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Posted: 05 Feb 2013, 13:07 

Wega is what Sony called their CRTs after the Trinitron name got old.

The size and weight can be a pain for people used to such conviniently thin and light stuff like what is the norm today, but it's soooo nice to just not have to think about scaling or stretching or any of that stuff.

Downstairs I have an old JVC pro monitor for arcade games. I see people talk endlessly on other forms about NTSC encoders, sync issues, VGA up scalers, trying to get fake scanlines to look right, expensive line doubles like the XRGB series, etc. Meanwhile I just plug my boards straight into this thing and its %100 analog 240p RGB purity. Zero artifacting or dot crawl, all the old school interlace based special effects work perfectly and there is zero delay.

The new stuff is great for Bluray, PS3, Apple TV, etc, but sometimes the easiest way to do stuff is just to match the era of the source and display. It's amazing how much crap you can skip dealing with this way, and with quality CRTs being literally FREE these days the the only reason to not stock up on the things is if you have space issues.

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 Post subject: Re: How much would you pay
Posted: 15 Mar 2013, 18:58 

The 6th Day is underrated. A really entertaining well made film. Much better then say: End of Days.
Hi yes End of days is terrible but it's the reason i asked what would people pay why pay a small fortune for crap just because its the last American Ac3 release i can't relate to that kind of collector

Because they don't know how else to do it.

A true movie fan says, "I Love Dr. Strangelove, I'm going to get all the Kubrick stuff, even if some of it is junky". Kubrick, Godzilla, Star Wars, Bergman, Wells, Miyazaki, Woody Allen, Kamen Rider, Bugs Bunny, movies based on Phillip K Dick stories, scenery discs, Beatles related, Formula 1, whatever.

For people who simply aren't emotionally moved by the actual contents of the movie but still want to hoard crap like any other human, they have to find some other, easily definable category to focus their efforts on. DTS or AC3 are pretty good since that stuff is plainly written on the jacket. No need to fall in love with the movie, or understand the movie, or even watch it, or even OPEN the thing. Its written right there on the back of the package!

"Does it say DTS? Then yes, I want it. No, I've never seen the movie, and I don't care that is stars Jennifer Aniston and has a %12 rating on rotten tomatoes and sits in the $1 DVD bin at Walmart. I want it. Here is $300".

If someone used to work at Sony or in the theater business or their dad invented DTS or something, then I guess there is some emotion there, but otherwise these people should really be collecting stamps if all they want to do is tick boxes. I mean, if you have 5000 LDs and are polishing off the DTS then..I guess that's less crazy, but I've actually seen guys who describe their collection as "mostly DTS" which is...depressing. "Mostly Hollywood garbage released during a two year timespan" is more like it.

And IMO it harmless, if borderline autistic, because when these guys get in a bidding war over late period releases they are, most of the time, only jacking up the price on garbage. I mean, I *want* to buy DTS LDs, in theory, but the selection of titles in pretty terrible. Besides, i can't tell the difference between AC3 and DTS with my mediocre speakers anyway so I'll stick to AC3 since the selection is much much better.

Ideas for abstract collecting schemes:

LDs that span three sides with the first side being CAV and sides 2 and 3 being CLV.

LDs where the isolated music or commentary are split between the L and R channels even though the disc has digital sound.

Movies about choo choo trains. - Idea rejected for being too emotional and human.

LDs that came in digipacks.

LD singles released in the month of March.

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Posted: 29 Mar 2013, 18:20 

As for the CRT/LCD thing, unless you have something really special few sets being made today do good job with LD. Pioneer's Kuro line was great at LD, Sony's XBR9xx series was awesome too, but these were the last great HDTVs for SD video (and games, which are an even bigger issue).

There are loads of people who say that LD looks great straight into their LCD but IMHO they don't have a clue of how good LD can look. The colors get horribly blown out and the low resolution really hampers the picture when it's blown up to three times as big as the largest LD-era TV ever made. I have a 17" CRT production monitor I use for games and making copies of LDs and I'm being serious when I say that LDs from this look WAY better than they do on any LCD. My main unit is a Sony XBR960, a 34" wide format CRT.

I haven't seen every TV in the world, and some are better than others, but if you have a late-model LCD you probably need a fancy scaler that costs more than the TV...and even then, frankly, CRT looks better.

This changes not at all with the player, btw. Good players and bad players all look the same with a garbage TV. A 97 or a S-104, money spent at that level is a band aid on a bullet hole.

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Posted: 12 Jun 2013, 22:21 

I finally got a perfect copy of Ghibli Ga Ippai Collection (1996) [TKLO-50180] recently. I'll do a big write-up on it eventually but its going to take me a while to drill through.

Anyway, obviously this isn't the largest box set ever at a puny 13 discs, but is it the largest non-TV box set? Off the top of my head I can't think of anything bigger than 13 discs that consists of (nearly) all theatrical releases. This set is 13 discs, one TV movie and 9 roadshow releases. 1233 minutes.

BTW, what is with Japanese fans? This set cost 900 friggen dollars and whoever bought it only opened three of the discs...he didn't even open the one with the Miyazaki-Kurosawa "fireside chat". That's the most interesting thing in the box! The copy of Macross: Super Dimension Fortress: 15 Years Anniversary Memorial Box (1982) [BELL-1036] I got recently was the same way. He only open the last disc...which only has six minutes of video and some still frames. The rest was still sealed. $450 is a lot to pay for 6 minutes...

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Posted: 17 Nov 2013, 22:53 

Your issues are probably coming from multiple places. On one hand, the S201 is probably the most low-end LD player Pioneer ever built. The chassis is made from recycled Ritz cracker boxes and tuna fish cans.

At the same time though, I'd be surprised if a proper calibration didn't make things look better. Chances are your TV has the contrast, brightness, and color jacked up way to high for LDs low SNR meaning you are amplifying all the flaws.

And then your TV could just suck at SD. Keep in mind that 55" was science fiction when LD was around. Even the most beautiful woman on Earth has nasty skin when you look at it through a microscope.

Honestly, I've yet to see an LCD do an even passable job on LD. The better plasmas do a great job and CRT is still the best.

I would try running Video Essentials or something like that first before spending $$$ on equipment. Scaling and noise have little to do with each other.

I wouldn't be surprised if a CLD-99 looked just as bad on your TV.

As for crosstalk, I think I see a little of it in that picture. Crosstalk in general is no fun, but the problems are magnified when the image is being upscaled. "A game of telephone", if you will.

EDIT: My mistake, the S201's replacement, the S104, was probably the most low end player made.

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Posted: 05 Nov 2015, 06:01 

You people are weird.

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Posted: 07 Dec 2015, 05:12 

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin is an OVA (direct to video) series currently in production. So far two episodes have been released, scheduled for every six months. I think the target number of EPs is 5, but as we saw with Unicorn, if the show is a hit I wouldn't be surprised if they made it longer. Each episode is an hour. The mecha are CG. That's about all you need to know.

The release format is similar to Gundam Unicorn. There are both Japanese and English tracks, stereo and DTS 5.1. Subtitles in seven languages. The DVD has no world release, only the BR. There is only one Bluray disc world wide and this time those in the US can only purchase the collectors edition. It is an import in everything but name, only sold by Right Stuff. I guess Bandai figures thier target audience would want nothing else than the maximum package, and I think they are correct. With Gundam Unicorn Bandai did eventually make compilation DVDs for a massively reduced price just for American cheapskates. I'm not sure what's neutered about them, but I'd assume a lower bitrate than the JP DVDs, not that anyone buying DVD in the age of BR would care...anyway. I assume Origin will get a similar release. There are also a bunch of ways to see it online but I don't know what any of them are. :)

When you load the disc you see this:

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.24.26%20PM.png

You choose what language you want (for menus) and the episode starts. The soundtrack and subtitles will default to your BR player's preferences, so for me it automatically started in Japanese with English subtitles. (No need to fumble for the language buttons on the BR remote to turn off the Canadian valley girl boys, which is nice.) There are some FBI/INTERPOL things here, but otherwise you paid for an episode of Gundam and that's what they gave you. No extraneous hucksterism. There is a full on DVD style menu but you only see it when the show is over.

I'll leave judgement of the show to the rest of the internet. I will say though that I like it. I wish the mecha were still hand drawn, but since they aren't that important to the show really I guess I don't care. Bandai does still seem to be making shows with hand drawn mecha, but for some reason this wasn't one of them. I assume it had to do with available staff. Anyway, the show is pretty good. Episode 2, IMO, was excellent and it gives me hope that the show will continue to entertain.

Anyway, the real reason for this post is the packaging, which is clearly meant to evoke the LD mystique.

They come with outer shipper boxes with air pockets all around. They were designed to ship straight to everyone's house. Of course RS puts it in another box so the thing that shows up at your house is pretty humongous for something that's on a 5" disc.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.36.24%20PM.png

Does this look like a couple of LDs?

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.37.41%20PM.png

How about now? ( Gundam Formula F-91 (1991) (Uncut) [BELL-449] shown for comparison)

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.38.27%20PM.png

So what's in the box?

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.40.29%20PM.png

Well, EP 1 came with a little book that has most of the major line art and also the direction for the entire episode. You know, in case you want to...animate the entire thing again yourself? Well, its fun to look at, and these days most animation productions don't really produce enough concept art to fill a decent art book so this is at least something that was hand drawn and very human looking.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.43.02%20PM.png

You also get another little book that shows how scenes were originally composed as manga pages and how they look once animated.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.46.32%20PM.png

The box itself is very much like small LD series used to be (like super sentai shows) but everything is flimsier by a large margin. The obi is one step up from fax paper and the box is maybe half the weight of a good LD box. However, its a nice gesture.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.49.05%20PM.png

Episode 1 was supposed to come with some sort of clear plastic thing that would lineup nicely with the clear plastic thing that came with the HG Char's Zaku Origin model kit, but I bought both of these things and received neither freebee. I assume it must have been a handout in Japanese shops only.



Episode 2 was a bit fancier, just a bit.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.50.53%20PM.png

You get this large format (but very thin) book of select key animation frames. You also get a fake cel. I never understood the appeal of them, but here you go.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.51.52%20PM.png

Some nice drawings.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.52.26%20PM.png

You also get a 12x12 copy of the outer box art sans logos. This isn't very exciting, I'm afraid.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.53.52%20PM.png

Inside you get the same sort of thing you got with EP 1.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.54.56%20PM.png

A book with character designs and full direction.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.55.33%20PM.png

And other book with the comic layouts technique layed out.

http://s420144560.onlinehome.us/tg_images/Screen%20Shot%202015-12-06%20at%2010.57.35%20PM.png

All in all I'm pretty happy with it. The only thing that I'm not super pumped about is just how flimsy every single thing in these boxes feels. Its soooo thin. They also either shrink wrapped or baggied every single dumb thing in these sets. The BRs themselves are shrinkwrapped into an outer sleeve thing which is then shrink wrapped itself to sit in that pocket with the thinner of the two books and the obi thing. Opening one of these produces a XMas day sized pile of plastic. Its all kind of "pretend" and false but I'm probably the only one that would see it that way. Other than that, this is exactly how I like my OVAs delivered. No commercials, no waiting around for YEARS for a US version, and a nice package that really puts you in the mood of the show.

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Posted: 31 Mar 2016, 20:12 

Given that anime is usually based on economy of frames, "smooth" is as hard to define as it is to find. Most anime is shot on 3s, meaning 8fps, not exactly An American Tail. Even when the budget is high, "smoothness" is used sparingly. They might spend %50 on 3 minutes of awesome and starve the rest of the film. This unevenness is one of my favorite things about anime.

However, I can say we'd be looking at either a theatrical release or a late 80s money pit OVA. As much as I like Ghibli I don't think they're nerdy enough to achieve maximum smoothness. Even Porco Rosso, which is pretty smooth, is shot on 2s much of the time.

Here are a few things I can think of, you'll have to figure out if there is a 4:3 LD of it.

Royal Space Force (there is a "TV size" LD I have, 4:3, that shows much more detail than the LBX issues)

Crusher Joe (the movie, not the OVAs)

Daicon Opening Film (still nearly $100, very scratchy, but probably the absolute highest quality anime ever that was done completely in the hand drawn and optical sense)

I'm not an expert on Cobra, but there is something Cobra that is extremely HQ.

Robot Carnval (an anthology, some shorts are cheap, some amazing, more variety in style than any anime anthology I can think of).

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Posted: 28 Sep 2016, 02:07 

Is there some website somewhere that is specifically responsible for making noobs think that LD is "uncompressed"? We get people here all the time repeating that lie.

LD is based on composite video and is therefore HUGELY compressed. That's why it looks like total crap compared to RGB. Not even half the information is there.

Personally, I would love to buy a few new LDs but you couldn't kickstart a laser POINTER with the amount of totally ridiculous new age pseudo science coming out of this guy's keyboard. No engineer is going to waste his time taking a year off to work on a project spearheaded by someone who believes in the healing powers of analog fairies.

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Posted: 25 Oct 2016, 01:06 

A lot of TV from the 60s looks amazing on BR. Video tape hadn't come in to use so everything was shot on 35mm.

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Posted: 08 Dec 2016, 21:12 

Mine has no rot either. In the end I'm not sure it matters as this disc is super common. Even if %10 of them are rotted it still isn't going to be hard to find one of the %90. Even if half of them were rotten you'd still be able to find one. We'll never run out of this or Red October or Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or Terminator 2.

Overall I'd say at least %50 of the time the person reporting the "rot" doesn't know how to identity if. Most people group any and all defects as "rot". This movie is a more casual movie goers choice too so figure an even less informed survey than average.

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 Post subject: Re: AC-3 setup problem
Posted: 09 Aug 2017, 17:22 

The AC-3 jack is always active. As long as there is an AC-3 disc in the player, currently spinning, it's putting out AC-3*. You can't select anything, on any LD player, just plug it into the demod. It will convert the RF to the entire 5.1 DD, over SPDIF or descrete channels like my HK ADP303.

On the receiver you select whatever input your demod is hooked to and anything made that can see 5.1 will see it.

If this doesn't work there is a problem, I think it's usually the demod's fault but that's pretty rare too.

FYI, to save licensing costs there is zero actual Dolby Digital technology in a LD player, not even the logo, except DVD combo units and they still only output DVD DD. All it does is give you a breakout to one weird section of the FM waveform, thereby letting you access an AC-3 encoded version of a compresssd 5.1 digital signal. That signal "happens" to be DD but it could be other things, technically, so the player just says "AC-3" on it instead of Dolby Digital. This way the price of the player barely changed and only the people actually watching things in 5.1 would pay for it, by way of Dolby fees on the discs and the demodulator chips in the receivers and demods.

* In the same way, the SPDIF/TOSLINK on an LD player is always playing the Digital tracks, as long as they are there on the disc. The Analog outs can either player the Analog tracks or play a DAC-ed version of the Digital track. Most of us here have three separate signals going from our players to our receiver.

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 Post subject: Re: AC-3 setup problem
Posted: 17 Aug 2017, 01:02 

Don't you have a meter or something? There are less expensive ways of getting something to work than continued expenditure of money. There are probably mutiple pepple on your street with some means to verify that your main supply is good. Check for 100VAC, once you know you have it, stop messing with that part of the mystery.

Did you power this with 220VAC at any point? If you did, something probably popped. It might not be that difficult to fix.

Btw, it could be a problem at my end but the image of the PCB you show is very low res. A good pic might help.

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Posted: 09 Sep 2017, 19:56 

this here is a 2011 46" SANYO OEM for BEST BUY's "INSIGNIA" house brand, that happens to make a very strong argument in favor of LCD Monitors employed as Analog SD video displays;




I have an Insignia TV and its total garbage. Maybe its an aggregate name for so many suppliers that you get a good one once in a while.

The best LCD I have (excusing a 4K iMac) is a 34" Bravia. Its OK, but I'll still take CRT for old stuff.

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Posted: 12 Sep 2017, 22:31 

I honestly would have moved on it if I needed something. If you want CRT you are usually better without the HD stuff. "FD" is, I think, just to indicate that it's a flat tube. There are WAY better Sonys but they are all OOP now so you have to take what you can get.

To be clear: on a wide SD CRT the difference between 16:9 and 4:3 is simply how much it limits the path of the beam. The exact same info just gets stretched out to 16:9 in wide mode or not in 4:3 mode. Analog scaling. No issues. The same goes for 16:9 enhanced mode in 4:3 TVs, only on the opposite axis. The only issue you have is how wide "wide" is. As long as the geometry is good it always looks fine.

Also this would likely be much lighter than the higher end sets. Over 200lbs is common with a big 32+" set. Mine is about 250 and they get even worse some years, closer to 275...and I've never seen one with halfway decent handles on it. :)

Another thing, CRT shopping is a lot of trial and error. Even if you find the right model there may be something messed up on it since it's older than Facebook. The tubes are never perfect to begin with and they do drift over time...

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Posted: 15 Sep 2017, 01:18 

LD is a noisy format, you see it a lot in reds. Your TV needs to be calibrated to make the most of it.

However it sounds like you are saying it looks worse than VHS and that shouldn't be the case.

Many things can add to noise in general such as vibration, dried out capacitors, etc but a huge one is crosstalk. If the laser is out of alignment you'll get crosstalk on CLV discs, described as a herring bone pattern. Do you have any CAV discs and do they look look significantly better?

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 Post subject: Re: LD player for music.
Posted: 08 Oct 2017, 08:11 

No. It’s about you. Everything is about you.

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Posted: 12 Oct 2017, 07:29 

The glare from what, flash? Don’t use flash.

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Posted: 12 Oct 2017, 21:33 

Going outdoors can help a LOT but then this is an AV forum... :)

I’ll do some of this and update later with some results with both SLR and iPhone SE.

Like above.
I sometimes have to take stuff into different rooms to get more or less glare.
This is an experiment and its not like we can control the sun or light bulbs giving off the glare and say HEY LIGHT STOP THAT.

I’m not sure if this is a joke or not but yes, you can control the light. You’re a #$&@-ing man aren’t you? Are you going to let some brainless piece of glass push you around? You control the angle, the brightness, the distance, the number of lights, the curtains, the location, the time of day you shoot, etc...in ANY house, any place pretty much.

If human kind can do anything well it’s control light. That and complain about the need for more equipment. :)

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Posted: 19 Oct 2017, 22:07 

Serious question: why do so many people with mental problems obsess over LD? I don’t need to name a single example, we all know them, many are members.

I don’t *think* I’m emotionally impaired or Skitzophrenic or anything but I’m starting to think I must be or I wouldn’t be watching LDs, right? Maybe my attic is full of heads and I’m blocking it out...

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 Post subject: Re: Laserdisc vs DVD
Posted: 25 Oct 2017, 04:09 

You can watch BRs on CRT. I’ve done it 1000 times. It looks like LD with more color, or DVD with no macroblocking.

Furthermore, there is only one Transformers movie and it came out in 1986. Both LD editions are decent but not great. I don’t know how this terrible 2017 movie has anything to do with LD so please follow your own warnings. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Laserdisc vs DVD
Posted: 26 Oct 2017, 02:14 

How many times do you have to be told that you are not explaining anything to anyone? You are feeding a troll. That’s it. The rest of the membership understands what you said already, has no real problem with it, and is already overall convinced of the value of it. Then there is this guy who needs weird stimuli and all your typing gives him exactly what he craves.


Seriously, who’s the real idiot? Forper or someone who shoves the same facts down his neck every 6-8 weeks on command with zero results?

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 Post subject: Re: Laserdisc vs DVD
Posted: 28 Oct 2017, 01:21 

There is no need to keep talking about it. I think you covered the entire topic right there. DVD sucks, MPEG2 sucks, we all know this, who cares? Especially now that DVD is only being kept alive to keep Red Box in business and things like that. It’s almost an afterthought now for studios. It’s over. We won. We complained when LD died and we kept complaining until we got something better. Good for all of us.

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Posted: 06 Nov 2017, 22:07 

Serious question: why do so many people with mental problems obsess over LD? I don’t need to name a single example, we all know them, many are members.

I don’t *think* I’m emotionally impaired or Skitzophrenic or anything but I’m starting to think I must be or I wouldn’t be watching LDs, right? Maybe my attic is full of heads and I’m blocking it out...
Just to be certain, who in this thread is "obsessing" over LD?

I will admit to having mental problems (which I am seeing a Psychiatrist for), but is sharing a valid complaint about an Ebay seller who is trying to swindle me out of money and/or a valuable LD player is far from obsessing, wouldn't you think?

I was referring to the crazy eBay scammer that you started this thread for, not you. I don’t know why you’d think otherwise.

As for who obsesses over LD, if that word bothers you so much, since you asked me this question, it’s everyone here. Anyone who spends more money shipping a dead product than it cost to purchase and decades after it became passé is obsessed. That would be the popular mainstream opinion. If I invited my neighbors to see my media collection they would say all sorts of nice things about it but when they got back home they would say, “that guy is obsessed”. That wasn’t the point of my question. I don’t have any problems with obsession. My neighbors are two dimensional vapid squares and I’d way rather hang out here, even with just the crazies. I’m totally cool with a fairly large about of obsession.

My question was why do all the weirdos come here? Good and bad, really. We have like 20 regular posting members but we have way way more than our share of ripoff artists and people with significant mental issues that come here. I didn’t name any because I didn’t want to emphasize anyone or any particular type of craziness. I wasn’t even thinking of you. Whatever your craziness is, it appears to be completely compatible with peace on the forum and I appreciate your contributions to LDDD.

We attract the crazies though, seriously. Have you not noticed this? I’m not trying to attack anyone for being crazy, I’m just trying to figure out why crazy people love to give so many other people so much trouble via the medium of Laserdisc either through nonsense posts or by conducting international shipping scams from Portugal to Japan. It ain’t normal! I’m on forums with tens of thousands of members and and way less craziness.

There’s something about those discs...

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 Post subject: Re: Bon Jovi Test Pressing
Posted: 13 Nov 2017, 16:29 

Value is unknowable until you put it on eBay and learn how bonkers fans of Bon Jovi can be. There’s probabky a few high rollers out there. What makes one LD worth thousands and another totally worthless has never made any sense to me. I can see this going for $8 or $800. It’s not pure gold for sure, you’ll probabky have to drop it on eBay at exactly the right time in order to see an impressive figure.
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