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| signofzeta |
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Posted: 05 Nov 2015, 06:01
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| staffanu |
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Posted: 16 Jan 2021, 18:52
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Last spring me and a friend bought three broken Philips laserdisc
players from the early eighties: two VLP-600 and one VLP-700. These
players are very similar to the Magnavox VH8000, the first commercial
player in North America. It took a while but after combining parts we
finally got two players back in fully working order!
http://madeye.org/vlp600/IMG_20200712_174509-512.jpg http://madeye.org/vlp600/20200926_193945-512.jpg
This has been a really fun project, and we have been working on it on
and off since we got the players. Initially we did troubleshooting
just as for any other broken electronics, but realized after a while
that we had to understand a bit more in order to fix the broken
mirrors and also to adjust the laser.
The these players are PAL only, and have no digital audio support.
Initially we could only test with the French dubbed version of
Titanic, which has no analog sound track. It was also CLV so we could
not test the trick features. It took some searching to find a disc
with PAL, CAV, and analog sound, but fortunately the excellent
marketplace at lddb made it easy to find!
We have written detailed summary of the repair at
http://madeye.org/vlp600/ .
For a full demo the working player see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G75mXibxwfY |
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| ldfan |
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Posted: 12 Jun 2023, 22:33
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| In addition to what others have said, many films will have a combined open matte + pan & scan when a film was released for home video in the age of the CRT TV. T2 and Robocop are good examples of this. The only one movie I recall is a straight open matte from the widescreen is Rain Man and I literally went through the entire movie to check every scene. Regardless, I still prefer the widescreen because that is usually what the director intended for us to watch (but not always). |
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| rein-o |
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Posted: 29 Sep 2023, 00:22
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There are a bunch of M holders out there, some are 3d printed and may or may not be great, I don't have any players but have heard stuff
so be careful on those.
I think if you have the one issue you may need to move the worm gear back to get the laser back into position?
I have read posts about that, so make sure that is your issues before you try it and fix it.
I'm no tech just trying to remember what I've read.
Good luck.
Edit: I don't have any players that use M-holders :oops: I have LD players :ugeek: |
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| signofzeta |
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Posted: 29 Sep 2023, 15:26
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| Manhattan was one of my first discs. The moiré on that one guy’s suit during one scene is amazingly extreme on some setups but overall it’s very crisp for something so letterboxed it’s missing half its resolution. It’s also one of WA’s best movies, maybe even his best. |
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| rein-o |
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Posted: 29 Sep 2023, 16:44
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chrisw6atv wrote:
My latest Laser Disc (in late September 2023) is Manhattan. I decided I should have it because it is the first letterboxed/widescreen Laser Disc released,
Maybe in the USA. |
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| admin |
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Posted: 01 Oct 2023, 05:16
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Based on the data we have right now, Japan got letterboxed releases as early as 1982?
(Japan/LD/Released in 1982)
https://www.lddb.com/search.php?adv_search=%2A&format=ld&release_op=same&release=1982&country=4&picture=2&format=ld&sort=date,asc
Eclipse, L' (1962) [FY023-34DT] (May '82)
Pied Piper, The (1972) [FY026-26VC] (Jun '82)
Last Concert, The (1976) [FY036-24HD] (Oct '82)
1.5 year before the first letterboxed home video release of Amarcord (1974) [RCA 00904] on CED in the USA, and 2.5 years before Manhattan (1979) [ML100469] .
Julien |
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| rein-o |
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Posted: 01 Oct 2023, 15:38
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| Those are some classic films, no matter who released the first widescreen I'm glad people got a clue and embraced this important issue on home theater formats. |
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| signofzeta |
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Posted: 02 Oct 2023, 15:42
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DD is really more of an archive tool. It’s the tunneling electron microscope of capture systems. It’s a PITA for most people and absolutely not worth the hassle in most cases. It was created to archive legitimately rare or one of a kind discs. It’s not for punters.
If what you have is truly special and you want to saved for all eternity for the betterment of man, then go with the DD. If there are three copies of what you have on eBay right now and two versions on YouTube then just use whatever. |
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| signofzeta |
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Posted: 02 Oct 2023, 15:50
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Unlikely. They cost more than $10 when they were mass produced by the thousands decades ago. JDM CDVs were ¥2500. If the format is reborn it will only be because someone spent thousands doing it for even more of a loss than Phillips experienced.
I’d be the first to stand in line if the line ever ends up forming which I very much doubt. |
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| laserfanhld-gb |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2023, 09:08
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| Thanks for starting an interesting post. I haven’t ever seen this particular Genesis LD which I note dates from 1984, I’m just wondering due to its vintage if a comparison based on a more modern transfer e.g. The Way We Walk in Concert, a 1993 release would highlight the differences especially in video qualities somewhat better? Also another interesting one although from 1987 is the (Japan Only Release) Invisible Touch Tour/Hi-Def Live that was shot using early Sony HDVS 1125 line high definition cameras etc. There is varying amounts of noise visible at times on certain very dark scenes but generally the PQ is excellent, making it hard to believe that this was shot in the mid 80s! |
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| kimlaughton |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2023, 09:17
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I’ve just moved from a CLD-99S to a CLD-959 and while there certainly is an improvement it’s not enough that you’d notice without careful checking of captures.
I think these days what you do after the player (in terms of scaling, noise reduction, external comb filtering etc) will make a much bigger difference to the end result than the player itself in most cases.
It makes sense however that differences were exaggerated previously. It was hard for most non pro reviewers to objectively compare a large number of players and as with most equipment like this there is a strong desire to upgrade and get the ‘best’. No one getting into any hobby wants to hear that the majority of the equipment involved is good enough and that the diminishing returns are so intense that you’d be better off spending your money enjoying some nice dinners.
It would be nice to see some good captures of a large sample of players playing the same content with the same capture setup, but not sure how that could happen unless someone has a really large player collection. |
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| signofzeta |
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Posted: 07 Oct 2023, 18:59
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If you were still using an SD CRT you’d still see huge differences in players. The process of digitizing everything and converting it to HD more or less puts every player in the same ball park.
If I may ask, does this process typically make most players look pretty good, or does it make most players look mediocre? (I am aware, of course, that displays have quality differences, too. My "good" display now is a Sony 77-inch OLED set, which I would expect to be among the better ones available.)
Playing SD video on new displays tends to group all players closer because the display is capable of so much more resolution and dynamic range than what’s on an LD. They all look mediocre compared to the HD or 4K signals you’re supposed to be using on that TV. An NTSC signal has not even 1/4 of of the picture information of an Blu-ray so the TV fills in the differences. This is why all LD players look the same, they look like your TVs conversion process. Your TV goes to 11 and LD goes to like…3, so the 3 has to be re-transcribed at 11 levels. The taste of the Kool Aid is dependent on the taste of the water it’s made with because it’s %95 water.
LD players were tuned for CRTs. All NTSC LD players played NTSC LDs but some have more chroma noise than others and new TVs can eliminate it which blends noisy and non-noisy players together...or sometimes an TV gets so busy rendering noise it makes the overall picture worse. A CRT with high saturation may not even be able to render noise that is very obvious on a flat panel. An S201 playing a submarine movie is like…nasty, on the disc itself, but there are ways of reducing it intentionally or unintentionally, by the nature of the design.
PVMs rarely do wonders for LD or any movie sources since they usually have zero movie-centric features. They are meant for bug checking and verification of analog signals, not to disguise any fault but more likely to bring them out as that’s what they were made for. |
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| ldfan |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2023, 05:18
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You can check out this list here….
https://www.lddb.com/hardware/part/ac3rf/
…… and look under “AV Receiver”.
You’ll have do a separate search on each model to see which one’s come with an optical and/or coaxial digital output (some don’t come with any digital outputs so you would be stuck using the AV Receiver as is with your speakers plugged into it).
For “Processors” that have an optical output, the models to search for are…..
Sony, SDP-E800
Sony, SDP-EP9ES
Denon, AVD-2000
Keep a search for these on eBay and every so often you might see one listed for a good price. |
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| rein-o |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2023, 05:33
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Yes grip ring, loss of words at the time of my last post  |
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| thurminator |
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Posted: 22 Oct 2023, 15:05
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Broken on arrival, eh? Oh well, add another destroyed player to the pile…
If it’s the M Holder (sounds like it) and it’s an original part then it was probably at least half broke when they mailed it. Please do not mail players though, seriously. I know you got bored on YouTube and just wanted to try something but please try to see the larger picture: players that worked for decades are being smashed almost daily by noobs in Facebook groups who only heard of LD a month ago. They think they are entering a scene but they are also helping to end it completely by rapidly accelerating the rate at which players are being consumed.
Thanks for standing at the gate of LD heaven. I've been collecting laserdiscs for about 7 years, and have enjoyed tinkering with vintage electronics and computers for a lot longer than that. I wanted to get this player so that I can use it with my vintage surround sound setup with my Wega Trinitron I've also had for years. I'm well aware of the issues shipping can cause, which is why I bought the player I did, which is not a rare model. I've seen exactly 4 players show up within 100 miles of me in 7 years, and because yes, LD seems to be having a little bit of a resurgence online I decided to bite the bullet and spend less than $130 to get a player with AC3 capabilities shipped to me in the hopes I'd be able to fix it if it had issues, which so far has been well within my electronics capabilities and has allowed me to support the awesome guy running the LaserParts store keeping this hobby alive. I made my first post here for this because I've never had an issue with my CLD-V2600 I couldn't fix myself with research since I found it locally and re-discovered the format 7 years ago. |
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| ldfan |
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Posted: 24 Oct 2023, 06:26
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The “RF” in respect to AC3-RF is really just a descriptor that the signal coming out of the jack is RF based and not S/PDIF like standard optical and coaxial digital outs.
This is the only way Dolby Digital could work in LD since they decided to take away an analog audio channel to place this new data track on the disc (unlike DTS as they stole the entire PCM track on LD to make their codec work and also do it without any special decoding equipment like AC3-RF since it technically isn’t RF as the PCM track is already in an S/PDIF format).
Anyway, going to back to AC3-RF, the magic inside the Demodulator isn’t about RF but about QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying). Think of it like how in the early days of the internet we were able to carry a digital signal on an analog phone line. This is more or less the same concept of AC3-RF with a digital signal hidden in an analog one. |
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| rickituarte |
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Posted: 25 Oct 2023, 06:55
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| I worked at DiscoVision in Carson CA 1981 and we had more rejects than good pressings. quality control was difficult. We would actually play a clear disc directly from the mold presser and determine if the master was defective. from there the clear disc went to the metalizing dept to have the coating baked on. after that the two sides were glued together. another quality control check was done to view the finished disc. hundreds of rejected disc were discarded daily. |
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| dolorespettr |
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Posted: 26 Oct 2023, 15:50
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Hi-
Tonight after fixing my CLD-D604 player (I hope), I watched Wavelength:
Wavelength (1983) [40185]
It is the -one- "regular" Hollywood movie from the 1980s (or newer) I know that has not been released on DVD or another newer format. But here are the weird parts: I put the disc in the player the normal way, and it came up on Side 2. I physically flipped it over (side 2 label up), and then it played normally ("Side A" was content of Side 1, then later it automatically played Side 2 as expected). The disc started to skip in the end credits (at the 40-minute point?), though, but a scan back and forward went to the end of the disc and back OK. However, a second normal-speed play from the 40-minute point of the uno online 45-minute side started skipping at the 41-minute point and then stopped. I ejected the disc, and its Side 1 label (which was on physical side 1) had fallen off in the player. Very strange. I have never had a disc label fall off before.
In this case, if both labels fell off, I could reattach them on their correct sides.
Now, I need to check the player to see if the side B skipping was related to the label issue or not.
Though extremely dated the film is interesting enough to keep a viewers attention but has severe pacing issues and the ending is highly predictable and underwhelming.
I was just waiting for Carradine to deliver his trademark laugh and always find myself struggling to take him seriously despite him being a terrific actor. |
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| signofzeta |
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Posted: 08 Nov 2023, 13:52
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Colorization is satanic. I’ve never seen this movie colorized and never would I want to. It screams loud enough in b/w.
The only acceptable colorization I can think of would be Ray Harryhausen stuff since his earlier work was b/w only for budget reasons and he lived to approve the colorization. Also since they were colorized in the 21st century and not the 80s the effect is massively better. If colorization floats your boat then look for the newest one. Someone’s probably done it on YT. |
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| signofzeta |
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Posted: 08 Nov 2023, 18:44
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Where on the internet are people generating hype for a b*****d version of King Kong?
Never mind…Facebook, obviously….
Questioning the quality of the transfer is extra hilarious. They friggn colorized it. That’s how much they care about accurate transfers. They literally scribble all over it with digital crayons. They couldn’t even spell “authentic”. |
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| remav |
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Posted: 08 Feb 2024, 07:03
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Hi-
...I worked in a store that sold the original Magnavision player in 1980, and I got my first player in 1984, a Pioneer VP-1000 that skipped and froze about halfway into discs. I fixed that problem, and later I upgraded to nicer players into the late 1990s when I got a used CLD-D704.
My 704s are all wearing out. Bearing issues we are working on a fix, but I have to find the time. |
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| admin |
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Posted: 22 Feb 2024, 06:21
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| elahrairrah |
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Posted: 06 Mar 2024, 19:09
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| I've got some Karaoke LDs I'm willing to part with if you want to give me the songs you're looking for. |
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| admin |
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Posted: 11 Mar 2024, 15:05
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=> https://magnashow10.base.shop/items/67228930
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Julien |
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Thanks list