Just brought the Encore PAL version of (1984) sci-fi thriller Runaway directed by Michael Crichton of Westworld Coma and few more. Have been watching Coma (1978) for several nights on and off haven't watched Westworld in 2 months now as I watched it for 6 times a night for over a week.

Runaway (1984) [EE 1026]

Hopeful Runaway will come on in square pizza box with some left-over. At £1.99 p+p £3.00 I'm not going to crumble its still sealed http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Laserdisc-Run ... _500wt_715

Score again by Jerry Goldsmith I think its the second outing with Michael Crichton? Jerry also scored Coma.

I would prefer the NTSC letterbox version but can't see it going cheap enough I'm too tight today to pay £24.99.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RUNAWAY-WIDES ... _500wt_949

Plus the NTSC has a Low probability of running-away with possible laser-rot.
Runaway (1984) [73736]

Its been posted today so should turn up on Monday?

Michael Crichton is a favorite of mine.
westworld is also a favorite film of mine, i have read some of his books which are pretty good.
sphear is not so great but the older ones so far are.

i think he was a great director for film, he would give you want you wanted to see.
it almost has a feel of TV films when you watch his stuff.

i liked runaway but not one of his best, it's funny to watch now since all the electronics are so outdated.
but still a fun film.

Maybe Michael Crichton should have directed Sphere I rather like the film.

Got, Coma (1978) playing on the video projector for the first time since I brought last year or and watched over a 100 times.

I've only watched Runaway once on VHS in the mid 80's and not sure if I seen it broadcasted on TV?
Its also second time he's had Tom Selleck of "Magnum, P.I" he ended being bided on Coma for body organs.

I remember the ending of Runaway with mad guy that had those creepy machines attacking Tom, then they attacked him, was it by sticking in probes into face with electricity?

I'm wondering if I will get into the film and watch a 100 times or more? I also noticed the running time of his, films, are under 2hours.

the bad guy is gene simmons of KISS, which is sort of funny.

i don't know about sphere, the book was not one of his best, now Congo was a good book but missed some in the film, i don't think he directed it?

unfortunatly i have only seen parts of coma, i will have to get that one and watch it.
andromeda strain is a pretty good film, i have the book in line to read but haven't done that yet.
just finished some casino royale and now on to some other Sci-Fi.
i may do Crichton next but do like the Conan book i'm reading

Yeah Congo (1995) got on THX Laserdisc and R2 DVD. The Andromeda Strain very good and has cameo appearance by Michael Crichton as a surgeon and I noticed on Google image possibly in Jurassic Park

I remember seeing Coma in the theater as a kid and it scared the hell out of me - plus, for years I thought that people in comas were hung by strings! I now love the film - its creepy and effective. I have the original pan and scan MGM LaserDisc release - its still sealed and since I have the film on DVD in beautiful widescreen, I haven't opened the LD and don't plan to. I got the disc for a dollar from Pioneer when they had their shut down sale - I also got many discs that had been out of print for years, such as Missing, Halloween II, Raggedy Man, The Border, The Sting II, etc. It was amazing to find out Pioneer had those titles all those years yet people were seeking them out because they had been dropped from their studios catalogs and were listed as out of print.

I liked Sphere - well, about 75% of it. Up until the end it's very interesting and keeps the viewers attention. Then the ending takes a total left turn and destroys all that has come before. Such a disappointment.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000341/

Looker (1981) saw this on VHS around mid 80's and rather liked it and didn't even know it was directed by Michael Crichton its also in scope, I think it only showed this on the end credits the rest of the film was panned and scanned.

Seen other works from his, novels like
The 13th Warrior R2 rented DVD
The Lost World: Jurassic Park THX laserdisc dts seen once at the cinema it was dreadful
Twister THX CAV laserdisc seen too many times at the cinema
Disclosure seen at the cinema once in scope
Rising Sun on rented VHS P/S
Jurassic Park R2 DVD seen also at the cinema
The First Great Train Robbery seen a small bit of it on TV years ago

Somehow I prefer Coma in mono it doesn't draw too much listening distraction attention it allows me to focus on the story and the mono mix is good from Foley to effects to score and clear dialouge.

Westworld being stereo matrix is okay its not over-loud easy to follow the story.

Jurassic Park its a fail in my books now, now that Universal butchered it with dtsHDMA 7.1 and I have no interest in buying much less shoplifting. Steven Spielberg can keep it! Its funny how I used to enjoy it for sound and now its in the lower than low grade in my books its TOO DAMN NOISY!

The 13th Warrior: this was an interesting one to to read, i think the book is sort of better than the movie, but the movie was fun.

Jurassic Park: O.K. book, good read but i like some of his other stuff better.

The First Great Train Robbery: i have this in line to read, i look forward to it since the film was fun, haven't seen it in years.

the terminal man, i have this book also but want to see the film, don't really like George Segal but what can you do?

I have the BD of Jurassic Park but haven't listened to it too closely - what are its problems, specifically? I've always held on to my DTS LaserDisc because it's the only release to have the exact mix used on the theatrical DTS CD-ROM's.

Disconnect all LCR wires or if you have set-up like mine and can mute any given channel and monitor it then if not (just undo all LCR wires) and listen to only the four-zone surrounds chances are that is where the difference can be heard.

Switch the AVR to down-mix it back to 2 zone surround listen to scene then repeat the scene again up-mixing it back to 4-zone surround. Also listen with sidewall surrounds disconnected and listen to the stereo rear back. Oh how that term gives me want to vomit up! Just listen I bet the rear back is hardly used unlike the sidewall surrounds.

Would the rear back only carry sound effects or both M/E, like most other 7.1 mixes I've listened to Super8 is dead boring overrated Dolby 7.1 its rubbish! The rear back is not artistically used some sounds just don't sound convincing enough with Ben Burtt throwing in the same boring recycled, cliché sound effects again and again that have had sly modification to fool people.


Its funny how when surrounds with typical 70mm is to go fully around the cinemas side and back walls, split in two halves.

I bet Dolby or someone could have sussed out to use a Dolby CP55 with 70mm on its CP200 as an EX decoder in the mid 80's to place the centre phantom on the back wall.

Today with home cinema the format codes can’t allow a common AVR to play all the surrounds sidewall and back with regular or discrete mono/stereo surrounds, I can its easy to wire up so it can be switched to run at least 3 different types depending on the film?

Just checked the expected delivery date which should be Wednesday or Friday this week.

Panalogic used their matrix decoder starting back in 1993 in Australia to create 3 surround channels for Jurassic Park and Casper. That prior use is why I was always surprised that Dolby and Lucasfilm got a patent on Surround EX, since it was so obvious and already had prior art.

SMART Devices had, for years, been recommending the use of Circle Surround to encode additional channels and overhead surrounds long before Surround EX too. Kintek had as well, using DBX's surround decoding system that generated 3 surround channels.

I use 2 SMART Circle Surround EX decoders to create additional channels in the front to duplicate the 5 front channel layout of 70mm Todd-AO. Films like The Sound Of Music and Patton sound incredible, and fully discrete. SMART was blowing out their professional Surround EX decoders for $50 so I got two of them to create my 5 channel front system. I can screen DVD's of films like the original roadshow of Aroumd The World In 80 Days with 5 front channels and 3 surround channels (since the surround is EX encoded on the DVD) to match the original Todd AO Cinestage presentation. And since the DVD is in true 30fps Todd AO, it also looks fantastic.

I had an idea thou a bit vague it was in the back of my mind around 1989, but since no AC-3 dts for the home existed at the time for experimenting? I didn't know of the Panalogic, I've heard of the company and Kintek as a local cinema used Kintek matrix for its JBL sound system at the Regent centre theatre/cinema in the late 80's to around I guess mid 90's when they installed a Dolby CP500.

I've heard of the smart model also, it goes cheap on eBay today.

I spoke to Dolby labs New York around 1998 about using a Dolby pro-logic decoder with my soon to buy Millennium dts 2.4.6 decoder that I still have, just don't use it no more.

I chatted for a good 25mins between 9pm and 9.25pm to a Kris or Chris Kristofferson and he seemed interested in my idea as I had no clue or idea that its been tried before in the early 90's? I didn't have access to internet at home at the time.

Next think I knew its published in magazine about almost a year later announcing STAR WARS episode 1 in Dolby digital surround-EX. Which of course is striped down modified Dolby CP45 that I use in the rack for EX use, as and when.

It seems like the postman came early? Well its here and its going to be Dolby Stereo film of the day, I hope.

Packing is okay fine no dents to package looks like it was handled well (except for no FRAGILE stickers). At least it was warped in bubble wrap. I like the sound of popping bubble wrap in the morning.











Its still sealed but not for long.

Image is nice and sharp for Laserdisc, digital freeze on side 1 is okay. Side 2 CAV still frame is a bit jittery the frame flickers I think its a minor issue. Daylight scenes are clear as to is the rest of the photography.

The bright lights on, the floodlights on chapter 5 time 9m.47s with blue background doesn’t create the usual green cyan around the whites so all in not a bad transfer.

Dolby Stereo mix is average fine with helicopter flyby pan on chapter 3, time 5m.13s/16s.
Jerry Goldsmith’s score is different with keyboard synth http://www.filmtracks.com/titles/runaway.html

The opening score made me pause the film, for a moment as it was a bit on the toppy bright side. So I changed the HF crossover with roll off starting at 2.03KHz -6db which made it better for playback.

I think most of the dialogue is production with very little ADR.





Gene Simmons overseeing Laserdisc transfer at the plant. My cat was sniffing around he smells PAL no not the dog food PAL maybe he likes Gene Simmons.

Laserdisc is nicely chaptered with 36 for feature and 37 for theatrical trailer.

The robot throwing the cermet bags off the building on chapter 11, time 26m.48s/51s the impacts sound a little compressed when landing on stage right with slight half pan or crosstalk into centre.

G.W. Bailey as the chief seems a bit typecast as a police officer, still its funny on chapter 10, time 24m.51s "A$$holes" reminds me of Police Academy.

Gene Simmons facial expressions are funny at times slack. "Damn evil son of b!tch" gives the guy false money.


Jugs bugs detected.

I like the science technology for the film. It doesn’t say what year the film, takes place in.

Image is flickery of the roll-bars on the CRT short clip of watching RUNAWAY (1984) last night on Encore PAL laserdisc, wonderful transfer. The video here will have high contrast as I couldn't balance it down on the camera, maybe except reduce the contrast on the CRT TV might work? Well maybe next time.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=101 ... =2&theater



I couldn't find a way to reduce the contrast or find camera setting to capture the small white shade in the above lighting in the scene as there was smaller trace of fine shaded lighting but the camera is over-doing the contrast level a small tiny bit too high, maybe next time I'll reduce the CRT contrast and see if that works better.