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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 23 Jan 2013, 10:53 
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hippiedalek wrote:
jazz2future wrote:
Just got my Criterion edition of the Game.....

Holy crap it looks great!!!! I thought my version was good, but this is remarkable!!

Yeah, the Criterion version of the Game is a beaut, probably the best in my collection. I can see why it goes for so much now.


One of my favourites too. Criterion still have the rights and recently released it on blu ray and sure you've got improved picture and sound but wow the blu packaging isn't a patch on that beautiful gatefold. Cost me a few dollars that one but hey it's got a director approved signature sticker on it...
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 23 Jan 2013, 12:44 
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tim_p wrote:
hippiedalek wrote:
jazz2future wrote:
Criterion still have the rights and recently released it on blu ray and sure you've got improved picture and sound but wow the blu packaging isn't a patch on that beautiful gatefold.

Yeah, I don't like the new blu ray artwork at all, just doesn't fit the film at all in my opinion.

I love the collage on the inside of the gatefold of the laserdisc, all those little bits and pieces from the film, really nice touch:

Image

A while ago on twitter I challenged my followers to guess what film I was watching from a series of "twitpics," some of which included pictures taken of the screen with my phone. Obviously they don't fully show off the quality of the disc as they're just phone pics but I thought I'd add them here to give an idea:

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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 24 Jan 2013, 11:32 
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Can anyone tell me how animation fairs on Laserdisc in terms of picture quality? Say films from Pixar for instance like Toy Story and A Bug's Life etc?
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 24 Jan 2013, 15:15 
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alien wrote:
Can anyone tell me how animation fairs on Laserdisc in terms of picture quality? Say films from Pixar for instance like Toy Story and A Bug's Life etc?

They perform with great panache! I have a huge collection of Disney and Studio Ghibli Laserdiscs, and almost all of the mid to late 90s releases are near if not reference quality!
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2013, 02:08 
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flcl4evr wrote:
alien wrote:
Can anyone tell me how animation fairs on Laserdisc in terms of picture quality? Say films from Pixar for instance like Toy Story and A Bug's Life etc?

They perform with great panache! I have a huge collection of Disney and Studio Ghibli Laserdiscs, and almost all of the mid to late 90s releases are near if not reference quality!

Awesome! Naturally being animation, I assumed as much. However it does put me in a bit of a spot because I have the opportunity to buy Toy Story on LD for a good price, however I think it would look absolutely amazing on Blu-Ray. So I'm stuck about buying it for a niche format that I really enjoy as a hobby (Laserdisc), or watching it the best way known to man (Blu-Ray). :think:

If you have any screenshots of animation on LD feel free to post. I'd love to see them even if they are simply camera-pointing-at-TV.
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2013, 04:32 
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alien wrote:
flcl4evr wrote:
alien wrote:
Can anyone tell me how animation fairs on Laserdisc in terms of picture quality? Say films from Pixar for instance like Toy Story and A Bug's Life etc?

They perform with great panache! I have a huge collection of Disney and Studio Ghibli Laserdiscs, and almost all of the mid to late 90s releases are near if not reference quality!

Awesome! Naturally being animation, I assumed as much. However it does put me in a bit of a spot because I have the opportunity to buy Toy Story on LD for a good price, however I think it would look absolutely amazing on Blu-Ray. So I'm stuck about buying it for a niche format that I really enjoy as a hobby (Laserdisc), or watching it the best way known to man (Blu-Ray). :think:

If you have any screenshots of animation on LD feel free to post. I'd love to see them even if they are simply camera-pointing-at-TV.

I would, but now that I run HDTV through a line doubler, I'm not 100% positive that it can really be a good representation of what LD has to offer
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2013, 05:29 
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flcl4evr

Your saying that running the LD on a modern HD TV is holding Laserdisc back in terms of quality? Because for the record, I play my Laserdiscs on my 32" HD TV as well and have gotten terrific results. Probably better then running it via CRT because of the bigger screen and picture enhancement settings available on my HD TV. SO if anything it would be giving me a closer representation to what I would get (that is if I am understanding you correctly.) :)
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2013, 05:42 
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If you like Toy Story a lot I can't think of any reason to not buy the BR. If you are an LD fan then buy both, but the BR is going to kick its but.

As for HDTVs and LDs, it REALLY depends on the TV. Most of them totally ruin LD. A few Pioneer plasmas work miracles though. My Sony XBR960 is pretty great but my friend's Pioneer is even better, IMO.
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2013, 05:57 
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signofzeta wrote:
If you like Toy Story a lot I can't think of any reason to not buy the BR. If you are an LD fan then buy both, but the BR is going to kick its but.

As for HDTVs and LDs, it REALLY depends on the TV. Most of them totally ruin LD. A few Pioneer plasmas work miracles though. My Sony XBR960 is pretty great but my friend's Pioneer is even better, IMO.

Yeah I'm leaning towards the Blu-Ray because its so obviously technically superior to LD and DVD obviously, its just I wouldn't mind buying a animation for LD and using it as a show piece as I have yet to played a cartoon on LD yet and seen it for myself.

You see I see that thrown around a lot (about most HD TV's making LD look like s**t) but I disagree. I have watched both very old discs from the early 80's and newer discs from the mid/late 90's/2000 and both generations of LD look good to me. The latter discs being a massive improvement in quality and understandably so, its the same with any format. I don't question some of those Pioneer plasmas being better then say my 32" LCD, but it doesn't mean the LCD playback is bad, at least not in my opinion. I keep DNR off (both on the player itself and on my HDTV, sharpness set appropriately, contrast and colours look fine for the time being and my black levels have improved lots after a recent tweak.)

The only complaint and its a small one at that, is since the majority of actual widescreen Laserdiscs are letterboxed, the black bars appear thick and the picture is ever slightly stretched, but I don't notice it much anyway. I can't afford the few selected tittles of anamorphic enhanced LD's but its good to know they exist.
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 01 Feb 2013, 04:36 
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned Men in Black. Just watched the Pioneer pressing last night and the image quality was excellent!
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 02 Feb 2013, 01:46 
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alien wrote:
signofzeta wrote:
If you like Toy Story a lot I can't think of any reason to not buy the BR. If you are an LD fan then buy both, but the BR is going to kick its but.

As for HDTVs and LDs, it REALLY depends on the TV. Most of them totally ruin LD. A few Pioneer plasmas work miracles though. My Sony XBR960 is pretty great but my friend's Pioneer is even better, IMO.

Yeah I'm leaning towards the Blu-Ray because its so obviously technically superior to LD and DVD obviously, its just I wouldn't mind buying a animation for LD and using it as a show piece as I have yet to played a cartoon on LD yet and seen it for myself.

You see I see that thrown around a lot (about most HD TV's making LD look like s**t) but I disagree. I have watched both very old discs from the early 80's and newer discs from the mid/late 90's/2000 and both generations of LD look good to me. The latter discs being a massive improvement in quality and understandably so, its the same with any format. I don't question some of those Pioneer plasmas being better then say my 32" LCD, but it doesn't mean the LCD playback is bad, at least not in my opinion. I keep DNR off (both on the player itself and on my HDTV, sharpness set appropriately, contrast and colours look fine for the time being and my black levels have improved lots after a recent tweak.)

The only complaint and its a small one at that, is since the majority of actual widescreen Laserdiscs are letterboxed, the black bars appear thick and the picture is ever slightly stretched, but I don't notice it much anyway. I can't afford the few selected tittles of anamorphic enhanced LD's but its good to know they exist.


If the image appears stretched then you have your set in the wrong mode - the image should NEVER appear stretched - it amazes me that people accept this as normal now. Set it to the "zoom" mode which is specifically for letterboxed NTSC films - every set has the mode even if it's called something else.
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 02 Feb 2013, 02:29 
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disclord wrote:
alien wrote:
signofzeta wrote:
If you like Toy Story a lot I can't think of any reason to not buy the BR. If you are an LD fan then buy both, but the BR is going to kick its but.

As for HDTVs and LDs, it REALLY depends on the TV. Most of them totally ruin LD. A few Pioneer plasmas work miracles though. My Sony XBR960 is pretty great but my friend's Pioneer is even better, IMO.

Yeah I'm leaning towards the Blu-Ray because its so obviously technically superior to LD and DVD obviously, its just I wouldn't mind buying a animation for LD and using it as a show piece as I have yet to played a cartoon on LD yet and seen it for myself.

You see I see that thrown around a lot (about most HD TV's making LD look like s**t) but I disagree. I have watched both very old discs from the early 80's and newer discs from the mid/late 90's/2000 and both generations of LD look good to me. The latter discs being a massive improvement in quality and understandably so, its the same with any format. I don't question some of those Pioneer plasmas being better then say my 32" LCD, but it doesn't mean the LCD playback is bad, at least not in my opinion. I keep DNR off (both on the player itself and on my HDTV, sharpness set appropriately, contrast and colours look fine for the time being and my black levels have improved lots after a recent tweak.)

The only complaint and its a small one at that, is since the majority of actual widescreen Laserdiscs are letterboxed, the black bars appear thick and the picture is ever slightly stretched, but I don't notice it much anyway. I can't afford the few selected tittles of anamorphic enhanced LD's but its good to know they exist.


If the image appears stretched then you have your set in the wrong mode - the image should NEVER appear stretched - it amazes me that people accept this as normal now. Set it to the "zoom" mode which is specifically for letterboxed NTSC films - every set has the mode even if it's called something else.

My LCD doesn't actuelly have any zoom modes at all, at least not that I know of. It only has 2 different aspect ratio options. 4:3 mode and 16:9 mode. 4:3 mode applies black bars on all sides of the image for a letterbox presentation which is normal I know, but its not my preference. I would zoom in if I could, but obviously I can't if the feature isn't available to me.
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 05 Feb 2013, 09:49 
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Blade Runner Criterion CLV looks really great!
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 05 Feb 2013, 13:53 
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seroxx wrote:
Blade Runner Criterion CLV looks really great!


I sold mine. It had too much aliasing and it put me to sleep every time I watched it. I kept the book though - that doesn't put me to sleep :)
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 05 Feb 2013, 16:01 
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gumbyandpals wrote:
seroxx wrote:
Blade Runner Criterion CLV looks really great!


I sold mine. It had too much aliasing and it put me to sleep every time I watched it. I kept the book though - that doesn't put me to sleep :)


The Criterion Blade Runner is also over-matted, giving the wrong aspect ratio and screwing up Ridley Scotts compositions.

An LD I just received yesterday, and that totally blew me away with its quality, is Liza Live At Radio City Music Hall - it was shot in 16:9 using Sony's HDVS Hi-Vision cameras and the sound was encoded in Shure's Stereosurround process, and it's an amazing looking/sounding disc. The big shocker was its pressed by DADC and didn't have a single drop out or speckle - its literally perfect, like a Denon disc - of course, it was released in 1992 or so, before DADC fell apart, so i'm sure that's why it looks so good. In any case, it's amazing - the downconversion to NTSC from the 1125i HD original has no artifacts and it looks like it has much more resolution than standard NTSC. It's one of the few Stereosurround encoded titles on LD to actually carry the Shure Stereosurround logo on the jacket, and the sound is mixed for an "in the audience" perspective - it sounds so good it could stand alone as a CD release. It was shot at the same time the NHK was starting their experimental 8 hours-per-day MUSE-E Hi-Vision direct broadcast satellite transmissions - they started on 11/25/91 (get it 1125?) - so I wonder if it was originally done for Hi-Vision broadcast? Although MUSE receivers and Hi-Vision televisions were VERY expensive at the time, MUSE-to-NTSC (so-called M/N) converters sold like crazy due to their low cost and the fact that the down-converted MUSE broadcast was of much higher quality than a standard NTSC broadcast - so the Japanese snapped them up, with something like 30% of Japanese households owning an M/N converter within the first year of the experimental broadcasts. As a side-note, I've never known how well ClearVision and Wide-ClearVision sold - and we're there any LaserDisc's ever offered that were encoded in ClearVision?
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 07 Feb 2013, 19:33 
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Last night I watched 12 Monkeys (1995) [43208]. This movie looks AMAZING, especially the dream sequences. I'm pretty sure the other versions have the same video, but I can't personally verify this. Chroma noise is nearly imperceptible during %90 of the movie.

The DTS is also really good, and, unlike back in the day, its much easier now for most people to decode DTS than it is for them to get Dolby Digital from an LD so every LD fan with a player that has a digital out should have this movie.

No special features whatsoever, its just a movie. :)

I'm going to rank this one even higher that Goldeneye: Special Edition (1995) [ML105544]. I confess this comes as a relief to me since I wasn't really comfortable saying that my best LD was Goldeneye when the movie is basically garbage. 12 Monkeys on the other hand is legendary.

Another nice looking LD is They Might Be Giants: The Videos 1986-1989 (1986) [ID7920EN]. Quality varies from video to video with They'll Need a Crane being the most impressive.
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 08 Feb 2013, 02:20 
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That's a surprising one signofzeta. Because in terms of picture quality, I always thought the DVD and especially the Blu-Ray looked really flat.
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 08 Feb 2013, 06:33 
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alien wrote:
That's a surprising one signofzeta. Because in terms of picture quality, I always thought the DVD and especially the Blu-Ray looked really flat.


I'm not sure what flat means. Its not a super colorful movie to begin with so its never going to pop like Austin Powers or anything, and if it did...something's wrong!

I'm basically loving it because its extremely low on noise and very clear. The sound is incredible too with lots of cool ambient stuff going on without every going too crazy into the territory of moronic bass waves and nails on chalkboard/knife sharpening noises and such, the overabundance of which have become standard with newer movies.
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 08 Feb 2013, 07:11 
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signofzeta wrote:
alien wrote:
That's a surprising one signofzeta. Because in terms of picture quality, I always thought the DVD and especially the Blu-Ray looked really flat.


I'm not sure what flat means. Its not a super colorful movie to begin with so its never going to pop like Austin Powers or anything, and if it did...something's wrong!

I'm basically loving it because its extremely low on noise and very clear. The sound is incredible too with lots of cool ambient stuff going on without every going too crazy into the territory of moronic bass waves and nails on chalkboard/knife sharpening noises and such, the overabundance of which have become standard with newer movies.

That's true about the colours and being that the cinematography has a very stylized look with many different filters, the Blu-Ray (for Blu-Ray standards) looks quite soft and hazy with contrast either being way over blown or too low. Overall that's what I mean by flat. Still is better then the Laserdisc and DVD on pure resolution alone.

obviously I haven't seen the LD, but if its good for LD standards (just like Austin Powers & Goldeneye are as well) while incidentally their Blu-Ray counterparts are pretty poor for Blu-Ray standards, then that's fine..
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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
PostPosted: 14 Feb 2013, 09:59 
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signofzeta wrote:
Last night I watched 12 Monkeys (1995) [43208]. This movie looks AMAZING, especially the dream sequences. I'm pretty sure the other versions have the same video, but I can't personally verify this. Chroma noise is nearly imperceptible during %90 of the movie.


12 Monkeys was actually the first movie to ever be published on DVD in germany.
And I remember there was a huge article in a big home cinema magazine reviewing the DVD, and comparing it to the LD.
The conclusion of that article was, that LD was from that day onward a dead format with bad picture quality and flat audio.
That magazine also stopped reviewing LD's from that issue onward.
So I wonder now... if the picture quality of this LD has demonstration qualities...
What was this magazines article all about?
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