Well Starwars.com finally announced today:

"On October 16, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will begin the worldwide release of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace on DVD."

  Well I for one say "cool". I mean what else can you really say? We all know that George Lucas has the worlds worst looking beard, it looks like it's actually eating his face, but he sure makes some cool flicks. Sure I'd rather the DVD first out of the gates to be Star Wars itself or The Empire Strikes Back or.. well you get the point. This at least signals to us DVD/SW fans that the other films will finally come out on DVD at some point before we DIE. I'm 32 years old and we're talking about a movie I saw in grade fucking ONE in 1977. Lucas has to know that his fanbase is having grandchildren. Doesn't he? A couple of generations have passed and we're still handing out cash to Lucasfilm every year like he's a buddy down on his luck, and we love it! There's still two more movies to go. Go figure.

  Anyway... I'm super excited about the news. I've read a couple of things on a few websites about this and it looks as though they are really goinna give us a bang for our buck, and make the wait worthwhile. For example, The DVD version will contain a bunch o' documentaries. Including one created from 600 fricken hours of footage taken over the four-year process of creating Phantom Menace. Someone at lucasfilm is sitting in a chair right now going "So you're telling me I wasted FOUR years of my life creating 600 hours of film and you're goinna make a one hour documentary out of it?, fuck you guys I quit". But for the rest of us watching the DVD, it should be pretty exciting.

 I have to say, the feature I am most excited in seeing are the se7en new scenes, for a total of 40 minutes. The scenes were shot against blue screen but never finished. But check it out kids, Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects studio Lucas owns [he needs something to fall back on in case the Star Wars franchise stops making money], went back and did a complete post-production job on the scenes. This resulted in almost a year of work, since ILM is currently busy with the next Star Wars film, due for release next year. So we're going to get 40 minutes of new footage with all new special effects. That should be cool. Hopefully it wont have anything to do with Jar Jar, but whatever. He's funny when I'm drunk.. I think.
 

 Here is what the website starwars.com has to say the DVD actually contains:

 

• The Phantom Menace, mastered by THX for superior sound and picture quality, presented in Anamorphic Widescreen and Dolby 5.1 Surround EX (English), Dolby 2.0 Surround (English and Spanish), and Dolby 2.0 Surround (French, for Canadian release)
• Audio commentary by Writer-Director George Lucas; Producer Rick McCallum; Co-Editor and Sound Designer Ben Burtt; Visual Effects Supervisors Scott Squires, John Knoll and Dennis Muren; and Animation Supervisor Rob Coleman, offering personal insights into the making of the film
• Seven never-before-seen deleted scenes with full visual effects completed just for the DVD release
• "The Beginning" -- an all-new hour-long documentary culled from over 600 hours of footage offering unprecedented access inside Lucasfilm and ILM during the making of Episode I
• Multi-angle storyboard to animatic to finished film feature, that lets you flip through the various phases of development of key action sequences
• Five behind-the-scenes featurettes exploring The Phantom Menace's storyline, designs, costumes, visual effects and fight scenes
• The popular "Duel of the Fates" music video that debuted in 1999
• All 12 parts of the Lynne's Diaries, the web documentaries that first appeared here at starwars.com
• Galleries of theatrical posters, print campaign, and never-before-scene production photos
• Downloaded by millions from starwars.com, the original theatrical teaser and launch trailers, plus seven TV spots including the "tone poems"
   

The two-disc set is priced at $ 29.98 in the U.S. and $ 41.98 in Canada.

Keep checking starwars.com for more updates on this upcoming release. Cause this is about as much free hype I'm goinna give Lucas. I've already given him about $700 bucks and 250 hours of my life.