s an extra “also” (the first one should be ignored) in the photo caption at the end of the introduction. (p. 10)
  • The Star Wars Movie Viewer was indeed released in 1977, as were its first two “refill” cassettes. However, Danger at the Cantina and Assault on Death Star, the last two cassettes, were actually released in 1978. (p. 18 – 19)
  • More of a layout frustration than errata: The second line of the photo captions for the Special Widescreen Edition LaserDisc releases of ANH and TESB carried over to a second page instead of staying with the photo and first line of caption. (p. 78 – 79)
  • Typo: Text reads, “in then foreground” instead of “in the foreground.” (p. 137)

Volume II

  • None identified so far

Volume III

  • I neglected to note that the Dairylea mail-away Droids cassette, which includes the episode “Tail of the Roon Comets” is missing the word “the” on the cover and label of the item. (p. 34 – 37)
  • For some reason, I seem to have gotten it into my head that Ahsoka appears twice on disc labels in The Clone Wars: Seasons 1 – 5 Collector’s Edition on DVD and once on Blu-ray, yet she actually only appears once on DVD and not at all on Blu-ray. It’s right there in the pictures, yet the text and caption are inaccurate. It’s like I locked into that “fact” (which wasn’t correct) and never questioned it. (p. 152 – 153)
  • The end date for the title of Ch. 17 (Behind the Curtain) should probably really be 2021, not 2020, due to the last minute inclusion of Behind the Helmet, even though that was a Disney+ item, not a physical release. (p. 239 and related tables of contents)
  • The date in the caption for the Japanese The Making of Star Wars as Told by C-3PO and R2-D2/SPF FX: The Empire Strikes Back VHD release should be 1984, not 1982. It is correct in the text but not in the caption. (p. 247)
  • The date in the sidebar header for Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars is missing the “, 2020” to also note its Disney+ release date. (p. 315)
  • The elaborate screener for The Legacy Revealed is identified as an “Emmy Screener” in the caption, which should omit the word “Emmy” entirely. (p. 323)