I will stick for now to the following naming convention (for players):
/ Brand / Family / Model - Language _(other infos).pdf
If you happen to have a PDF manual missing or can scan yours (below 10MB would be great, you can split/multi-zip/etc. as long as it can be reconstructed on a Windows or Linux platform), just send it to: manual@lddb.com . Don't worry if you can only send JPEGs of each page, I can easily generate PDFs if needed.
To make sending HUGE scanned PDFs easier than splitting by Email, I setup a anonymous drop (upload only) URL that you can access here:
https://cloud.wilk.fr/index.php/s/pWtRSbVInEc6Te8
The password hint is : what is the video medium we are mostly collecting here? (small case, no plural)
Julien
PS: Topic is locked, PM me if you have a question.
I've already got that - it's an excellent article, and useful even for the video side. I just haven't figured out how to translate that description of CX into code, but OTOH I'm still working on improving my video decoding (it's getting pretty good, it's just *slow* code, and I need to write an NTSC comb filter as well...)
Sony has patents on Dolby A and SR digital decoding and the patents give the programming code - for the SHARC chip I think - while its not CX, it might help you out with figuring out how to program CX decoding. CX is a simple system without frequency emphasis like Dolby or sliding bands - it just has variable time constants and a knee where it goes from 2:1 compression/expansion to 1:1.
Hey just thought you all might find this interesting. Here is what my copy of the Discovision US Demo looks like, note the handwritten manufacturing info...
I know that most of us still miss Disclord/Ty and his knowledge, he forgot more than we will ever know.
But one thing has been on my mind recently, what ever happened to his collection. I know he had a lot of players, once he posted a picture with what looked like over 15-20 players. He had some other rare discs and while I can't remember how many he had I wouldn't be shocked to find out he had over 5000 discs.
So back to the title which sums it all up. Did anybody get his collection, or is it out there with non LD lovers :think:
In short; you don’t want this. You can already buy 12x12 sleeves aftermarket, they’ve been available for 70 years including round bottom poly ones. You don’t want anything but the annoying ones though unless the LD came with a paper one in the first place.
The topic comes up so often I’ve started putting together a video to explain why paper sucks. Paper-only is completely out of the question for several reasons, mainly because the heavy LD will rip through it and also paper has no anti static aspect so dust and hairs will stick to the media. The paper plus plastic ones usually are larger which causes the outer jacket to likely eventually burst.
This video, which I’ve been promising for at least two years, is in fact under construction. Filming is complete, editing is underway.
This is a bit of an odd one, and I apologize if there's a super-easy way to search for this info that I've failed to come up with.
I'm trying to add a cheap CLV disc to my collection. Not CAA-labeled-CLV, but an actual old-school CLV disc. Problem is that CAA is so universally labeled CLV I can't seem to find any easy way to search for CLV that isn't also CAA, or a definitive date for when CAA started showing up so I can just hunt for something older.
Background: I have a LD player and some anime discs from back in the '90s, but this is related to my collection of old video media formats, one of each type and variant. I don't much care what the content is--the cheaper the better--or being able to watch it, it's just about the technology to me. I'm getting down to the really hard to find stuff (EVD, UniHi, DCT, VDR-V1000), when I realized that I was missing some of the funky LD variants. In particular, I have several CLV discs but being '90s titles I'm assuming they're all actually CAA. Hence my desire to find an old-school "pure" CLV title on the cheap.
I should probably post a separate thread asking if there are any major LD variants I'm missing. My list shows (with some overlap): VSD, 5" CD-V, 8" and 12" "CD-Video" (digital audio track), 8" and 12" analog-audio-only, DTS/DD encoded audio, all-CAV, all-CAA, CAA+CAV, and "true" CLV (what I'm hunting for), plus maybe a disc with graphics printed on one side instead of playable "flip this over" filler.
That's not including exotics like MUSE, CRV-disc, RLV, VDR-V1000, HD-MAC prototypes, and whatever the heck discs HDVS used.
Hoping to get a conversation going about stand out AC-3 Soundtracks.
23126 Godzilla (1998) 20102 Twister (1996) Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) [PILF-2830] ML105544 Goldeneye: Special Edition (1995) (i did find the LFE excessive at times)
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Top Gun up to now? also I've had U571 for years and for a DD5.1 DVD it sounds amazing, I believe it got a late release on LD presumably in DD and I've always wondered how it sounded/looked, can anyone confirm?
Will confirm the visual and sound quality of U-571 is optimal. One of my favorite movies on LD, not because of late release status. Love the cast, story, and production. Bill Paxton at his best dramatically imo !
I wasnt fortunate enough to hear AC-3 in the LD hayday but i do still clearly remember watching movies like Toy Story and Jurassic Park in 5.0 Prologic and being very impressed
There probably aren’t very many movies with A in it that I want to see. I was never that big of a fan of his fascist anti-human message in the first place but now that I know how it turned out...that he grew up and became governor of California and started signing actual death warrants...it’s too depressing. The violence fantasy becoming violence reality.
Bad guy appears. A-Bot says something that sounds like a toddler wrote it, but in a monotone marble mouthed way, uses some sort of weapon. Sound FX, guy dies, A-Bot drops another murderous toddler-ism. The shorter ones around A Bot that are still living swoon at his emotionless massiveness. We endure another 11 seconds of nothing at all so the cycle can repeat.
I’d rather throw a Bill Cosby - Michael Jackson film fest than watch those movies again. Maybe Conan...because in that one he plays the part he was made to play; a brain dead murder. And when his girlfriend dies his suffering is, honestly, totally convincing. That movie is almost perfect for what it is and he is perfect in it. You must be a blast at parties.
LD has composite video right there on the disc. The TVs already handle it. There is zero point in building an expensive converter in every player. You cannot make a picture better by converting it to a better format because you still have all the flaws of the original in place as well as all the flaws from the conversion. With 90s tech it wouldn’t have looked very good anyway.
the first time i read that, i thought you were saying progressive source was the most important thing for material to be encoded with SuperNTSC, but i may have read that wrong i see now... Yeah, I think after all of this SN exploration I'm saying that a progressive scan master is more important than SN encoding alone for the best PQ on LD and the reason later releases (even without SN encoding) look so much better than LDs from say, 1990. I think a progressive master may negate the need for SN encoding. Progressive masters don't need to be telecined, just scanned. Then when its time to make the NTSC/PAL master they can do the frame conversion digitally (?) It is easier to make an interlaced version of a progressive master than the other way around. Scan the film once at the highest resolution then down convert from there.
In the final analysis of the best LDs for PQ you'll find a correlation with a DVD release around the same time and thus likely a progressive master was made and used for LD which *may* have been SuperNTSC encoded.
There are plenty of examples of the opposite; LD NTSC masters used for early DVDs that were non-anamorphic LBX.
The T2 Extreme DVD has some really insightful info regarding the process of transferring a film to video. Scans of the insert: Insert_1sm.jpg Insert_2sm.jpg
I unplug my R7G every night and tuck it in to it's own bed. Read it a few pages from the instruction manual before wrapping the power cord around the remote control nice and snug.
I've named him Alan and he's great. :D
Wonderful parents like you are so far and few between Ted - one day little Alan will grow up to become a wonderful X0 :D
Not a hope. The minute Alan turns 18 he's out of the family!
Speaking of Doug Pratt and the DVD-LD Newsletter, whatever happened to the site, http://www.dvdlaser.com/ ? Front page is up, but every time you search for something, you get an error page. Did he stop maintaining the site? Digging up this old thread for anyone interested in Doug Pratt's LaserDisc Newsletter reviews.
The website may not have been maintained for some time, however I was surprised to learn that he still publishes the newsletter every month! I had no idea, and only discovered this information when ordering the full set of back issues "from September 1984 to last month". Expecting 'last month' to be some time in the early 2000s, I then found myself reading the January 2022 issue of The DVD-LaserDisc Newsletter (he still has LaserDisc in the title). Of course it's all DVD and Blu-ray reviews nowadays, but the design and layout is the same as when I used to buy printed issues in the mid '90s.
If anyone wants to order back issues from the LaserDisc era, you can e-mail DVDLaserdisc@gmail.com or message Doug on eBay . They're all available in PDF format.
Took me the whole evening but I tested ALL my remaining HDDVDs tonight and... I have 21 survivors that "play".
Let me define what "play" means as I had no time to watch everything entirely:
Insert the disc in the player, the disc gets detected as a HDDVD Movie starts playing Jump to the last chapter (to trigger a layer change) If still playing, rewind a few chapters to trigger the layer change again
Listing all the dead ones would be too long, so let's list only the winners:
2007 DTS-HD Master Audio (2007) [---] (signed by Omar Hakim in NYC, even if rotted, I would keep it!)
Paramount :
U2: Rattle and Hum (1988) [07036] Italian Job, The (2003) [07037] Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) [07040] Sleepy Hollow (1999) [11819] Mission: Impossible: Ultimate Missions Collection [11993] (only the first movie played, more on this later) Top Gun (1986) [13055] Beowulf (2007) [13231] (Canada release)
Universal :
Miami Vice (2006) [61030032] Darkman (1990) [61032834] Carlito's Way (1993) [61032853] Shaun of the Dead (2004) [61032931] Unleashed (2005) [62031106] Being John Malkovich (1999) [62101263] End of Days (1999) [27783] Tremors (1990) [27918C] (Canada release, not sure it would play entirely)
And 2 French releases:
Renaissance (2006) [3316685] Terminator 2: Le jugement dernier (1991) [302 345-5]
What do they all have in common?
[1] Very little to no plastic decay inside the case and [2] No weird patterns that appeared/evolved on the data side of the disc over time. and [3] They often (even still sealed before test) had little to no insert/catalogs/etc. that might denote a different batch or production facility.
Side note: sealed or not sealed seems to make absolutely NO difference in the outcome of the test.
Among the dead ones, 69 would not even be recognized by the player => fail at step a) 2 would be detected as HDDVD but couldn't start playing => fail at step b) (both Universal) 3 would play but fail to reach the last chapter => fail at step c) (3 Universal incl. 2 combo discs) 3 would play the last chapter but fail at shifting back a few chapters with error => fail at step d) (Dreamworks, Paramount, Universal)
That would denote that the rot does not stabilize after some time but keep eating discs alive. Most of my failed discs would previously fail at c) or d) 5 years ago, now most fail at a).
Among the 77 victims:
33 Warner => death rate is 94% for me when considering all Warner titles I still have 28 Universal => death rate 78% 6 Paramount => death rate 46% 3 Dreamworks => death rate 75% 7 various labels => death rate 78%
R.I.P. (Rarely I Play) HDDVD.
Last update
I tried the DVD side of the few combo releases I own:
HDDVD dead, DVD playable:
Departed, The (2006) [111728] Scorpion King, The (2002) [31304] Children of Men (2006) [61030033] Hot Fuzz (2007) [62100068] Bourne Ultimatum, The (2007) [61101398]
HDDVD dead, not able to read the full DVD:
Appleseed Ex Machina (2007) [3000014884] Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) [111299] Ultimate Matrix Collection, The [---]
Remember Laserdisc was developed around the early 1960's and a format that both NTSC and PAL was compatible with was established. Digital Audio come along much later so it was not even imagined during development. Laserdisc format always struggled since you cannot record but people with home theaters loved it. When CD/Digital Audio started being the future, laserdisc had to decide how to implement Digital Audio to add CD capability to the players as a means to try to keep the format alive. Laserdisc NTSC used as a base the HiFi Stereo technique used for VHS/Beta tape by using an unused spectrum to store the digital audio (VHS/Beta Audio was stored in an analog format and laserdisc stored digital format). Sadly PAL does not have this unused space.
There are documents stored with the development of laserdisc, maybe others will point you there.
Thanks list
Requires a transit screw for shipping