The region 1 starts with the old universal world logo like it should. The 3.1 sensurround mix is a joke, it's just mono in all 3 channels with fake rumble. Earthquake was a genuine 4 track stereo film so I don't know why universal thought the 3.1 track was real. Please reduce the size of your pictures - they make everything smaller and hard to read without zooming.

Are you sure its triple mono full-range? Are you monitoring the channels correctly?

I can confirm an odd mix on other film more about that in moment.

Well at least the original Universal opening is intact on R1, that's wonderful to hear.

no just added DNR to the picture of the cover

Peter Sandza: "Ask Childress if all this was worth his arm".
Bob: "What? Did you do something to his arm, Peter"?
Peter Sandza: "I killed it. With a machine gun".

Now playing in odd Dolby Digital 4.0 Lucasfilm THX Sound System.

THE FURY (1978) sci-fi horror, directed by Brain De Palmer

This has a rather odd 4.0 mix that seems to carry a duel mono phantom on stage channels left and right and while the mix is discrete with centre carrying its own mix of dialouge music and effects. Often at times dialouge is phantom on left and right with occasional Foley footsteps.

The mono surrounds are rarely used throughout the film.

I've always been curious to see Earthquake with something somewhat akin to sensurround. Is the old LD the way to go? I'm not really a fan of disaster flicks, but figured if I was going to sit through it, may as well go for as close as possible to seat shaking.

Yes, it's 3.1 channel mono with rumble noise even when there isn't supposed to be, like the first quake and such. It's awful.
Wait till you hear it, you'll see how bad it is.

Get the widescreen US LaserDisc of Earthquake - its mix is almost the same as the pan and scan and has good rumble and surround FX.
Midway widescreen is also good and the trailer is in true Mod II Sensurround, but not decoded with a DBX decoder like it should be
So if you have a DBX II decoder, you can hear the trailer to midway in real Mod II Sensurround. The trailer on the DVD isn't the
Sensurround version. universal made trailers for theaters with Sensurround and those without.

i was wondering about earthquake, now...is the japan ld better than the us ld?

Apparently yes, but I've never seen it for sale.

http://www.urabanchou.com/index.php?mai ... _id=169801. Boom.

I've always been interested in the audio history of Earthquake and currently own the R2 Uk DVD (with 5.1). I was going to invest in the R1 DVD for the Sensurround 3.1 but heard that it was a total copout in terms of audio presentation

I've got the John Williams OST (with earthquake sound effects as a bonus track) on a custom made DVD-Audio disc that was created using the Japanese quadaphonic LP (it's a beast)

I would love to know if the Laserdisc is a better presenation of the senssurround audio mix

+1

Are they 70mm IMAX size.
They are now 35mm size.

Sincerest thanks for resizing

your posts and pics are always welcomed and contribute so much to this forum

That Earthquake DVD-Audio was made from my CD-4 quad LP by a friend for me, then we posted it, along with my Jaws CD-4 LP Quad DVD-A conversion, on Demonoid. I also have the Poseidon Adventure quad soundtrack LP but we never got around to converting it to DVD-A.

The widescreen LaserDisc is a better presentation overall than the DVD, but the image on the DVD is wonderful. The 3.1 mix is totally fake, forget about it - the 5.1 mix is the actual 4-track stereo with the LFE rumble, they just didn't direct any info to the surrounds properly. The absolute best audio presentation is the pan and scan LaserDisc since they used a real Sensurround box to control the audio. The widescreen is the same mix but sounds like a dub that's a few generations down. You can hear the 12kHz surround switching tone on the P/S LaserDisc, but not on the widescreen - its high frequencies are dulled a bit and it doesn't go as deep. When I watch Earthquake I sync the P/S LaserDisc to the DVD so I can have the great audio with the DVD's image.

According to lddb the p&s version is just digital stereo as opposed to the widescreen version, which is surround encoded... is the surround info matrixed into the stereo track and can it be decoded with a standard av receiver?

The LDDB info is wrong, it's stereo surround encoded and clearly says so on the back cover: this videodisc has a matrixed surround soundtrack.

Gotta remember that lots of the LDDB info is wrong or incomplete - like many titles listed as Pan and scan when they are really open matte, or not listing a digital reissue of an early title.

so who got it, let us know if it's any better

Ok - that's worth knowing. Thanks.

That's a bit annoying since whenever I see pan and scan listed on here I automatically get put off because as we all know, pan and screen chops off information on the left and right side of the image which is not how the director intended it to look. I'd love to know which tittles are actuelly open matte so this confusion is avoided.