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Posted: 07 Feb 2021, 00:45 

Modern DACs beat anything ever built into an LD player. I’d concentrate on anything known for reliability and durability that also has a digital out and then let something else render the sound.

Since you’re shipping I’d maybe try for a single sided clunker. As long as the DAC is outboard they will sound the same. Solder joints are not what breaks during shipping. It’s usually plastic parts that are now quite unobtainable. Nobody who knows what they are doing has total confidence that any player is repairable now, even guys who have repaired the same model twice. It’s a probability battle with LD now, as in, “I probably can/can’t fix that player but we’ll see...”. You can break some LDs players just by shaking them really hard so while *insanely* overpacking them is a good start you’ll need a little luck no matter how well they pack it.

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Posted: 08 Feb 2021, 20:06 

Yes, there is only one, the AC-3 one. If you have the other 4:3 ones you have garbage, basically. I have a copy, it’s great. If you used a 4:3 CRT this is for sure the version you want.

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Posted: 09 Feb 2021, 22:10 

Last night I watched La Strada #29 (1954) [CC1129L] . Somehow I hadn’t seen this movie before even though it’s super famous and I’ve owned it for nearly a decade. I’ve never seen a more compelling movie. I was totally transfixed for the last half hour, more in my seat than I have been with any movie in my life. I give it my highest recommendation: watch it as soon as you get a chance or don’t talk to me ever again. :)

These are the movies we sacrificed to make superhero garbage and Star Wars/Transformers sequels that make most of their money from hate watchers and the Chinese. Never forget this. I realize that movies like his can be made today by individuals but this was not an individual effort. This was a multinational movie that won (inaugural) Best Foreign Language Film. Nobody is throwing serious weight around anymore at all when it comes to drama that isn’t blatant Oscar bait or comedy aimed at people with above average IQ.

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Posted: 10 Feb 2021, 21:50 

Last night I decided to continue a trend of emotional b/w movies with subtitles by viewing Wings of Desire (1987) [ID6635OR] .

This is one of my favorite movies and every time I see it I get more from it. At this point in my life my favorite part about it is the way people who have known each other all their lives meet for the first time...if you know the movie, you know what I’m referring to. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re here.” As an aging hippie who has longed to see human interaction move to the level of “seeing each other with no misconceptions” it’s nice to at least see it depicted in fantasy...so we can maybe be inspired to work more towards it.

All of the principle characters give a wonderful performance, most have since left us, it seems like another one every time I watch this movie...Ganz just last year. To make a third movie in the series only the director and Nick Cave would be available, most of the other mains have joined Cassiel in heaven...correct me on that if I’m wrong.

This disc pretty much sucks, like many in the Cinemadisc collection. The sound is very good (Dolby Surround) and the subtitles are just how I like them (large and yellow) but it’s not wide and the color is very lame (film alternates between color and b/w but is mostly b/w so mostly OK). Side three has mild rot, and I’ll have to check but I think this is also true of my copy of High and Low (Cinemadisc) and both have one of those weird opaque white side 4s. Coincidence?

Verdict: if this movie doesn’t move you, you’ve never been in love and probably will not be. Buy the Bluray or at least an import because this disc is the worse 1998 (!?!) had to offer LD-wise.

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Posted: 13 Feb 2021, 16:03 

It was expensive back in the day, it’s expensive now, the title selection is small. If prices are climbing it means other Facebook noobs are group-thinking up the value, if you buy one you’ll be making it one step worse for the next guy.

Consider just not getting into AC-3. You don’t have to. It’s not really that big of a part of the LD experience. A quick glance at the LDDB shows that only about one in sixty discs has AC-3 and they are all post-1995 Hollywood junk for the vast majority. In most cases I prefer Dolby Surround. Less directional but overall massively better sounding from the front.

In period DTS was even more high end and expensive but these days DTS is the standard of everything so while the discs are $$ the playback is affordable. To get a kick out of 5.1 on LD consider buying one of the more affordable DTS discs. You won’t need any hardware beyond an LD player with digital out and any AVR from the past 15-20 years. Sound quality is vastly better than Dolby Digital AC-3 LDs, maybe that’ll get it out of your system.

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Posted: 16 Feb 2021, 17:15 

Anybody else think Ford v Ferrari had the look of a video game or more computer generated than needed??????

It looked pretty authentic to me and the filmmakers claim it's 100% CGI free.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a29738370/ford-ferrari-movie-race-scenes/

Also, that DTS-Master HD mix on the Blu ray was amazing :o

I don’t believe there is anything CG-free anymore. If they use real cars and stunts, fine, but that’s not a real sunset, and every frame of the movie was color graded in post. It’s a cooked as hell looking movie from the trailer.

I say, “the trailer” because I didn’t watch it. I’m sure I wrote this somewhere else when this movie came out but This David and Goliath narrative is BS. Both were giants but Ford was massively huger. They decided to buy a win against an actual sports car company with a ringer car. They then lost interest and left, which is what giant OEMs do when they’ve proven their point.

I would rather watch LeMans but I’d rather watch a movie about Tyrell or Arrows or Theodore Racing or some team with no commitments outside of racing rather than a movie that is just...winner worship. That’s what The Super Bowl is for and I don’t watch that either.

I prefer Grand Prix to LeMans but neither captured the book they are based on, The Cruel Sport by Robert Daily which is the best book about racing I can imagine ever existing of you like 60s F1. Some time ago a lady friend gave me a 1st edition and I’ll never get rid of it. No pseudonyms, no fiction, it contains some of the real anecdotes that became plot points in Grand Prix. The photography, especially for the time, is amazing.

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Posted: 16 Feb 2021, 23:18 

Le Mans is the better film from a movie making perspective, cinematography in particular, but frankly all that insane crap you’re talking about turns me off, reminds me of Colin Chapman levels of anti-human stupidity. It’s anti-fun. Actual racing is enough of a meat grinder as it is. I’d rather the cars went a little slower and that we still had some more of these old guys to talk to.

It’s impressive that Marylin Manson was so committed to his work that he was willing to psychologically torture his girlfriends for it but I find myself less interested in the music than ever, if that’s even possible.

Grand Prix is more like Gone With the Wind, more of a traditional Hollywood spectacle about a kind of racing I enjoy. It’s downright bad at times (blood on hands...) but it also has the best footage that exists of that period of GP racing so it’s got it’s us and downs.

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Posted: 17 Feb 2021, 02:40 

Senna knew what he was doing, and as bad as 1994 was it was a massively massively safer sport than in the time of The Cruel Sport. I was thinking more about Jochen Rindt. He wanted safer cars from his boss but Chapman was winning and when you’re winning they don’t f with you. Or maybe Ricardo Rodriguez who set “youngest” records that stood for decades only to be killed by a Lotus 24 built too close to the edge. Stirling Moss’s story about the cake...oh, I would have paid anything to see that.

The Lotus 72 is perhaps my favorite GP car ever, the D of course, but with that fanboy obsession comes...complicated thoughts. I eventually got to work for Lotus on the Engineering side, twice, got fired twice, I have complicated thoughts about that too... :)

Driven was the WORST movie. I’d rather watch The Love Bug stretched to wide.

Rush was exactly what you’d expect from a Ron Howard movie about F1, totally competent but nearly art-less, the Apollo 13 of racing films. :)

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Posted: 17 Feb 2021, 02:43 

While I think both Gran Prix and Le Mans are great films they are almost like travel films. Ted you posted a film about sailing with cameras, its like that,
if you watch it today it may not be as exciting but its a part of life and shot for the people who couldn't afford to travel to these areas or see what
Germans or Japanese people looked like, but now we have that on TV or do a google search to see it.

Anyway wasn't able to finish Le Mans, only watched the first half, will watch the rest later.

If you are referring to the Flying Clipper...or whatever it’s called, I think there is actually footage of the Monaco GP in there too.

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Posted: 17 Feb 2021, 03:57 

80s Nick imported enough cartoons to last a lifetime. God bless their cheap-ass souls.

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Posted: 20 Feb 2021, 20:08 

If they have an analog only deck a DTS disc is the same as any other disc as far as they are concerned (assuming it’s not one of the four titles listed above as having commentary). If they have a deck that does Digital Sound then they will get garbage from the analog outs until they manually switch to the analog tracks. It’s possible that later players have a mute function for this, like how newer CD players won’t play data through the DAC, but my newest player is from 1995 so I can’t check.

If one had an optical connection between the LD player and the AVR and the AVR didn’t support DTS, I’m not sure if it would play noise or mute itself.

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 Post subject: Re: Sega Saturn
Posted: 21 Feb 2021, 16:18 

If you like VF2 you’ll probably find that no other 3D fighter on the Saturn was ever quite as good but Fighters Megamix is close. In general games made by Sega are a safe bet, Sega Rally, Sega Touring Car, Panzer Dragoon, Sakura Wars, etc.

In 2D fighting the Saturn has many great games. Vampire Savior is fantastic, Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter is super impressive and fun. There are a lot of SNK ports that were the best of the time but they aren’t as good as Neo ones or usually the PS2 ones either so I guess it matters what other systems you have. Astra Superstars is a very unique fighter, a semi sequel to Galaxy Fight and Waku Waku 7, it’s a fan art driven send up to Dragonball in a way, and uses little animation but a lot of sprite warping and other 32 bit FX, it was an ST-V game originally.

Saturn Bomberman and Guardian Heroes are better mutiple players games than anything...except maybe Death Tank (hidden on Power Slave) and Death Tank Zwei (hidden on Duke 3D, requires Quake to unlock).

The SS also rules at shooters but of course those can be the most expensive games. Layer Section, Radiant Silvergun, Darius, etc.

IMO, Saturn Tomb Raider is a bad version of a bad game but your tag says you’re from Finland and tastes vary by region I guess. I genuinely cannot tell what I’m even looking at in games like that.

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Posted: 21 Feb 2021, 19:24 

Holy s**t! I also watched Stardust Memories last night, the two pack version. This is one of my favorite movies of his, not that many people say that.

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Posted: 22 Feb 2021, 03:58 

One of my favorite documentaries, David Macaulay's Cathedral . Tremendous architectural illustration, stirring photography, perfectly narrated and explained. The animated segments are great for holding children's attention without pandering to them or trying the patience of adult viewers (there are no animal sidekicks or superfluous child characters). What I love most about Macaulay's TV specials though is the pacing. It's conversational: neither turgid like your least favorite history lecturer nor frantic like a cable TV show that's desperate to keep you from changing the channel. Quick enough to always be interesting, slow enough to let you think and react. Also recommend the other three, Castle , Pyramid , and Roman City , but especially Cathedral .

I didn't know this was on LD! Or maybe I forgot. Maybe it isn't, you didn't specifically say.

When I was a teenager they published a book about animation, I forget the exact name, that was more or less built around the production of the animated segments of Cathedral. It's a very good book for learning tradition techniques and has great stills of Cathedral. Its sort of a how-to guide for animation based on a movie that is a how-to guide for building a huge church. Both are very good.

Speaking of traditional animation, tonight we watched Fantasia: Special Edition (1940) [1236 CS] . I usually go for the CLV version because its a real flipper of a movie but tonight I decided the extra work was OK. Does this actually look better in CAV? It shouldn't, but it seems like it does, like the color is deeper, but it could just be me. The Dolby Surround is fantastic, the picture is about as good as it gets, leaning to the slightly softer side which some may prefer to later DVD-esque Disney LDs like Lion King, Snow White...

Anyway, the movie itself is just amazing. It recently occurred to me that even though Fantasia was never their most popular movie it may very well outlive the other early films just because its way way less weird since its sort of psychedelic and semi-representational on purpose. There's nothing as weird in here as kids lying and because of that turning into donkeys, for example, and the biggest liar of all time turned into an elephant in the end and was rewarded with the nation's highest honor so what ancient morality is this movie trying to push anyway? Not a valid one in my culture...

The saddest thing about being an animation fan is that it is a position of constant compromise. When you look at something from the 60s, which was hardly the high point of animation's history, you just think, "Man, you couldn't do that past the 70s...". And the stuff from the 80s, even the cheap crap like Thundercats, is considered impossible now, like moon launch impossible. Even though there are more people who want to be animators and the tools that exist make it easier and faster and cheaper every year, we still basically just have worse animation every year. I guess we're not in the b/w Astro Boy or Huckleberry Hound ghettos any more, but just barely, and its only because of sweatshop labor and Adobe Aftereffects. Japan is over and Korea has yet to take flight. Many of the actual *shows* are of course much better than the junk I grew up with, but the animation itself...there is no Call of the Primitives moment these days. No high points, only animation done perfectly to some specification chosen because it could be perfected. Every single episode of Bob's Burgers or Steven Universe has zero mistakes in it and will look identical to every other episode until someone changes the character designs on purpose as some sort of intentional refresh. You could build it in the Unreal Engine...not just the show, but the entire production!

With Fantasia being mega budget and from 1940 it is absolutely packed with those things you can't do any more. In fact, these segments have is so many techniques above and beyond the standard "draw it, trace it, back color it in blocks" style that was standard by the time of 101 Dalmatians, or really even Peter Pan. There is airbrush, there is what I think is use of oil pastels on FX layers, rotating gradients, front lighting, its honestly hard to even tell how some of this was done and I'm a pretty hardcore dork for this. The labor needed is one thing but the organization is even more impressive, especially considering everything is tight as hell. Recreating this movie today would I think require at least one trillion dollars and some actual genuine witchcraft. Nothing that produced this exists any more!

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Posted: 23 Feb 2021, 17:00 

I would also suggest that you find the owners manual for your player or one very similar. LD player owners manuals explain every single feature on the machine and also a good deal about Laserdisc itself.

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Posted: 24 Feb 2021, 01:47 

A lot of people come here under that impression but aside from that one guy with the “sports” projector they have all turned out to have missed it. They work *very* hard to hide all buttons and ports on new TVs for reasons I can’t understand. Typically these days composite is hidden in the YPbPr socket which itself needs an adapter to run, hidden in an 1/8” TRS jack. On my Sony it’s a downward pointing jack hidden near the recessed area for the cable input.

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 Post subject: Re: Sega Saturn
Posted: 24 Feb 2021, 02:01 

I’m not sure what you mean by models 1 and 2. Did Europe get the same crap redesigned pads as the US did?

In Japan there is only one pad and it’s as nearly flawless as anything. There are a number of color variants but they are all the same.

Because Sega of America SUCKED they designed a new controller for the US that almost nobody prefers (it’s slippery and has edges all over it but is still not bad really...). When the round button Saturns hit the US they gave up their stupid idea and just started shipping normal Japanese versions. Because of this some fans call them by versions 1 and 2 but if anything the numbers are the reverse of that; the better pad is the older one. My friends and I just call Saturn pads “Saturn pads” and the US ones “US Saturn pads” since the US ones are far less common, are weird, never should have been made, etc.

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Posted: 24 Feb 2021, 02:08 

No, in that case the adapter you buy would be doing at least part of the scaling and all of the comb filtering. This is the most important step since scaling 480p to 4K is relatively trivial.

I would look again for the composite input on that TV, make absolutely sure it’s not there, then sell the TV. It’s useless to a fan of old video formats. Any decent stand alone scaler costs more than an LG TV.

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Posted: 24 Feb 2021, 03:39 

Sadly, it’s very hard to judge that when you only have one player and one TV.

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Posted: 24 Feb 2021, 19:31 

This is all being inflated way out of proportion...

LD is a latently stereo format. The 5.1 stuff was added on 15 years after the start of the format and is not essential to enjoying LD. Don’t FIXATE on it like this, it barely matters. It’s a cool hack and that’s about it, like Enhanced audio CDs with QuickTime videos on them. Worry about it later. Your player can’t do AC-3 anyway so you’re hundreds of dollars and multiple broken eBay players away from the Dolby Digital LD experience. Learn up on what you have already before buying more stuff. More stuff will only bring more confusion.

When LD launched it had two tracks of analog sound, much like a tape. You could use stereo sound or two different mono tracks (commentary, isolated score, languages, etc). Later on they added CD quality digital sound into the format sacrificing nothing. So if you have later discs and later players you have two different stereo tracks to chose from. Depending on what disc you have you may want to listen to stereo analog, stereo Digital, or just the Left or Right from one of them. This is why you are able to select them that way. All of this is in the manual for any LD player.

Any two channel stereo (tapes, records, Gamecube games) can contain a matrixed four channel system. Dolby Pro Logic is the name used for the multiple systems used to unfold “2.0” into four channel Dolby Stereo/Dolby Surround. I hesitate to use terms like “4.0” because it was never used in period literature and can only cause confusion. Also, it *isn’t* 4.0 because it isn’t discrete, only the master was. The LD version is 2.0 with available separation via matrixing, which isn’t the same and doesn’t sound the same.

Your amp will do Pro Logic because newer versions are built into the specs of newer formats for the purposes of auto down mixing and reconstitution (cable TV). Therefore you can get Dolby Surround (earlier analog version of Dolby Digital) from probably every movie you have on LD that had it in the theater using the stuff you have right now, from either the analog or Digital stereo tracks. Star Wars, for example. If you have any Star Wars LD, your LD player, and any Dolby certified Surround receiver you have all you need for Dolby Surround. The vast VAST majority of LD owners in the 90s only ever experienced LD home theater this way. The 5.1 stuff was borderline millionaire grade gear. A niche of a niche. A sub basement in the basement of LD.

It’s your stuff, read the manuals and learn how to use it. You can do it. When you’ve come to know what you already have then when you go to learn about 5.1 you likely won’t have any questions, it will all make sense.

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 Post subject: Re: A slippery slope
Posted: 24 Feb 2021, 21:23 

This is a good topic.

There are some Criterion LDs that will always look and feel good to me. Kane and Kong, which were #’s 1 and 2, originally came in these cool slipcase boxes. The inner jacket for disc 1 has a very cool concept sketch and the one for disc 2 is the shot from the film realizing that drawing. Black and white movies work much better with LD than color so to me releases of early cinema are as useful for as long as I have a player.

Brazil: Special Edition #196 (1985) [CC1348L] the Porsche 959 of LDs, US releases anyway, it is what DVD and Blu-ray eventually became. It’s relevance in period is greater than now but it’s still possibly the one Criterion release that to me has the greatest sense of gravity, literally and metaphorically.

Adventures of Robin Hood, The: Special 50th Anniversary Edition #66 (1938) [CC1166L] a top contender for best picture on LD (if you have a low noise player), terrific mile a minute commentary, a stone cold Hollywood classic, fantastic bonus section. For fans of TECHNICOLOR.

Tokyo Olympiad #117 (1965) [CC1227L] as a film fascinates me in general. Having it in CAV isn’t really necessary...whatever. This movie was government funded and its distribution is as difficult and slow and irregular and expensive as you’d imagine something considered a national treasure by the Japanese government would be. Therefore it’s hard to find or expensive on every format and this one is probably the cheapest. The essay on the back of the box is very good. I love this massive thing.

Not to be forgotten are Janus Films releases which aren’t specifically Criterion but are similar in every way such as Red Balloon, The/White Mane #??? (1952) [CC2000L] which probably saw most use in American middle school French class...which I flunked, probably because we only watched it on VHS...easily one of my favorite LDs.

There are some I have that I consider basically worthless, Carnal Knowledge comes to mind. A loathsome film and a bland LD with zero special features. These discs remind us that the main point of Criterion in the early days was to simply get significant films on video to be seen instead of disappearing into obscurity once they aged a bit. Carnal Knowledge was some kind of hit in the 70s but not at any point past that.

Then there is Armageddon which I swear is not an April Fools joke but a real thing.

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Posted: 25 Feb 2021, 02:10 

Why CAV?

And yeah, a 29” PVM is a good reference. PVMs are not made for viewing hours of composite TV in a home. They display faults in the signal instead of hiding them like a Wega but they are at least a quality CRT. You may be very frustrated with how hard it will be to achieve the same results on a new device that doesn’t even have the inputs needed for LD. I’ve yet to see LD on any display in person that looks as good as it does on even an average CRT from the early 2000s.

“No, you don’t understand. I just bought a really huge TV and I’ve always wanted a huge TV, it has to be the one, it was expensive, big, etc...” yeah, but your decades old LD player doesn’t care. It vastly prefers other tech of the same period. Rather than spending $$$ trying to modify your old MG TC to run on unleaded gas...just decide it’s only for the race track now, change nothing, and use leaded gas.

I suggested selling it as a joke...but only sort of. Many new 4K TVs do an amazing job with composite video and yours seems to not do it at all. That’s an uphill struggle you elected to commit to. Good scalers cost more than good TVs now. You could off it and buy a Sony and just not have this issue...which *seems* insane now, I admit, but...keep a tab of how much you spend on adaptor doodads. It may add up to something even crazier and produce lesser results than just cutting your losses now.

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Posted: 01 Mar 2021, 23:07 

There are quite a number of ways to convert coax to TOSLINK and back. It’s a pretty trivial job. A quick eBay search shows several products.

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Posted: 02 Mar 2021, 21:51 

G and J is the shop I’ve used most probably, not a single issue ever.

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Posted: 04 Mar 2021, 08:23 

Rein-O and Admin are correct. This is a fansub that has been repackaged by a bootlegger con slug, probably 1989-1994. I wouldn’t be surprised if when played it contained a message from the fansub group that said something to the effect of “never pay for this”.

You have garbage, sorry. :) But I guess even this is a sort of relic of the past and interesting in its own way now that there aren’t 20 table fulls of these things at Detroit/Chicago Comic Con, etc. Actual anime cons rarely tolerated these things but the mainstream comic cons did and they sold like crazy.
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