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 Post subject: Re: Indonesian laserdiscs
Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 05:16 

Indonesian laserdiscs seem to be very rare but I found someone selling this Indonesian LD which is not a Karaoke LD.
My girlfriend will buy it for me.

Here it is:

http://koleksi.tokobagus.com/kaset-piringan-hitam-lagu/warkop-dono-kasino-indro-laserdisc-antikk-jadul-kuno-18405634.html

Warkop are a comedy group from Indonesia and this is a disc containing some of their sketches I assume. I am sure it is not
funny ( from a Western point of view ) but at least it is a real Indonesian title.

I will also try to find other titles but that is not easy at all.

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Posted: 07 Nov 2015, 04:13 

I have never had a single DiscoVision disc in my collection despite owning dts LDs, MUSE discs, anamorphic PAL+ releases etc. I would love to own one but they are
hard to find in Europe. I wonder how they play on the X0.

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Posted: 02 Apr 2017, 09:21 

Just like I said, I think forper brought a lot of negative energy into that forum. We need to get rid of all the haters.

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Posted: 13 Sep 2017, 14:14 

That is very true, forper, especially in China, for instance. Things are also getting much better in Indonesia. My Indonesian wife told me she used to go to bed hungry at night sometimes because her family could not afford
to buy enough food. Things are much better now in Indonesia. The only thing I worry about is the spread of radical islam in the entire world. I can see how much Indonesia has changed over the past 10 years, more and more
headscarves and I really don't like it !!! And I really worry how a country such as Nigeria with a population that is growing so god damn fast will be able to provide for all of its citizens with all the rampant corruption in Africa. It's crazy.
But it's true, it is getting better in general, especially in East Asia.

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Posted: 23 Feb 2019, 09:37 

I watched The Ghost and the Darkness last night. Normally I wouldn't mention this film but the surround mix ( I watched the German Blu-ray ) was outstanding. Wow. No wonder it won an oscar for best sound effects back in the 1997.

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Posted: 01 Nov 2019, 19:22 

I watched Hotel Mumbai last night. I thought it was fantastic. It showed how religious zeal can drive people to doing such terrible things. These people took their religion very seriouly and clearly acted in its name because they believed it was OK to kill infidels. It had nothing to do with them being mentally ill. They clearly knew what they were doing. At times it was very difficult to watch this film. There was a scene where they shot a receptionist who at gunpoint had to call the guests in their rooms telling them that it is safe to come outside so that they can be shot. The film showed how these terrorist groups were and still are supported by parts of Pakistan's intelligence agency. I also thought that the performances of all actors were excellent. I hadn't seen such a suspense-packed for quite some time. Strongly recommended.

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Posted: 06 Dec 2019, 21:29 

Hi forper, I rarely post here nowadays as I do not have much left to say but I have to say that this is a nice set up you have there ! The room looks expertfly arranged and I like the TV in the middle of the room.
Mine doesn't look as nearly as neat but I have good equipment at home so I am happy with what I have. I have a Nakimichi tape deck that I find sounds terrific with prerecorded tapes ( not all sound great but
I am finding more and more that sound really good ), a very good LD player and much more to play with at night after a long day at work.

Just watched The Color of Money on Blu-ray. Nice film with a great score. Paul Newman was terrific in it.

I nowadays tend to watch more and more films in 4K. After watching like the last five films in 4K ( including A Few Good Men and A Clear and Present Danger ) going back to Blu-ray is like going back from
Blu-ray to DVD. At first you might not notice a lot of difference but actually if you look closer you can see it is like night and day. When I watched A Few Good Men last night I could literally see Jack Nicholson's teeth
and the colours of the American flag were so vibrant with HDR10. I really love that they don't use tons of filters for their 4K releases which was the case for many Blu-ray films so far. The 4K releases I have
seen so far look really much more filmic, especially on a big screen ( I am using a Benq projector ). The picture is considerably sharper but on older films you also see grain more clearly, etc. I love it.
Blade Runner has never looked better. There are some amazing 4K releases out there that are a huge step forward compared to their Blu-ray counterparts. That does not mean I stopped watching DVDs or Laserdiscs. These formats came much earlier and are still fun to use. First I thought I wouldn't need 4K because Blu-ray already looks great but 4K is like a Porsche compared to a decent Volkswagen. Both are good cars, the Porsche is better.

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Posted: 13 Dec 2019, 09:10 

I bought around 40 to 45 titles ( mostly PAL ) with classical music incl. opera for 30 Euro from an estate sale here in Berlin. I thought that was a steal given the amount of discs.
The titles are from such publishers as Teldec, Sony Classical or EMI Classics. Around half was manufactured by PDO UK, unfortunately, but I tested some and the audio appeared
to be intact which is most important here. The others are mostly WEA Germany ( rare pressing plant, good quality discs ), DADC Austria or Pioneer USA. Anyway I am very happy about this purchase. The sound quality on those discs is amazing. It shows how good PCM Stereo can sound if taken care of in a proper manner !

I am no longer really interested in the movie discs as I nowadays try to watch films in 4K if available, especially those that I love such as Blade Runner. However I really like collecting these music and special interests discs or rare movie titles that are unavailable on Blu Ray or even DVD. Those are really valuable in my opinion especially because they are mostly shot in the 4:3 format and can look gorgeous on laserdisc with excellent sound.

EDIT: I counted the discs. It's 63 titles in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
Posted: 13 Dec 2019, 11:16 

Why are we only talking about movies in this thread ?

There are some amazing music LDs out there with excellent soundtracks.

-> Sade: Live ( 1994 ) https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/10163/MLV-50114/Sade:-Live

Very decent video transfer and extremely well mastered audio track. One of my favourite LDs in my collection. Bought it for 10 HK $. I love the early Sade stuff.

Madonna: Immaculate Collection US https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/08835/38195-6/Madonna:-The-Immaculate-Collection

I have an excellent early DADC USA pressing of said disc with zero rot. Excellent video and sound quality. I always show it to people to show how nice laserdiscs can look and sound.

Madonna: Like A Virgin ( 8 inch release ) https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/33979/JM034-0036/Madonna:-Like-a-Virgin

Excellent soundtrack. My friend was impressed with the audio quality of all tracks. It sounds amazing and the video looks like coming straight off the master tape.
Borderline is just one of the amazing pop songs ever. Sounds incredible on vinyl, too.

Hiroshi Itsuki: Traveling alone on the Silk Road (1983) https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/53371/MK135-25NC/Hiroshi-Itsuki:-Traveling-alone-on-the-Silk-Road

This disc was pressed in 1983 and still plays beautifully with zero rot. The video quality is amazing. You do not see any speckles, dirt, etc. in the image itself.
Such a beautiful transfer and the analogue audio track is excellent.

Boyz N The Hood Criteiron https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/04129/CC1289L/Boyz-N-the-Hood:-Special-Edition

Fantastic video transfer. Doesn't look any worse than the DVD. In fact I prefer it over the DVD anytime. The sound quality is very very good and the video is beautiful.

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 Post subject: Re: Best quality Laserdiscs
Posted: 16 Dec 2019, 13:57 

Some Japanese pre-recorded Type I tapes I have from the '80s absolutely beat the equivelent CDs on my minty Sony KA5ES, a nice late 3 head deck. There's also that analogue quality you get with tape vs CD. Less fatiguing, natural sound.

Yep Confederate, the monitor function on serious decks is essential to tweak the settings before you seriously record. I have a Type IV dedicated to testing and setting up levels. I'm into dubbing SACDs to my Type IVs, they saturate pretty quickly but I can still get very nice recordings.. It seems more pure than jumping through all the hoops it takes to rip DSD.

Yes, I use the monitor function on my Nakamichi too and I am satisfied with the results yet I have a feeling that it can be done better.

I also have some very good type I tapes that sound really good on my Nakamichi. The Star The Next Generation soundtrack tape I got last week ( made in 1988 ) sounds excellent.

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Posted: 18 Jan 2020, 10:55 

substance wrote:
Chernobyl HBO series, very disturbing but excellent overall. I still think nuclear power is good though :)


I concur ( on both points ). Modern nuclear plants can hardly be compared to some old Soviet power plant.

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Posted: 24 Jan 2020, 19:01 

Today while I was taking a walk during my lunch break as I usually do almost every day I discovered a new and small record shop close to where I work.
All of a sudden while looking through the boxes with various vinyl discs inside them I noticed a laserdisc within the lot - The Frighteners dts LD !
I guess the seller did not even know it was a laserdisc and sold it to me for 5 Euro. I could not believe my luck. I most certainly did not expect this
to happen today ! Plus I have never seen this film so I have something new to watch on my laserdisc player.

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Posted: 27 Feb 2020, 15:36 



People who collect DTS, late release, specific PILF number ranges, HiVision etc versions of garbage movies are totally GTO. They’re all the same sort of sad hapless dipstick who think because they blew some bread on something that they are in a scene and probably that everyone worships them but in fact they are a joke to people like James Taylor with his broke a** claptrap primer grey Chevy.



Sometimes when I read your posts I really do not know what your problem is. You are always so negative. Every post is a rant.

Just let people enjoy their hobbies. And btw I love HiVision and I am happy to own a couple of discs and I am not "some sort of hapless dipstick".
Why do you have to be so offensive ?

I am fascinated by the technology. That's all. What is your problem ?

You must be a really sad person that is using this forum as a valve to release all of the negative things that run through your head 24/7/365.

Get a life for real. You are the main reason why I am starting to lose interest in this forum. Just let people be.

I am not saying that my posts are really interesting and informative but at least I do not attack other people for their interests, etc.

Who are you to judge other people ? :thumbdown:

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 Post subject: Re: HLD-X0 serial numbers
Posted: 11 Mar 2020, 13:49 

Yes, it is a very heavy machine. I can barely lift it and I am 2,01 m tall and weigh around 105 kilos.

I am sorry to hear your picture is corrupted. Did you try the cinch video output ? Is it corrupted, too ?

There is a British chap in London I believe who owns a X0, too. He appears to be very knowledgeable and seems to have repaired his X0 by himself.

I love my X0 even though I think it could handle warped discs better. It is a very beautiful player. It took me a lot of effort to get one. I do not regret it.

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Posted: 03 Apr 2020, 13:46 



I don't have any family or friends to speak of so what would satisfy me is actually being buried with all my stuff but I don't think that's within my means realistically (graves are already at a premium) so I plan a massive bonfire when I'm still healthy enough to give the instructions, yet close to death.

What I like about you is at least you are being honest and do not pretend to be somebody you are not ( "Oh, I have so many friends bla bla".). I don't have a lot of social contacts, either, but at least I have my parents who I have a very good relationship to and my wife who I am very happily married to. She never asks me for money and doesn't have any problems with my hobbies. She is an excellent cook ( she is Indonesian ) and I save a lot of money on buying food outside. I have a brother but I stopped talking to him because he is a prick. I have a daughter, too, but she lives in Macau with the family of my late first wife. They are quite wealthy and important people there but I simply do not belong to their world and I never wanted to anyway because it disgusts me. I'd rather be myself. I think their world is a fake one full of pretentious and superficial people and it is boring. Sometimes my wife complains that my records, laserdiscs and equipment take up so much space at home and i can actually understand that but most of the time she leaves me alone. I remember that a Western guy married to a Japanese woman here on this forum had to sell most of his laserdiscs to a local second hand shop for like 20 Yen a piece !!! because his wife wanted him to get rid of his collection. Now that sucks. I'd rather get divorced.
The important thing is to love yourself and have interests in life. I cannot emphasise strongly enough how important that is to have interests in life.
I just need enough to support my hobbies a bit, feed my family and travel a bit, nothing more.

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Posted: 04 Apr 2020, 11:45 

I agree, forper. I see a lot of superficial people, all having the same aspirations, a house, wife, kids, nice car, etc. These are not my aspirations. I think it is very boring. My late wife's family was like that. They were very
superficial and only cared about how much money I had in my bank account and warned me over the phone not to use my wife's money which was absolutely ridiculous. They were calling me loser all the time which
eventually made me leave my wife because I was tired of it. She then took her own life and then they blamed me for her demise because I had left her and used me as a scape goat. It was really crazy. All the money her father
was making didn't make it a happy family. He was never there because he was working all the time and he thought he could compensate his absence by providing his family with material things.
My second wife's family is very different. They are poor, even for Indonesian standards but they are a very happy family and in my view a more complete and healthier family than my former wife's one. They always have
a smile on their face and do not care about superficialities. Her parents were watching TV on a really old TV for a long time that had a partially broken tube. This would cause a permanent green spot in the upper left corner and the colours
were all weird but they didn't mind as long as they could see most of it and had sound. I am not kidding. I then bought them a new TV for 200 $ and they were happy which made me happy, too. We didn't throw away the old TV but gave it
to a very friend of hers who didn't have a TV at all. The people in her home town in Central Java are maybe the friendliest people I have met anywhere in my entire life and I have been to many many places on this planet. They have a really nice culture, great food, great traditional music and dances, etc., even though radical Islam has been been on the rise there in the last twenty years which is very worrying and sad. I hope it won't get worse because it is a lovely place with wonderful people and Indonesian is about the easiest language on the planet, you can learn to say a lot of things really really fast ( as opposed to other languages in the region such as Thai or Vietnamese which are very very difficult to learn for foreigners. I have been to Thailand many times in my life and I absolutely love it. I can barely say thank you and it is probably incorrectly pronounced ).
I just believe it is important to have interests in life and not be driven by superfacilities because after all as you already mentioned life is short and there is more to life than buying a new home, car, etc. I know people that
are in debt because they want to have the same things everybody else has and they haven't been abroad in many many years or done anything interesting. It is important to enjoy the simple things in life, those things that
we take for granted such as having a nice meal, going for a walk, enjoying each other's company, etc, especially in these times with the current COVID 19 pandemic.
Of course it is nice to have a nice salary and if somebody offers me more I will not say no but money is not what drives me. I have enough and if had more I know I would spend it on records and clothes. My pride is my very good
hifi and video setup at home. That is very important to me because I love music very much.

Now back to the topic and I promise I won't write more about it here. I am sorry I got off topic in my last two, three posts here, won't happen again, sorry.

These are the CDs that I have been spinning for the past couple of days on a regular basis. Learning about good dynamics and well mastered CDs also makes me appreciate music that I would have never listened to in the past.
I also have Tidal but the problem with it you don't know which master is used etc. I don't listen to anything with a single digit dynamic range. Even an average dynamic range of 10 is barely acceptable to me. It has to be
at least 11 or 12.

-> ABBA - The Visitor - First West German CD from 1982! ( excellent dynamics and fantastic recoding, some nice songs on it )

Diana Ross - Diana ( first West German pressing from 1989, excellent dynamics, it has an average dynamic range of 16 !, this is one of my favourite albums )

Herbie Hancock - Secrets ( 1997 Sony Japan release, excellent dynamics, great album, Doin' It is a fantastic song )

Herbie Hancock - Thrust ( 2016 Audio Fidelity SACD, CD layer, excellent dynamics and fantastic mastering, I love Audio Fidelity, it is sad they disappeared from the market and I actually bought a couple of
their releases because I wanted to support them )

Pet Benatar - Live from Earth ( first Japanese CD, excellent dynamics, I love Love is a Batterfield, the singer's actual name is Pet Andrzejewski and she is of Polish origin, too, same as me )

I also listen to a lot of vinyl, of course, some of which is Yello's album Stella ( excellent ) and a lot of Prince on vinyl ( the records are cheap but I don't really like a lot of the stuff he did past 1991-92 but his stuff from the 80s ).

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Posted: 08 May 2020, 11:19 

Btw, those pics you posted, they are not in Japanese but Chinese. There is a difference. Here is a translation of what it says on the covers:

小天使 = little angel
童話 = children's fairy tales
兒歌 = children songs
伴唱 = vocal accompaniment
系列 = series
珍藏版 = collector's edition

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Posted: 08 May 2020, 20:18 

Well, yes. But it is a bit complicated to explain. I have heard that all HDCD encoded discs used a very good sounding analogue-digital-converter by Pacific Microsonics. It is supposed to be one of the very best
analogue-digital-converters ever made. If you want to get the full potential of an HDCD encoded disc you should get a player that can decode the additional information or you can rip the CD and play the WAV/FLAC
file with the foobar internal HDCD decoder. I have a CD ( Herbie Hancock - Future Shock, late Japan edition ) that sounds completely different with considerably better dynamics ( 10 instead of 7 ) in HDCD mode.
All that other stuff K24bit, etc. it is just a marketing gag to make the product more appealing to any potential buyer. I know plenty of CDs that sound excellent and do not have any of that stuff assigned to them
( 24k gold CD, bla bla bla, etc. ). In fact I have a CD in my collection ( Vangelis - Themes, excellent collection of Vangelis stuff from the 80s such as Blade Runner etc., it is one of my favourite albums of all times )
that has the K2HD Mastering logo on it. That CD was released a few years ago. It is the exact same CD as the very first release of said album from 1988 or 1989. Both editions have the exact same dynamics on all tracks.

I nowadays listen to Amazon Music a lot. I bought a new Denon AVR a couple of weeks ago and I am very pleased with how Amazon Music sounds through it. It has a lot of high res content and it sounds excellent.
i just listened to the soundtrack of The Killing Fields in Hi Res ( 96 / 24 ) and it sounds excellent. Now I have seen a couple of youtube videos that say that you cannot hear the difference between 96 khz and 44.1 khz
but I think that is total BS. To me a lot of the Hi Res stuff sounds obviously clearer and more detailed when compared to their CD counterparts. To me a good or very good vinyl records sounds better than a CD in a lot
of cases but with Hi Res it is an entirely different story. To me it is sound wise more or less on the same level. Both can be excellent. One excellent CD is Madonna's Like a Virgin. It was one of the first albums that were recorded all digital but I just think that the entire album sounds incredibly good with fantastic dynamics and sound mixing. I do not know many CDs that sound that good.

I have just found a very interesting new digital releases that is available on Tidal, Spotfiy and Amazon Music. The beautiful soundtrack to the fantastic French film Deux hommes dans la ville.
Delon was just such a brilliant actor back in the 60s and 70s. Oddly the German name of this film is Endstation Schafott which translates to Last stop scaffold. What a stupid name. Kind of tells
you how the film ends more or less lol.

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Posted: 08 May 2020, 20:42 

I watched The Killing Fields this week. Oh my God. This film is so good. The actor who played the Cambodian journalist actually survived this crazy period in Cambodian history himself.
This was such an impressive film. It made you feel like you were actually there. How could anyone come up with a plan ? How can one kill one quarter of the entire population in a period of less
than four years ? How crazy is that ? They would kill anyone who would speak French or wear glasses. There is a scene where the leader in one of the camps asks the protagonist in French whether he would like
to have a cigarette and he pretends he doesn't understand. Knowing that he understands French would have been his death sentence.
The four years of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia are such a fascinating topic that we actually know so little of. The country did not have a real government, only a bunch of communists called the Angka that would
rule the country. There were hardly and foreigners who visited the country in those four years. I think I should read the book because I am certain the film omits of a lot of intersting stuff that can be found in the book
itself.

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Posted: 13 May 2020, 18:05 

I bought the following laserdisc via discogs because it was the only seller of this particular disc outside of the US:

https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/23326/7114-88/Prime-Cuts:-Jazz--Beyond

The laserdisc is 35 years old and doesn't have digital audio. It has a few speckles but otherwise plays great. Audio is excellent.

It has a couple of nice Jazz ( fusion ) tracks from the early 80s but I mainly bought it because of the Herbie Hancock track. I love this song
and it cannot be found on any DVD etc.

I only paid approximately 6 Euro for it and it came from Norway. Had as a customs sticker too as Norway is not part of the EU.

This is the kind of laserdisc that I believe makes sense collecting. I do not think I will ever buy any title such as Independance Day every again.
I am more interested in the rarer stuff such as music titles, documentaries or BGV titles which I enjoy quite a lot.

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Posted: 13 May 2020, 20:36 

I just watched Fried Green Tomatoes ( 1991 ) for the first time. I think it is excellent from beginning to end. They simply don't make films like this any more.
I enjoyed this more than Interstellar, Dunkirk and some other pretentious stuff combined. It is a simple and touching story about life and growing old with
stellar performances by everyone. Kathy Bates is wonderful and so is Jessica Tandy. The score is very good, too. It is a story about love, friendship, becoming a better
person, marriage crises, racism in the Deep South long before Martin Luther King, etc. It moved me a great deal. Excellent.

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Posted: 18 May 2020, 17:45 

I bought a 1200 Euro 4K Benq projector and I am very very satisfied with it. I am fully aware it is not real 4K but 4K content looks great to me on it. It looks clearly sharper than Full HD and HDR looks fantastic, too.
Can't complain. Sure it can be better but I am already very satisfied. I watched a Blu-ray last night ( Rising Sun with Sean Connery and Wesley Snip ) via my Sony UHD Player and it looked fantastic to me.

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Posted: 21 May 2020, 21:47 

You mean Life with Jake Gyllenhall ? I thought it was fantastic!

But Underwater isn’t anywhere near fantastic.

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 Post subject: Re: SECAM Laserdiscs?
Posted: 02 Jul 2020, 15:05 

Yes but there were two kinds of SECAM.

Most PAL/SECAM capable recorders could only play SECAM East tapes from the former Eastern Bloc. I had such a player back in the 80s/90s. It would play our Polish SECAM
tapes in colour but the French tapes were black and white. It is actually rare to find a VHS from outside of France being capable of playing back French video tapes in colour.
Those players / recorders were really expensive.

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Posted: 16 Jul 2020, 11:44 

Well, it is the dts version that got cancelled.
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