When are Darth, Indy coming to Blu-ray?

Blu-ray may have won the HD format battle, but it won't have a prayer against DVD until some of the biggest movies debut on Blu-ray—and in the case of such blockbusters as "Star Wars," it's looking like a long wait. Find out when some of the biggest movie sagas of all time are going Blu.

Original "Star Wars" Trilogy
The greatest of all movie franchises (at the box office, at least) has always taken its sweet time to arrive on video, regardless of the format. The first Beta and VHS tapes of the original "Star Wars" weren't released until 1982, five years after Luke & company first blasted into theaters and two years after video rentals went (relatively) mainstream. George Lucas famously stalled on releasing the original trilogy on DVD until he felt the format had "matured"—which turned out to be 2004, a full seven years after the DVD format launched. (The dreadful "Phantom Menace" debuted on DVD in September 2001, but c'mon—that barely counts.)

So, what's the scoop for Blu-ray? Well, the last official word from Lucasfilm was way back in May 2007:

Lucasfilm Ltd. has no plans to release any of the "Star Wars" movies on Blu-ray or HD DVD. Listings on Amazon.com (which has placeholders up for "Star Wars" and other movies not yet on Blu-ray) or any other Web site are purely speculative and erroneous.

And that's been pretty much it, beyond the occasional unsubstantiated rumor. As Yoda might say: "Difficult to see, the future is."

My guess? Given how fussy Lucas is about new video formats, I'd say 2010, at the earliest—that is, if Blu-ray hasn't given way to HD downloads by then.

Original "Indiana Jones" trilogy
Probably the next biggest gotta-have series on home video (well, for my generation, at least), the Indiana Jones saga was another DVD holdout—although when it finally arrived as a four-disc set in 2003, it still beat the older "Star Wars" trilogy to DVD by a year.

Anyway, there's been no official word from Lucasfilm or Paramount about Indy on Blu-ray, although a pair of Spanish DVD Web sites (via The Digital Bits; scroll down to the 5/13/08 entry) claim that the Indiana Jones "Quadrilogy" will go Blu on October 29. Of course, that's purely a rumor, although October would be just about the right time frame for "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" to hit home video. No confirmation yet from Paramount (and we probably won't get one until "Skull" has played out in theaters).

It's also worth noting that the Steven Spielberg-directed "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is already available on Blu-ray, leading many to believe that Spielberg is considerably more Blu-friendly than that old stick-in-the-mud, George Lucas (sorry, George).

My guess: If "Crystal Skull" weren't part of the equation, I'd have said that 2009 looked like a safe bet, but with "Skull" looking at a fall 2008 release on DVD and probably Blu-ray as well...who knows.

The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy
This massive fantasy epic would be a natural for Blu-ray—and indeed, if you ask me, the current DVD editions of LOTR don't have the best of transfers.

Anyway, here's the good news: Peter Jackson himself just confirmed that he's working on a Blu-ray version of the trilogy.

The bad news? Jackson says that Frodo, Gandalf, or Gollum probably won't go Blu until 2009, at the earliest.

The "Matrix" trilogy
When the Blu-ray/HD DVD battle was still raging, HD DVD fanboys delighted in taunting their Blu buddies with their HD DVD copies of the "Matrix" movies. "Matrix" studio Warner Brothers had promised that a Blu-ray version of the Matrix films would come eventually, but...it never quite happened, even after Warners stopped supporting HD DVD and went exclusively Blu.

Warners has since promised that Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity will jack in to Blu-ray sometime this year, although the studio has yet to nail down a specific date.

Transformers
Here's another "nyah, nyah!" title that HD DVD users lorded over the Blu-ray camp. And indeed, "Transformers" is a movie that begs to be watched in HD—in fact, there's little point in watching it at all unless it's in HD, if you ask me.

Anyway, Paramount has just confirmed that Optimus Prime, Megatron and the like will go Blu on September 2, for a whopping $39.98. Mark your calendars.

Lawrence of Arabia
Well, I'm dying for this one, at least—and word is that Lawrence and Sherif Ali might ride into the Blu desert sometime in 2009. Nothing official, however.

Titanic
Your heart will go on—on DVD, anyway. There's been almost no chatter about Titanic on Blu-ray, sad to say. Funny, given that the Titanic-on-DVD watch was a big deal back in 1998.

And here are some of the other big movies that I haven't heard a peep about, Blu-ray-wise: Citizen Kane, Vertigo (or any Hitchcock title, for that matter), Apocalypse Now, and Gone With the Wind.

I'm only scratching the surface, of course. What movies are you dying to see on Blu-ray? Put the titles in the comments below, and I'll do some digging for you.