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 Post subject: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 14 Nov 2017, 09:28 
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Evening, all.

With a quick search of the forum, there seems to be numerous topics talking about how to get a great signal from your LD player. The problem is that most of these threads seem in jump into the deep end talking about external signal processing, etc.

I thought it would be nice to start by asking a few basic questions about TV settings and one or two about these external boxes everyone are talking about on here. Hopefully this will also help other new comers (like me) on the forum looking for extremely straight forward and easy to follow answers.

With that long intro, here are my questions:

1) What are your TV video settings you would recommend for Laserdisc or analog video in general?

As of now, I have selected the ‘Movie’ mode on my VIZIO and tweaked a few settings. I started with turning both the noise reduction and sharpening to max then I turned down the contrast a bit as I was told that helps. There was also a setting for ‘Adaptive Luma’ that I shut off as the noise is much more visible with it on (I assume it does something with contrast). Beyond there, I’m mostly lost on ideal settings. That being said it looks much better than when I had it set to ‘Vivid’ - that was a noise nightmare.

2) Is an external upscaling device needed if the television has the function?

This one is quite straight forward. My TV takes the low-resolution image and automatically stretches it for the 42” display. Everything seems good. Why the need for an external device? Will I get a better result? What exactly would look ‘better’?

3) Lastly, are there any other suggestions for the best Laserdisc quality?

I was hoping that simply plugging in my device and adjusting the settings appropriately would give the best image, but people seem to talk about external processing units, something called decombing (slight idea what that does), etc. Are these devices needed? Do they truly make a big difference?

Again, thanks for all the help!
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 14 Nov 2017, 11:13 
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I think everyone finds their own answer depending on their equipment and how much they enjoy chasing the dream of perfect picture quality.

If your TV has a decent comb filter on the composite in (which most recent TVs do, surprisingly) and it's got decent zoom controls and picture settings then I imagine for most people that's enough.

Others want to squeeze out every detail possible from LD using equipment that can cost 1000s each. The results can be pretty stunning.

I'm somewhere in the middle. My new 4K TV has a pretty great comb filter on the composite in and some great image quality controls but it's built in scaling/deinterlacing just aren't as good as my AV receiver which has a pretty meaty Marvell Qdeo upscaler built in. The Marvell upscaler gives a really nice analog looking picture when upscaling laserdisc, but my TVs upscaling looks like early digital video.

It sounds like you're pretty happy with your current set up so my only recommendation would be to try and tune the settings using colour and pluge bars. You can find them on many discs already, I think every Criterion laserdisc has them at the end. It's a first step into improving LD picture quality but I think it's the most important. Here's a really useful link on how to use colour bars (https://www.videouniversity.com/article ... to-use-em/).

I'd recommend trying to leave noise reduction and sharpening off or min if possible as they can add some really nasty artefacts and can lead to some really non-analog looking images. I found I was able to eliminate a lot of picture noise with careful tuning of the contrast controls, leaving the detail in the picture unharmed by noise reduction.

Of course laserdisc being analog you've got to keep in mind that "ideal" picture settings vary from disc to disc, player to player, TV to TV, etc, and that's before you get into NTSC/PAL.

Good luck with the first step down the rabbit hole and welcome to the forum : )
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 15 Nov 2017, 02:32 
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Thanks for the extensive collection of information!

I figured that, like with most hobbies, there would be a point where money would merely meet the law of diminishing returns. I would say that I’m in the middle group as are you.

I do plan on picking up a better player in the near future (see my other forum post), but calibrating the TV is my current goal. Sadly, despite having a nice small collection, none of the discs are from Criterion yet so I will need to try and pick one up for the calibration bars.

Your comment on noise reduction does confuse me though. It seems to work quite well and I thought great players like the D704 had the NR technology built-in and were heavily utilized by enthusiasts.

Good to know that my built-in video scaler is most likely good enough - I partially assumed that most chips in more modern TVs would be fine.

I also did find this link on Laserdisc quality which helped with a number of my questions.

http://www.mindspring.com/~laserguru/digitalage.html

Thanks again!
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 15 Nov 2017, 02:38 
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Only real thing I can give advice on is.
1st buy a TV that you can return if you can't adjust the image to what you like.
2nd make sure that the image is pleasing to YOUR eye only, others don't count unless they are in the room.
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 15 Nov 2017, 10:47 
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rein-o wrote:
2nd make sure that the image is pleasing to YOUR eye only, others don't count unless they are in the room.


This is the best piece of advice you'll get on this matter. If you're happy with how it looks then don't change it :) The same goes for the noise reduction tip. I find noise reduction to be really distracting, but that's just the noise reduction options available on my TV and AV amp, and all noise reduction systems are not equal. I'd generally avoid using any picture settings on the player itself your TV will have much better controls.

I do still recommend calibrating your TV, both for LD and other formats. AVForums tend to have decent general settings for most TVs in their reviews so it's a good place to start. It'll give you a good round about base to start from without calibration discs.

As for LD I noticed you have Aliens: Special Widescreen Collector's Edition (1986) (Uncut) [1504-85] in your collection. I don't have this disc but it sounds like it contains colour bars at the end.

My knowledge on this is far from extensive, but I'm always tweaking with my setup trying to see if I can get any extra improvements.
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 15 Nov 2017, 17:15 
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hippiedalek wrote:
As for LD I noticed you have Aliens: Special Widescreen Collector's Edition (1986) (Uncut) [1504-85] in your collection. I don't have this disc but it sounds like it contains colour bars at the end.


You’re the best! Absolutely right. Just calibrated the display as best as I could using the Aliens disc.

The color bars apparently allow fine calibration of contrast and brightness. Seems I can’t do fine color adjustment without a ‘blue mode’ or filter for my TV though. Unless anyone knows otherwise.

Really glad just to have contrast and brightness set correctly. Now just playing around with DNR and sharpness. :thumbup:
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 15 Nov 2017, 18:54 
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I found setting the contrast and brightness to be the biggest breakthrough when I was first experimenting with LD picture quality. Remember that USA discs are mastered to a different black level than Japanese and PAL discs so if you watch a lot of them it's worth working out separate settings for each.

Out of interest now that you've got brightness and contrast set up have you tried turning off noise reduction? I found that getting the right contrast level reduced most noise in the picture to a tolerable level without scrubbing out the detail and losing the analog look.

I've never gone as far as using a blue filter, but I think they are commonly available with calibration DVDs etc.
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 15 Nov 2017, 20:15 
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Yeah, I can see a huge difference with just the contrast and the brightness levels.

I still feel as though the video looks a bit better with the digital noise reduction. It definitely makes the image look a bit blurry in areas, but without there is just so much static.

I also think that my player probably has a lot to do with it. I can definitely see chroma occurring on the screen. That is why I am searching for a better player in another thread that I posted.
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 15 Nov 2017, 21:07 
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Sounds good. You've taken your first step into a larger world. Enjoy : )
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 16 Nov 2017, 20:34 
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marcham93 wrote:
Yeah, I can see a huge difference with just the contrast and the brightness levels.

I still feel as though the video looks a bit better with the digital noise reduction. It definitely makes the image look a bit blurry in areas, but without there is just so much static.

I also think that my player probably has a lot to do with it. I can definitely see chroma occurring on the screen. That is why I am searching for a better player in another thread that I posted.


Get a copy of Video Essentials, calibration is the first step in improving your picture.

And yes that is an all analog (somewhat noisy) player you have there...
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 17 Nov 2017, 02:02 
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pbiancardi wrote:
marcham93 wrote:
And yes that is an all analog (somewhat noisy) player you have there...


Yeah, it's my first player. Picked it up at a consignment shop for around $40.

Excited to see how a better player can do with noise and chroma.
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 17 Nov 2017, 15:42 
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Believe me if you go from an S104 to a D704, the difference will be astounding.

I went from a Sony MDP-A3 (squarely average player--even before the picture started going bad) to a DVL-919 (still average player, but better than the Sony) to a CLD-79 and I couldn't believe the difference just in that jump.
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 Post subject: Re: Back to Basics - What are the Ideal TV Settings for LD?
PostPosted: 17 Nov 2017, 15:55 
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Always nice to see a bit of love for the 919 : )

I use the DVL-919E and I'm more than happy with it. The DVL series gets a bad reputation but as far as I can tell the 919E is just as good as the CLD-D925 which has a great reputation. There are slight differences between the 919 and the European DVL 919E so there may be a difference in picture quality between the two but I'm not sure.
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