@laserking....you deserve your name well my friend ....astonishing....where did you get all these hk releases ?
Hi exinferis,
I got them from many different places over the last few years. Many of them came from a seller in Texas. A lot of the early ones I picked up from a seller in Chicago several years ago. I have also obtained quite a few of them at various times from several lesser sources in Hong Kong itself. When I joined this site in 2005, I had no Hong Kong releases whatsoever in my collection. In fact, I had almost no imports at all, but I was well on my way to having all of the U.S. releases I wanted to own. Then, I encountered the seller in Chicago, which was a pivotal moment in my collecting experience. This guy was a serious collector like myself, and he liked a lot of the same types of movies I liked, namely horror, sci-fi, action, and mysteries/thrillers. Also, like me, he had a love for low-budget movies, especially in the aforementioned genres. His collection was about the same size as mine, roughly 3000 titles at that time. The biggest difference was that, unlike my collection, his was loaded with imports. He started listing things for sale that I never knew existed :o ! My collection began growing by leaps and bounds again, after I had gone through a period of dormancy during the early new millennium. My interest was renewed again in my collection! It was like a doorway to another world had opened up, and I had discovered this hidden place full of treasures I never even dreamed of before! It was an adrenaline rush of excitement like you can't imagine!
I had several telephone conversations with this guy, and during one of them, he told me that he liked Hong Kong discs better than Japanese ones. I was confused by this, as I knew the well-deserved great reputation that the Japanese releases have long had among serious collectors. I asked him why he liked the Hong Kong discs better, and why he had so many in his collection. He told me that there were two reasons. First, unlike the Japanese discs, almost all of the Hong Kong ones were either in English, or had English subtitles. This was due to the fact that Hong Kong had long been a part of the British Empire. Second, he told me that he believed that Hong Kong releases were among the very rarest discs ever made. He told me that there were many Hong Kong discs in his collection of which he had never seen another copy in 20+ years of collecting! :o This guy had been very much a world traveler, which I most decidedly am not. He went on vacations to Hong Kong, and many other places in that part of the world. Many of his discs were personally bought by him at video stores while he was vacationing there. He had begun collecting DVDs instead, and decided to sell off his laserdisc collection. I started buying everything I could afford out of his collection as he made it available for purchase. After a year or two, sadly, it became all too obvious that his vast collection was dwindling away to only a shell of its' former self :( . The best titles he had were all gone. The good news is that most of it was now part of my collection :thumbup: ! In fact, my collection has now, I believe, far surpassed what his was in its' prime.
Dealing with that seller was a valuable experience for me, not only because of all the marvelous treasures I got from his collection. I also gained a wealth of knowledge from him as well. I always remembered what he had told me about Hong Kong laserdiscs. As my collection continued to grow, I found that what he had said to me was absolutely true. My experience with Hong Kong laserdiscs was exactly the same as his had been! I can also say the same for Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and China. Every time I acquired a new piece from one of these Asian countries, I came to this site and checked for a listing of it. Almost without exception, I found that there was no record of it here at all :shock: ! It was obvious that these discs were quite rare indeed, and no one here in the hardcore laserdisc community even knew about them :shock: ! I remembered another thing that the Chicago collector had told me, and I believe that it is probably true. He told me that at some point in the late 90's or early new millennium, a large number of Hong Kong laserdiscs were destroyed :o ! He said that they were shipped back to Mainland China, where they were recycled for the raw materials from which they were made :thumbdown: ! If this is true, what a tragedy that so many wonderful treasures were lost forever :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown: ! It became my mission to obtain as many of these rare discs as I could, and to document the existence of them here. I want to preserve information about these rare releases on this site, including pictures of what they looked like, so all collectors will be able to see and enjoy them. To me, this is a vital part of preserving the history of this grand old format for future generations. It's a little like archaeology, preserving the fossil record of the dinosaur bones that remain, so that people will remember that these rare animals once walked upon this earth! So, for now, I am trying to do my part to keep history alive here for the future. I encourage you to do your part as well, by submitting information about any such rare discs that you might encounter in your travels. :thumbup:
IIRC onkyo 626 has the HQV Reon chip for video processing. HQV was the benchmark in broadcast video. Their original HQV processor was 3 or 4 decks on top of each other filled with FPGAs. It retailed a hefty $80,000. In early 2000s, they spent so much of their resources into creating a SOC which will do all that for lower cost and space. This gave birth to HQV Realta. It replaced the 90s multideck super expensive unit into a tiny chip and much more affordable. Unfortunately this move was also the doom of HQV. They spent their entire resources and the return wasn't enough to compensate. They bankrupted and was sold to IDT.
IDT wanted to make Realta more affordable. They took the algorithm and created and asics. Its called HQV Reon. The difference is Realta has more processing power and also software upgradable. If better algorithm is available, you can upload it to a Realta chip. Reon has a little less processing power and can't be updated. Later IDT came up with HQV Vida which replaced Reon. The principal is the same but has similar processing power as Realta and runs on newer algolithm especially for noise reduction.
In video processing the chip used tell you too little as you can imagine. Its the implementation that matters. From what you said, onkyo must have implemented HQV Reon correctly.
This thread was started to discuss general techniques for archiving and restoring failing laserdiscs, namely:
Analog sampling of video and audio Digital sampling of audio from laserdisc Post-processing techniques for cleaning up audio and video (laserdisc rot, proper deinterlacing methods, etc.)
I'll start with my process:
Pioneer CLD-D606 -> Y/C -> Blackmagic Intensity Pro -> 10-bit 4:2:2 .AVI. This is done using the Media Express software and software version 10.11.4 (Windows), a combination that produces perfect sync. (Later versions have issues with sync drift, loss of video sync, or both.) I capture everything at 0 IRE so that I have more flexibility in post (and also because I've caught some laserdiscs mixing 0 IRE and 7.5 IRE content, mainly music videos that have paintbox effects). Depending on the source material, I sometimes choose to eliminate noise introduced by the capture process by capturing the same material 3+ times, then if all captures are frame-accurate, I'll combine them by overlaying them in Premiere and averaging them using the Blend effect. Think of this as a video version of "oversampling". (This is a tremendous help with VHS sources too, but capture of longer sources almost never line up exactly even when using a line TBC feeding into a Frame TBC (all it takes is one delayed field to throw things off), so there aren't always opportunities to use this technique with VHS.) I then bring the footage into Premiere Pro and correct black and white levels (capturing 10-bit allows this without clipping during the original capture or during processing), and use NeatVideo (carefully and judiciously!!) for noise reduction and fixing dropouts/rot. If the audio needs some repair, I export the final audio and process it with izotope RX, then import it back into Premiere and use that for the audio. All video processing is done internally 32-bit. Noise reduction occurs before level correction in the filter chain. I then export 10-bit again. All of this takes place in the interlaced domain. For final output and deinterlacing, I use avisynth with QTGMC for deinterlacing (I use different settings for different sources, but the quick answer is that I use preset "very slow" for sources with a hint of noise still left in them, and SourceMatch/Lossless settings for anything where I was able to remove most of the noise previously). If needed, nnedi3_rpow2 + spline36resize for upscaling after the deinterlacing stage. Finally, the avisynth script is fed into FFMPEG for h.264 or h.265 encoding.
The entire path, from capture(1) to edit to export to avisynth to ffmpeg to final output compressed files, is 10-bit. It took me a long time to get avisynth verified working with 10-bit colorspaces(2) but the end result is definitely better viewing on my OLED TV than when I was doing everything 8-bit.
For especially noisy footage, or for being paranoid about the capture process introducing noise, I will sometimes capture the same footage 3 or more times, and combine them in Premiere using the Linear Dodge (add) compositing method, with the opacity % set to 100/N where N is the number of captures I'm combining. This only works if every capture is exactly frame-perfect, so inspection is necessary to ensure every frame is lining up. The end result effectively averages out all transient noise, leaving only the signal.
One sample result of all these processes: https://youtu.be/1dtVWr19L8I?t=807
The use of NeatVideo's artifact removal and dust/scratches removal can be beneficial in cleaning up laser rot -- but only if you don't over-apply them, since over-application can remove fine detail in the picture you want to preserve. Here's a badly rotted disc (The Motels, 8"):
https://i.imgur.com/1QShIdE.png
...and here's what (careful!) NeatVideo processing in Premiere can do to recover it:
https://i.imgur.com/ZjqSk5Y.png
(1)The Pioneer uses an 8-bit digital TBC but I still capture in 10-bit for the headroom. (2)hint: Use ffmpegsource for import, as avisource converts everything to 8-bit... another hint, use avisynth+ which supports YUV422P10 colorspaces)
I didn't make up the 25,000 figure, it was on the linked page: http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/laserdisc_archive/how_laserdiscs_are_produced.htm
I don’t think your train of thought is correct... ...Your example of a rubber stamp doesn’t take into account gain adjustment
I read something similar for vinyl/records.
The master is supposed to be used up to 50K discs but factories on a budget will push them to 60K or 70K. One reason why vintage Japanese records are still in demand: pure vinyl (no chemical mix in the 70's during the oil crisis to make them cheaper) and no overworn masters.
On Pioneer mint marks, it's easy to see which master you got:
Da Makani is the second Shakatak Laserdisc in my collection, and they only released 4 albums and 3 singles on Laserdisc and CDV respectively, out of over 50+ albums and counting! I've talked about another disc of theirs elsewhere, Twilight Sensation, which is excellent, make sure you get it if you can. Da Makani though, to me, is something very special and just a little bit different to your typical band Laserdisc.
The unstoppable, awesome and quite frankly LEGENDARY band Shakatak were asked by Kenwood (the electronics brand famous for many a pair of 6x9 holes cut in to the back of many a Ford Escort XR3i parcel shelf back in the day) to produced the official album and video for the 1988 Kenwood Cup International Yacht Race. Said race was run annually in Hawaii until just a few years ago. The band came up with the album Da Makani and an accompanying Laserdisc of the same name.
What you get with this disc isn't your typical fare of a concert or a collection of music videos. Da Makani runs for 45 minutes across 1 side of a Laserdisc and comprises the audio of the Da Makani album along with some wonderfully shot scenery of Hawaii. If that sounds dull to you then think again, and here's why.
Da Makani is absolutely exquisitely produced. For starters the audio, which is really what you are here for, is laid down absolutely perfectly. I waited until everyone was out of the house, slipped on this disc and cranked the volume up on my pokey little setup and it absolutely sang it's heart out. Keys sounds note perfect, bass guitars sllip and slide up and down the scales with eloquent rumbles and drums sound crisp and 'thuddy' in equal measures throughout. Note that this particular disc was released in 1990 and features both analogue and digital audio. The 1988 first pressing is analogue only as far as I am aware.
Visually, Da Makani excels yet again. I'll admit when I first slipped on the disc and the opening sequence began, I thought my DVDO processor was having HDMI handshake issues. It was in fact a swiftly edited sequence with a strobe effect, so be warned if you are averse to flashing images as they do appear at the start of the disc.
Da Makani opens with the 'Da Makani Suite' on chapter 1 which comprises 4 parts a) from sun to sea, b) wind jammin, c) from sea to sun and d) cliffhanger. It sets the tone perfectly. The film opens aboard a helicopter looking down on the sea and mountains over Hawaii before moving to a hot afternoon by the sea and the harbour, watching the world go by, to sunset by the beach and to a close. The accompanying music from the album is just sublime. Silky, aquatic synth pads and watery piano tinkles that give the mind the impression of the big blue. Gorgeous, tropical, subtle synth swells that just put you right in the mood.
'Bermuda Rig' on chapter 6 is another nice track. Just the sound of an acoustic guitar and waves rolling on to the shore. You can sit back, listen and view and think 'this is the life'. It's good stuff, and again the audio is king here.
A few of the images take a more artsy approach. You can really tell this is a product of 1988! Overhead shots of expertly arranged sunloungers by a pool, a closeup of a pool step ladder and the gentle lapping of breezy pool water. One shot in particular of a bottle of Perrier next to a swimming pool not only looks tremendously 80's, but is also pin sharp in detail. Some moments reminded me of the beautiful (and now very expensive) 7" artwork on the brilliant 1985 single 'Faces' by Italian pop starlet Clio. The same can be said for the whole of this disc, picture quality is absolutely bang on. It looks excellent.
Da Makani is one all-round superbly produced disc. I can only imagine what an R7G, HLD-X9 or X0 could do with it.
A couple of the chapters do appear to show some yacht racing foortage, though it is unclear if this is from the actual 1988 race. I would imagine if the disc was a promotional tool, and it was released in November of 1988, then it was probably just a marketing product. The race footage could have been from the 1987 race prior? I'm sure that any sailing enthusiasts watching the disc would know, and they would have to, because no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find a single thing about the 1988 Kenwood Cup on the Internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlymqNcvLXY
The disc closes with my favourite track on the whole album, 'Endurance', which is just an absolutely whopper instrumental track that a) sounds totally 80's and b) has some incredible guitar playing on it. The video almost succeeds the audio with some great shots of yachts and surfing followed by an extreme close up of some waves gently kissing the sandy shore in some of the most detailed footage I've ever seen on a Laserdisc (for my setup). The video closes with a beautiful sunset as it's parting shot while reminding me of an old Taboo/Mirage advert from the telly years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKnEIV8-iO4
Make no mistake, Da Makani, in my opinion, is one of the best sounding and best looking Laserdiscs I have ever seen. Even if you don't dig the Shakatak sound I would still recommend it. This is not a Laserdisc. This is an experience. Turn it up and get it on!
FUN FACT OF THE DAY: Da Makani means The Wind in Hawaiian. (taken from the sleeve notes)
Oh wow! Thanks for sharing this. I love this stuff. I have almost all of the Virtual Drug titles (except one DVD title) and some other stuff like Luminous Flight and Virtual Trip.
Just re-uploading the images here so they are kept indexed on LDDB. I normally set my image uploads to expire as I figure 'today I received' and 'my collection' posts etc nobody cares too much about so I don't tend to bother with them as such. :oops:
Also, found a photo from a while back of my Virtual Drug VHS tape (aka VR Cyberdelia which is the UK title for Virtual Drug: Ecstasy), VR Cyberdelia: Future Shock (this may be a Virtual Drug re-badge, I don't think it is though. I'll dig out my VCR soon and revisit it). Finally 3 Lux 2 which is a wonderful techno VHS in the style of Virtual Drug from Germany.
I know this is an old thread but I found it when trying to find a solution for the very same problem. My HLD-X9 has had a small piece missing in the same section for some time, but a few days ago another piece broke loose and loading/unloading didn't work anymore. I fixed it by printing a small plastic part to replace the end of the rail. Works fine so far. The tray is made from ABS so I printed using ABS too, so no glue required: dissolving the two surfaces with acetone makes a great bond. broken.jpg removed.jpg replacement in place.jpg sanded.jpg
The following is from a conversation I had with a former Technidisc employee. I made minor edits (readability), and it is shared with permission. This is strictly going off of that person's memory, so take from it what you will.
This was a large factory that had four different cleanroom modules inside of it. In front was the mastering module. It was both a cleanroom and it had filtered light. They had three other modules that were devoted to laserdisc and one to CD. Entire production lines from beginning to end inside each module. They had positive air pressure: each of the clean rooms was being pumped full of clean air from a HEPA filter. Any leaks will be pouring out clean air rather than letting dirty air in. They also had a giant library room full of rolling shelves that contained stampers in canisters. One item I liked was a very old laserdisc player that they had rigged up to play master discs. Because it was working with a mirror image of the data it had to play backwards. They had one engineer who actually knew what he was doing. And a bunch of potheads who did the actual work. Every once in awhile he would come in and check up on them and straighten out that work. Each of the modules was crewed by a different group. Laserdisc modules were ran by entire families. It ran 24 hours a day and they worked in shifts. Some would live at home while the others were working, then switch. Module one was ran by a man named <Name 1>. Module two was ran by a guy named <Name 2>. Automation ran mostly by pneumatics and Allen-Bradley ladder logic programmable logic controllers. Prices were hand operated, but they added automation piece by piece over the years.
When each of the laserdisc modules ran, they had a lady who sat in a room with about a dozen laserdisc players of different models. They would give her samples and she would sit there watching every disc playing simultaneously, looking for any kind of dropout. If she saw anything, production would stop and the issue corrected. Most of my laserdisc collection are vintage test discs. The engineers would grab samples to see if they were working or not and then throw them out and I would take them. Most don't have labels and only a few have jackets. Some were side A on both discs, but I usually didn't take those. I got a couple of good ones in my collections like the Star Wars set, take right from the factory floor. I think they caught a few people stealing the test samples and selling them at a local video store. I never sold mine. I just kept them to watch.
The real collectible gems were the radio CDs. Back then they would mint CDs with a collection of songs for the radio stations to play. We would get one CD with 15 songs. 5 rap, 5 rock, 5 country. They would ship them to radio stations, and they would only use the five tracks they needed. Whatever the top songs at the time were, they were on the playlist. Near the end we made a few CD-ROMs. There are a couple of collections of women in swimsuits as JPGs. Plus we made the Rush Limbaugh Mega Dittos screensaver CD. Last time I visited the old Technidisc building, it was a warehouse for cellphones.
Fans of the format have been trying to decipher Technidisc mint marks further. Do you happen to know any more detail on this: 025-085-649C 5H9H# ? We know 025 is Image Entertainment, 085 is August 1995, but no clue on other numbers. I’m guessing it has something to do with the day or possibly the modules you are talking about.
No because they moved stampers between modules. I think those numbers were used for what shelf it was on in the storage area, but I don’t know if there is any other meaning. I know they would make three or four stampers for every job incase one had a flaw they would switch to the next. So that might have been the way to tell the different stampers apart.
Did you ever notice that some laserdisc manufactured there have metal that goes all the way to the edges, and some have it that only goes partly to the edge? The last few years module 2 got a sputterer for metallization, replacing the vacuum chamber. So any disc that did not go all the way to the edge was from the sputterer. The German manufacturing video had a big metallization chamber that looks a lot like the one in module 1.
Did Technidisc use injection molding? We had two large hydraulic injection mold presses that could do laserdiscs. We had seven small ones for CDs and later bought a faster one for CDs that could produce faster than the other ones combined. The modules had the press at the far end. Automation would reach in and grab the clear disc. An operator would stand there with an air hose with anti-static air and blow on the disc. It would then be picked up and put on the drum for the metallizer. Once they had a full drum, they put it in the metallizer and ran it. From there they were unloaded and ran through a conveyor belt that put on the glue and other side. They were then pressed together. From there they went outside of the cleanroom to a finishing room. There was a lady that would grind the edges smooth, stick on a label and put in a white sleeve on a cart. These carts were then shipped out of the building to a different facility that would put them in the packaging and ship them wherever.
I remember one time they were taking some samples off to an electronic show, then realized the width of the tracks was badly out of range on the samples. It was too late to make replacements, so they had to stand there and say “Our discs are just like these, but they will be right.” We had one engineer who was fixing stuff. He would come in and see that everything was working right. Then go away for a few months and things would slowly get worse and worse. He’d come back and set everything right again. He was one of the engineers at Technidisc.
Great news! The guy who posts here who's username I cannot remember, sorry, has posted something rather special on his YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nugwyvSdE-Y
Now everyone can enjoy this great Laserdisc!
Note: The sickeningly 80's Perrier bottle is about 12 minutes in. :D And if you want to skip to the best track (in my opinion), that's Endurance and is at 40 minutes in.
I bought a Surfing Movie on DVD. Ignored the FBI Warning at the beginning at first, but noticed it was funny. The movie is called "Five Summer Stories", shot in 1970...
I rewatched Quest For Fire (1981) [1148-85] last night. It's about a trio of cavemen who go on an adventure to find fire for their tribe, and they meet a woman named Ika (played by Rae Dawn Chong) whose tribe knows how to make fire.
There was all sorts of cool stuff in this movie: a battle between men and apes, Lions wearing prosthetic fangs as Sabertooths, Elephants dressed in fur as Mammoths, a fight with a Bear, cannibals, etc. It's especially cool how you don't have to know what exactly the characters are saying to get what's going on. Also the music in the movie (performed by the London Symphony Orchestra) has a sort of Star Wars Original Trilogy sound to it. Ron Perlman plays one of the cavemen, LOL! It was his first movie too. Really good movie, though I think it's kinda slow at times.
I wish there were way more Ice Age adventure movies out there like Quest for Fire and The Clan of the Cave Bear (which I also have on LaserDisc) I saw Alpha (2018) I thought that one was alright. I did see Roland Emmerich's 10,000 BC (2008) once when I was a kid.
Why bring up the collection market prospects when the OP was just curious about what this thing was? It ain't always about money. Used Laserdisc prices could drop to zero tomorrow and I wouldn't think any less of my collection.
Thanks list
