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Posted: 25 Oct 2019, 16:46
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I think you are a little confused. DVDO was owned by Anchor Bay Technologies for a while and at that era they made consumer video processors. All DVDO products use ABT chips for this purpose. Faroudja also handled their processing in house. So all their products use FLi chips.
Pms (crystalio) and lumagen use of the shelf parts and build their products. That’s why you will see different parts on different products.
All these were talked about and discussed many times. I will repeat the summary one more time here.
Lumagen 2124/44 and Crystalio II vps-3300/3800 are the only video processors that will give you the next league performance. Your image will significantly improve. Even with less than 20/20 vision eyes you can tell the difference. Lumagen 2144 is virtually noise and artifact free. It is much purer and truer to source. CII can be adjusted to be noticeably sharper in the expanse of artifacts. It is older and buggier. The hardware is too old for anything remotely modern like Blu-rays.
Other video processors(including older Lumagen) will need 20/20 vision to tell subtle differences if any. You can use other processors to improve certain areas but not all like the above two. Lumagen processors will give you the absolute best scaling and color correction (if you have tools to calibrate). Dvdo vp20 and onwards will give you the best progressive scan image on video material but terrible in scaling.
All Faroudja and other video processors should be avoided. All dvdo vp20 and older should be avoided. They are simply too antiquated. They don’t do any processing right except maybe aspect ratio management. With these not only you won’t improve your image but actually you will lose resolution. They simply bob and weave deinterlacing lines. This will work on static images but will cause loss of resolution on motion. Faroudja shut down way before per pixel adaptive deinterlacing so none of the Faroudja stuff has decent processing per today’s standards. Dvdo vp 20 and higher got abt102 chip which has per pixel adaptive deinterlacing. (Optional on vp20 and 30, std on 50). |
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Posted: 25 Oct 2019, 17:03
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| These plans have been abandoned. No future firmware updates are expected for any Lumagen product except their current 4xxxx series. |
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Posted: 07 Dec 2019, 05:28
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The future will be different from the past, of course, I based my opinion on this fact:)
I agree that if the silicon had imperfections, it would fail within the first year or two but 25+ years is uncharted territory for solid state electronics. We don’t know how much more we can expect them to operate without fail. I do hope we get another 25 years.
Caps will surely die soon. A capacitor is a super battery. It charges and discharges. Resistors also drift away from their ratings over time. These are cheap and relatively easy to replace. No concerns here as you already mentioned. |
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Posted: 17 Dec 2019, 07:18
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Video Quality:
How did it compare at its launch: up to 5 points
How did it compare at its retirement: up to 5 points
Audio Quality:
How did it compare at its launch: up to 5 points
How did it compare at its retirement: up to 5 points
Content:
Number of titles: up to 5 points
Market penetration: up to 5 points
Packaging:
Package Sturdiness: up to 3 points
Package on Standard releases: up to 3 points
Packaging on Box Sets, Limited and Special Editions: up to 4 points
Laserdiscs:
Video Quality: 9/10
It saturated the existing display technology of the time. It didn’t require a new breed of higher resolution displays but LD had video information for every megahertz bandwidth for your TV. Kept itself well up to date with introduction or letterboxed releases and Squeezed (Anamorphic) releases although only a handful were released.
Audio Quality: 10/10
It had digital audio before any digital music disc format. Analog tracks are still comparable to today’s standards. Kept itself well up to date with additions of AC-3, DTS and Dolby Surround EX. It could potentially have up to 4 separate audio language tracks. It’s audio potential was well realized and utilized for the most part with vast number of AC-3 releases and commentary tracks.
Content: 5/10
LD had a massive library of content but very poor market penetration.
Packaging: 8/10
jackets are easy to damage. They don’t age well unless kept in museum conditions. Also not entirely clear they protect the discs from rot and handling damage. They are visually stunning and most pleasing. Perhaps the only format you may want to collect even if you don’t care to watch the content.
Total: 32/40
D-Theater:
Video Quality: 9/10
Excellent video. Easily watchable today even on 8K TVs. There was nothing remotely close to its video quality during its entire run.(although very short).
Audio Quality: 9/10
Covered all of the major audio formats of its time. Although it could technically support it, there were never any commentary tracks or multi language titles (loses 1 point for this)
Content: 4/10
Very small selection of about 90 films but quality releases. Later formats HD-DVD and Blu-ray had way more than 90 titles released on their release year.
Packaging: 6/10
Very sturdy packaging, nice choice of theatrical posters on the cover arts for almost all releases. Literally zero box sets, special and limited edition packaging.
Total: 28/40
DVD:
Video Quality: 7/10
Only slightly better picture than LDs and significantly behind of later newer formats. Nevertheless digital video was considered remarkable and a technical achievement on the release.
Audio Quality: 6/10
It supported all audio formats of the time on release but significantly behind of later newer formats. Although it could technically have 5.1 in PCM but this was rarely utilized if ever.
Content: 10/10
Largest content library and the largest market share only rivaled by VHS.
Packaging: 8/10
Although it scored the same as LD, points came from Sturdiness and Collector’s edition box sets.
Total: 31/40
Blu-ray:
Video Quality: 9/10
Its pixel count saturated all existing TVs. You have a 1080p TV? You have 1080 progressive pixels on this disc to cover them all.
Audio Quality: 10/10
Supports every single audio format out there.
Content: 7/10
It has a very large library and keeps growing. Market penetration is still behind DVDs after well over 10 years.
Packaging: 8/10
Same as DVDs
Total: 34/40
4K UltraHD Blu-ray:
Video Quality: 10/10
First format you had to buy a new generation TV to be able to watch it.
Audio Quality: 10/10
Same as Blu-rays
Content: 5/10
Excellent choice of films and very good number of releases in only 3 years. Market share is likely shrinking or remains the same at best.
Packaging: 8/10
Same as DVDs. Some excellent limited edition sets (Don’t look now, Terminator 2 endoarm)
Total: 33/40
Hi-Vision Laserdisc:
Video Quality: 10/10
You had to buy a new generation TV to be able to watch these. Well ahead of its time.
Audio Quality: 8/10
Could technically have DTS and Ac-3 on the later releases.
Content: 3/10
Excellent choice of titles for a very small selection of 31 films. Other formats had hundreds of releases in their early few years compared to only 31 in 5 years for Hi-Vision LD. Market share literally zero point zero zero zero one.
Packaging: 9/10
Excellent packaging with the exception of Jumanji which came in a standard LD jacket. Very sturdy and protective digibook packaging on almost all titles. These were literally all special/limited edition releases but no crazy collector’s edition release with props and memorabilia.
Total: 30/40
VCD:
Video Quality: 1/10
Terrible video for any time.
Audio Quality: 1/10
Terrible audio period.
Content: 10/10
Virtually every film and much larger world wide market share than any other format.
Packaging: 5/5
Very protective but least interesting packaging. There might be some interesting box sets out there.
Total: 17/40
HD-DVD:
Video Quality: 9/10
Same as Blu-ray.
Audio Quality: 9/10
Same as Blu-ray except more release opted for lossy Dolby Digital Plus instead of lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA. Probably because of lesser storage capacity (30GB vs 50GB for BD) otherwise supported all audio formats
Content: 8/10
More impressive titles were coming out on HD-DVD and had more Collector’s edition sets (Forbidden Planet, Harry Potter Set). Very impressive (about) 400 titles in only 3 years. Initially it was outselling Blu-ray too until very last few months. Lost major studio support and suffered a very quick unexpected death.
Packaging: 8/10
Same as DVDs
Total: 34/40
VHS:
Video Quality: 5/10
it was half of the available TV resolution on its release and fell miserably behind towards the end. 5 /10 is more than fair.
Audio Quality: 6/10
Excellent audio for starters but well behind competition after only a few years.
Content: 10/10
Anyone to argue this?
Packaging: 8/10
Later plastic boxes are super sturdy but most had paper cases. Can have a very lovely art work and collectable visual for many. Super fancy collectors set with prop/memorabilia were perhaps realized well after it lost its dominance.
Total: 29/40
HD-VMD:
Video Quality: 8/10
Same resolution as Blu-rays and HD-DVDs but much lower bitrates. It was marketed a cheaper alternative to Blu-rays and HD-DVDs while the format war was going on.
Audio Quality: 2/10
It is not clear if the format had the rights to use other codecs but all releases seem to have lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. This only best VCD.
Content: 2/10
Nearly no films and no one has even heard of the format.
Packaging: 5/10
Same as Blu-rays. No known special editions.
Total: 17/40
Ranking:
Blu-ray: 34
HD-DVD: 34
4K UltraHD Blu-ray: 33
Laserdiscs: 32
DVD: 31
Hi-Vision Laserdisc: 30
VHS: 29
D-Theater: 28
HD-VMD: 17
VCD: 17 |
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Posted: 22 Dec 2019, 20:26
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Interesting to see the wide range of opinions here. I think the BD hate is overblown, where are the two guys that used to fight forper on that lol.
I am telling them if LD were still manufactured today they would be getting the same masters with the same orange and teal color timings. Rest assured that they would also implement forced warning and trailers into any new players. |
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Posted: 23 Dec 2019, 19:03
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Some notes:
Most Laserdiscs aren’t worth the cost of shipping.
The number of discs is determined by the running time. One hour per side with CLV discs, one half hour per side for CAV discs. A short movie may be one disc, a movie in CAV format may be as many as five sides.
Those thick plastic ziplock things, at least one ones I’ve see, can really mess up jackets pretty bad from my experience, especially if the owner liked to leave the jacket in there and just pull the disc in and out. I’d expect the opening edge of the jacket will be pretty dinged up.
The LDDB Top Ten is the last ten discs most people want. It represents what they already have and what the most common discs are. They WERE in demand, but now that there are enough LDs for everyone at super low prices nobody is going to pay much for T2 special edition anymore because they already have three copies.
Good luck. There must be an LD fan on Guam still.
Not related to this ad here but I love it when some people list “most are two disc special editions” for LDs :) |
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Posted: 25 Dec 2019, 23:44
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There is a somewhat scientific way you can calculate minimum difference between certain players. Image science foundation says average human eye can tell errors in color accuracy if the error is above %3. In other words if you have two TVs side by side, when you play the same material on both simultaneously and let’s say one of TVs colors are off by only %2 then they will look identical to you but once the color accuracies are off by %3 and above then you will be able to point them out. Now keep this in mind but also keep in mind we are more sensitive to certain colors and way less sensitive to others so this %3 is an average. On more sensitive colors we will likely pick up errors of %1 where as less sensitive ones perhaps even %7-8 will look the same. Nevertheless %3 is a good base line.
Now, can you tell a difference between a CLd- 50X and 60X? I will say most of you will say 60X models have slightly less noise. I will say then going from 5 series to 6 series is at least %3 improvement. I think a dvl-909 is somewhat on par with a 604. Let’s climb the ladder from here. 60x, 704, 97, s2, x0. I have 5 players of 5 different levels. I don’t think anyone will argue there are easily identifiable differences between these players. 5x %3 = %15 at least per this calculation. Also remember %3 is when you can start to see difference but this difference can be much greater. So I claim HLD-X0 is at least %15 better than a DVL-909 and this above is how I back my claim. %15 may sound small but in my opinion very significant. Especially since the LD medium has very limited resolution where every scan line and detail is needed. |
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Posted: 26 Dec 2019, 02:07
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I enjoy the show but I wouldn't say it's the best ever either. Probably top ten though in the 8-10 range. I actually read the books first as I am a pretty big reader. It's cliche to say they are better but it really is the case.
I am with you on your ranking. It really is good. It is a better show overall than Killjoys and Dark Matter (the other two heavy sci-fi shows in the air) but those two have much more likable characters. I don’t want to sound like complaining a lot though. I am grateful that we have these sci-fi shows. It was far worse a few years ago with nearly no heavy sci fi shows whatsoever. |
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Posted: 10 Jan 2020, 03:30
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| Jaws wins this one too. Comes with both CD and Book. The most complete home release ever. |
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Posted: 15 Jan 2020, 05:54
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| Just watched Gemini Man in 4K UHD Blu-ray. This is one of the two US 4K UHD releases with High Frame Rate (HFR), the other one is also an Ang Lee film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. It was shot in 3D 4K HDR HFR (120 FPS) which is the highest technical achievement in film so far. 4K UHD disc has this film in 2D 4K HDR HFS (60FPS), 3D 4K and 120FPS aren’t supported formats (no home video formats known to support these). I believe only a handful theaters showed these films in their respective format. So, how do I feel about the look of this film? I am not sure. It definitely has the soap opera look, you notice it within minutes of the film starts. It is also super sharp. In many scenes it felt like you were really there. I also own Billy Lynn and I felt that it was very suitable for HFR, I am not too sure on Gemini Man. I think it is something too new and I need to watch it again to develop any opinions on it. Overall, I liked the film. Excellent action scenes, perhaps “none others like it” type experience due to HFR. I would highly recommend this 4K UHD disc just for its technical merits alone but the film isn’t bad either, with some very good action scenes. |
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Posted: 15 Jan 2020, 06:38
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| Oh another note, after watching Gemini Man on 4K UHD BD I continued watching The Man in the High Castle on my Apple TV 4K in supposedly 4K HDR. Oh my, what a disappointment after coming from true 4K. Streaming 4K right after watching a 4K discs was like watching VHS after a Blu-ray. |
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Posted: 16 Jan 2020, 02:20
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Ld-S2 has a bnc output. In fact, the X0 is GR44 the enhanced universal soldier Van Damme and the S2 is Luc Deveraux.
Julien, welcome to the club. You have reached the LD nirvana! Having tried every possible player/video processor combinations under the sun, I can confidently tell you your X0 + 2144 is as good as it gets by a long margin. Enjoy them! |
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Posted: 23 Jan 2020, 23:37
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| There are two titles with Japanese audio and English LD-G. All other titles have English audio and English LD-G. |
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Posted: 29 Jan 2020, 12:38
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| Terminator Dark Fate last night. It wasn’t bad at all in my opinion. I thought it was going to be really really bad. Action scenes are well worthy of the Terminator franchise. Linda Hamilton was legit bad a**. I think the story has some issues but passable in my opinion. Arnold was good and some jokes made me laughing really really hard but they didn’t feel out of place. It is worth a watch. And I think it is far less irritating that other modern remakes and sequels. Is it a good terminator movie? No and that was expected (and unfair to ask). Terminator movies main wow factor was being pioneering and groundbreaking in many cinema techniques and special effects technology. Dark fate offers nothing new on these. Until the next technology revolution in cinema I doubt any terminator film have the same effect as the original two films. Same goes for Jurassic Park, Toy Story, Tron, and many others |
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Posted: 29 Jan 2020, 12:40
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| Started watching Fruits Basket with the wife. So far so good. |
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Posted: 07 Feb 2020, 23:20
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| I use the lightning port on my LD player for 6K. |
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Posted: 08 Feb 2020, 20:55
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Frankly if you want to maximise image quality this isn't the hobby for you, just buy it on Blu-ray. There is a reason why nobody makes new LaserDiscs any more after all! Most of us are here because we are interested in the format in some way, either due to the rare content, or the impressive special edition sets, or simply for the interest of seeing an old format in action.
Nope. I believe Laserdisc on a good setup often has the best image quality ever available for many titles.
I wouldn't say often. The majority of titles available on LD you'd probably be better off watching on Blu-ray or even DVD, if picture quality were your primary concern. Perhaps occasionally you will get transfers that overdo it with DVNR or screw up the colour timing; it happens (the fact that this happened to most of the Star Trek films annoys me a lot; but even then you can get earlier versions unsullied with these problems on DVD which are still therefore of higher picture quality than the LD). But I don't think this is anywhere near the majority of titles.
For example, the endless remasters of Macross: Do You Remember Love? , I have many of the DVD remasters but the best image is still the laserdisc Perfect CAV. It's literally perfect.
Also, sound. Sound is a big reason why Laserdisc is still the best format overall.
In terms of the stereo CD quality uncompressed audio, yeah, LD is pretty nice. But I don't think it's substantially nicer than Blu-ray these days. The problem of film soundtracks having their dynamic range compressed for home releases has largely gone away though I believe with Blu-ray players now having the option to automatically compress the soundtrack. And when it comes to surround sound setups, LD is no better than DVD or Blu-ray and infinitely harder to set up. Again, there might be occasional screw-up with the sound mix on individual titles, where some enterprising engineer think they know better than the original sound designers, but by and large these are in the minority.
In terms of things like animation, this is where LaserDisc is likely to shine due to the lack of DVNR, the problems with MPEG2 compression on DVDs not being great for animation, and the fact that most animation doesn't need to be particularly high resolution for your mind to be able to fill in the rest. I do enjoy watching The Lion King on LaserDisc though I never consciously noticed anything with regards to the picture quality; it's more because I own the beautiful CAV boxset release.
Don't get me wrong, I do love LD for many reasons, most explained in prior posts. But ultimately on today's TVs, unless your eyesight is particularly poor, 268 lines of horizontal resolution (for a 2.39:1 film on an NTSC LaserDisc) is not ideal for a live-action film heavy on impressive visuals. It was the best folks at home had in the 1990s, of course.
My vote is for DVD or Blu-ray too. There was an era you could buy a ton of LDs for $1 each. In that era we would call out any above $100 sale for a rare title absolutely ridiculous. That era is over. Even common titles are $10-20 and anything somewhat rare is automatically $100 or so. Now DVDs are dirty cheap. So are used Blu-rays. There aren’t really all that many exclusive to LD content, cut, and supplementaries as people think of. Most of those have been released and re-released on Blu-ray. Today there is less and less reasons to start collecting LDs beside nostalgia and high curiosity.
I have said it elsewhere before. Different color timing, DNR, near field mixes, these are all due to the era. If LD lived on, they would get the same treatment. On the technical side of things, this has been discussed a million times, LD does not have better picture than DVD or Blu-ray. Technical specifications easily tell you this and so are your eyes. |
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Posted: 11 Feb 2020, 01:13
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If you are buying generic non-branded or cheap cables, go for digital coaxial cable. Electrically there is no difference. Digital coax must be 75ohm and most manufacturers make sure of that.
Svideo is only useful for 2 or 3 players which have debatable quality comb filters. Component video doesn’t exist for LDs. Theta Voyager version 2 with the progressive scan output module is the only LD player in existence with a component output and its output isn’t that great. |
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Posted: 16 Feb 2020, 08:50
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| Be optimistic. 30 years is a long time. You can teach yourself how to fix LD players in that time frame. Hopefully ever faster advancing technology will get us to a point we can replicate all parts. If there is will there is always a way. |
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Posted: 17 Feb 2020, 17:21
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Just to chime in on keeping electronics on power or off while not in use. If you are using it daily or even a couple of times a week, it is always best to keep it plugged in and in standby. Use a decent surge suppressor with MOVs (very common and cheap) or even better with a micro processor controlled relays (rare and more expensive) with some common mode and differential mode filtering.
Unplugging and plugging power often will put a much larger stress on electronics. They will wear and tear much quicker. Minor voltage fluctuations and some transients are tolerated and filtered at the power stage of electronics. That’s why keeping it in standby is no a problem. As a matter of fact it is the preferred way as most electronics do not have hard power switches anymore. |
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Posted: 18 Feb 2020, 05:08
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| Y/c being combined is overrated. In signal processing applying the inverse of any function returns the original signal. In other-words you split y/c in a mediocre function with poor results then you recombine it the result is equal to your original signal. The issue is some players recombine in an analog circuit which introduces noise and some high end players recombine in digital which is non destructive. |
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Posted: 04 Mar 2020, 16:03
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| Theta Voyager for sure for the prettiest one. Most karaoke ones are ugly with the added buttons and mic inputs. I am not a fan of top loaders either. |
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Posted: 23 Apr 2020, 22:22
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| While I was researching a serial controller device and reading the serial protocol on the Lumagen Radiance series, I realized Radiance processors have the ability to take serial commands and display them on the screen. One could potentially serialize the display output from a LD-G decoder and/or a CC decoder and feed it into Radiance. |
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Posted: 27 Apr 2020, 05:42
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| S2 has a comparable s-video output as far as comb filter artifacts and 2D comb filter limitations go. S2 has much cleaner video from video noise. |
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Posted: 29 Apr 2020, 16:14
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Hey Forper,
Don't own my own home
Don't own a car (sold old 2nd hand piece of crap because worked hard enough to negotiate a company one)
Not married and no intention with partner of 18 years (marriage 'industry' is a crock off s**t for one thing....)
Guess I'm pretty lucky health-wise.
Some do it tougher than others. Life isn't fair. I have mates who got thrown out of home by bad parents for no good reason. They still don't go round wishing death on them in online forums. No matter how bad your parents were it makes you look bad too.
Apologies to substance for stirring this up.
That’s ok mate. Everyone is bored, tense and ready to get triggered right now. Everyone has their story. I have mine too. I don’t know the situation in Australia. I can not comment. But I am an immigrant in the US. I came here from a poor country and I came with near empty pockets. When people tell me how nice stuff I have, I tell them how much nicer stuff they would have been if I was born in this country. But then what do I know? Everyone has a different life regardless where they were born. Some are more fortunate than others. Maybe being an immigrant I was more motivated more driven. But I can give you an example, college took me 10 years to graduate and not because I was dumb but I never gave up. After I graduated, I realized it was useless and I didn’t need it but maybe I do? Maybe not the knowledge they teach but being able to say I have an engineering degree? Or that decade long suffer made me who I am. No one has the right formula. We try our best. Forper has a solid plan and he knows it’s gonna happen. Ideally you want to love your parents like you do. I respect you for looking after your mother. I left my mother behind some 20 years ago. All I can do now is to call her everyday and tell her to stay home. The rest of my family calls me only when they need money. I stopped answering their calls long ago. I hear you both. Life is complicated. I am sure more will chime in here soon. Sometimes one needs to vent. That is ok. As long as we are respectful to each other and not judging. |
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Thanks list