I've had my Laserdisc setup for a year or so now, and during that time I've spent many hours fiddling with video configurations to try and get the 'best' picture. I've quoted best there, since it's a subjective issue, but in my case I've tried to focus on getting the viewing experience as close to a CRT as possible, but viewing on a modern flat screen device.

I've tried a number of approaches, but the one that I've settled on (for now) involves the following equipment.


* LG 4k 65" GX OLED - This is functionally the same as the more popular CX model, but designed to be mounted on a wall.
* Pioneer CLD-D704 Laserdisc player.
* Extron 301-HD - Cheap on eBay, does a good job at deinterlacing and has a good 3D comb filter.
* Micomsoft XRGB-Mini Framemeister - I had one of these around for retro video games, i use an OSSC.
* Onkyo TX-NR686 AV Receiver - Not important with regards to video, but I use the analog and optical inputs to support analog, digital and AC3 audio tracks.
* Logitech Harmony - Again, not important, but makes switching audio configurations and video aspect ratios convenient.
* 20" Sony PVM CRT - for use as a reference monitor to compare with OLED.


The PVM is calibrated it with the video essentials disc. My goal is to closely replicate the CRT viewing experience, so a good reference monitor is really helpful.

I find there are three areas to consider when setting things up:

1. Analogue video noise - from disc and player.
2. Quantisation / banding - This is related to how the analogue video signal is converted into digital, and whether data is lost when the digital signals are processed.
3. Colour reproduction - By default, the extron produces a desaturated image. Compensating for this is a tricky balancing act.

Before doing any adjustments, I find it useful to disable any image processing options on the TV. Turn all 'Dynamic' options off - black level, noise reduction, super resolution, sharpness (zero).

OLED displays have an almost instant response time. This can result in apparent judder in bright areas on 24Hz content. I turn OLED Motion Pro (which is actually black frame insertion) to medium. This inserts black frame between frames which eliminates the judder caused by immediately switching from one image to the next. The trade-off is lower brightness. Keep other motion settings off, or you'll end up with motion interpolation, and the soap opera effect.

I also turn on Real Cinema, which removes duplicated frames caused by 3:2 pulldown. You can see the difference of this setting on scrolling end credits. It's fun to verify it works correctly with a high frame rate camera.


1. Analogue video noise

Analogue noise is unavoidable, but can be reduced with more expensive playback devices. CRT's are much more forgiving of analogue noise than modern HDTV's. My aim is to closely reproduce the CRT experience, so I don't mind simulating some CRT artefacts to hide the noise, while maintaining detail.

A CRT works by breaking down an image into a raster pattern, which is drawn a line at a time onto the phosphor on the glass. These scan-lines are separated by visible areas of black. This scan-line pattern is very effective at hiding analogue video noise.

By contrast, hooking a Standard Definition device into a modern HDTV will cause the TV to try to upscale the image. Modern TV's do a very good job at this, but any noise in the image will be magnified by the process, both in scale and detail. Upscalars uses edge detection to improve scaling quality, but these algorithms really pick out noise in the detail. There are options to apply noise filters, but these have the tendency to smooth out real details too. A problem!

In my case, I prefer to use the Framemeister to add scan-lines to the image, and perform vertical integer scaling of the image. I find that this has the effects of hiding the noise, while keeping the details of the image, without using noise filters. Here's my setup:

Extron [deinterlace] -> 4:3 720x480p -> Framemeister [crop to 720x360 and scale to 1280x720] -> 16:9 720p -> AVR -> LG OLED [scale 3x to 3840x2160].

A notes on scaling - the Extron can output 640x480, but samples 720 pixels per line. Of course, 720 and 640 are way above the horizontal resolution of Laserdisc. I haven't compared the output of these resolutions, but I worry about scaling artefacts of digitally scaling down the sampled data before scaling back up again. In reality, I expect it's not a real problem.

Most of my Laserdiscs are letterboxed widescreen, and this setup maintains the correct aspect ratio for them, while allowing integer scaling of the scan-lines. This results in perfect scan-lines for most discs. Scan-lines for 4:3 content are more troublesome, since it needs 480x2 (960) vertical resolution. 960 doesn't go nicely into 1080, which is the closest vertical resolution that the framemeister can output. Best case is living with a boarder of 60px top and bottom of image. I've not yet experimented with this setup.

Digital scan-lines are very subjective. I like them, but I know lots of people hate them. They also reduce overall image brightness, which some people find a problem, particularly for day time viewing. I also accept that scan-lines are far from the only artefact of CRTs that hide the noise and limited resolution of SD signals. Personally, I find digital versions of shadow masks and aperture grills to be a bit much, but simple scan-lines are fine. Each to their own!



2. Quantisation / banding

The wrong configuration of your video hardware can lead to distracting banding in the image, that never appears on a real CRT. This is typically caused by digital processing of the image data, resulting in reduced precision of video intensity. This results in banding in the image, which can look particularly bad in some scenes.

There are a number of factors that can affect quantisation / banding:

* Incorrect black-level setting on the TV. NTSC black level should be set to 'limited' rather than 'full' range, otherwise you'll get crushed blacks. Attempting to calibrate the TV when black level set to 'full' results in quantisation of darker greys in the image, which makes dark scenes ugly - details will suddenly jump out of shadows and look bad really bad. I only have US region laserdiscs. Japan's NTSC standard defines black as IRE 0, while the US defines black as IRE 7.5. I expect black level should be handled differently for Japanese discs, but I can't test this.

* Loss of precision in processing chain. Once the image has been digitised, it is represented in binary form. Usually 8-bit or 10-bit per channel (e.g. RGB, YCbCr). This gives 256 levels of intensity per channel for 8-bits, and 1024 for 10-bits. If processing is done in the digital realm, then precision will be lost resulting in quantisation intensity levels, and banding in the image. Try to make sure that any processing hardware in the chain outputs is set to output the same data it receives. In my case the only processing the framemeister does is adding scan-lines. I keep the brightness, contrast and other settings set to the defaults to avoid modifying colour data.

The extron provides a number of controls to adjust the brightness, contrast, colour and tint of the picture. I find that straying from the default of 64 seems to result in banding. I'm not certain why this is - the documentation claims to perform this processing with 30-bit samples of video data. I'm not sure why it can look bad. With contrast and brightness set to 64, and black level on the TV set to limited (I use the black level scenes on the Video Essentials disc to do this). You can check for banding by using the smooth white to black pattern near the end of chapter 15 on the same disc.



3. Colour reproduction

With the default settings, the Extron produces a very desaturated image. Using SMPTE colour bars on the Video Essentials disc this can be adjusted. The Extron's blue-only filter makes it fairly easy to calibrate the tint and colour levels, while isolating the setting from other elements in the chain. Be aware - colour saturation may need to be turned right up (in my case I had to turn it up from 64 to 119). This doesn't seem to contribute to banding problems, while I found that changing colour settings the LG TV did introduce banding in the chroma signal. On the TV, I keep colour at 50, and tint at 0. Check for banding by using the hue colour bars on the video essentials disc.

You might find that some colours are too intense when the SMPTE bars are used for calibration. I found that reds tend to be a little too intense. You can change the white balance to address this. I found that switching the TV white balance from Warm to Neutral was enough to address the problem.



Screenshots

These screenshots were taken with a cheap USB HDMI capture device, and ffmpeg. The capture quality isn't great though. I need to figure out how to get the best out of it.

Seems like a lot of work to add back something that never existed in the first place. Scanlines NEVER existed on film they were just a technological limitation of the home equipment at the time. I understand nostalgia but for the life of me cannot figure out why people go to such lengths to actively denegrate their picture.

It always seems to be the new LD fans who have some fond rememberance of a crappy picture from their youth but never remember that LD was supposed to push the boundary of home theater.

I agree totally and also with whatever post Substance may make.

This is whalers on the moon singing a tune, gets everything wrong.

Agreed. Not wanting to p**s on anyone's chips, but I think scanlines have their place when it comes to old video games. Not for films though. I can't work that one out. Films would have been designed for a theatrical run, not a 14" portable Matsui.

I can see the nostalgia buzz for it but there's just no logic to it at all.

Moreover, scanlines as implemented here weren't even a technological limitation of interlaced CRTs for anything except video games. Static scanlines were only visible for progressive video sources; 480i content resulted in alternating scanlines, which I don't believe the Framemeister can do, and regardless is always an iffy proposition to attempt artificially. More likely to be both inauthentic to what a CRT actually looked like and give you major eye strain and a headache.

I had a Framemeister for a few years. Great bit of kit but it's expensive for what it is now and there's kit out there for a fraction of the price that can do the job as good if not better. For old video games that is. For films and that sort of thing I find a DVDO is good enough for VHS and LD sources without spending a fortune.

Wait a minute, I saw this post before but didn't really understand it so I did a search on what a scanline is.

Why the hell would you add scanlines to your LD image at all?
I hated the scanline on my old videogames and was super happy when I bought my first arcade machine that didn't have them due to the resolution of the
monitor being different than our home CRTs at the time.

Is this like getting a CD player and having a filter to had skips and pops to your music when you playback so it sounds like a record?

LOL you think you are joking but you aren't - https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/dusty ... erator.php

OMG this is why I've been dumping some of my vinyl collection to replace with CDs.
I feel like 1989 all over again

I was joking and did know of such a filter for recordings but now that I think about it it makes sense to have
millennials into this type of thing for their home.

If my turntable weren't more fragile than my LD players I would've had it sold last year.

When it comes to 8/16 bit video games scanlines are almost essential. Nothing ever looks as good as the real thing, a CRT. I’ve tried several $$$ alternatives starting with XRGB2+ when we were still upscaling/line doubling on CRTs. Nothing looks like 240p SD. It’s easier and cheaper to just have a CRT.

When it comes to movies though…makes no sense. Film doesn’t generate scanlines and all LD period displays worked like hell to minimize their visibility (see; Trinitron).

A Sega Genesis is the source of Sonic 2. Whatever it puts out is the real thing. LD players however exist to play copies of things. They do what they can to approximate film or better video formats. They try to be as close to the source as possible but they aren’t the source. That’s the thing that isn’t understood here. You don’t need the scanlines any more than you need the noise of the player vibrating. Those are just artifacts from an imperfect source.

Seem to have kicked a hornets nest here! Sorry about that. Like I said in my post, scanlines certainly aren’t for everyone. I’ll put forward my reasons, and everyone can enjoy disagreeing with them!

About the Framemeister - I’m using it because it was gathering dust. Also, I’m not trying to render laserdisc as 240p. It’s 480i, deinterlaced to 480p by the Extron 301HD. For letterboxed titles this gets cropped to 360p, then line doubled to 720p. Every other line is just slightly darker (there’s no flicker or headache).

About arcade games - if they are running in low resolution, you are should be seeing scanlines, perhaps you are thinking of interlace flicker?

Film doesn’t have scanlines, but Laserdiscs aren’t really film. Laserdiscs store a raster pattern, designed to draw lines on a CRT. Depending on the size of the screen, these will be more or less visible, but always present. Scanlines are visible on even the highest quality Trinitron - I have an excellent 20” PVM where they are clearly defined. Scanlines are an artefact - a limitation of the technology at the time.

Despite this, scanlines do a decent job of masking the noise present in the analogue video image. Laserdiscs still look excellent on a good CRT, certainly better than how SD images look on a flat panel display - where (in my opinion) the image can look mushy and ill-defined, sharp and noisy, or both.

The purpose of this experiment is just to see if adding scanlines can reduce visible noise - to try to get it to look approximately as it would do on a CRT. Not better, but not worse either. If you are happy with your current picture quality, or dislike scanlines, this approach won’t appeal to you. I’m not trying to convince anyone they are wrong. Just to explain the thinking behind my experiment..

Laserdisc is never going to look as good as modern media, but that doesn’t stop them being interesting, or fun.

I didn't say you were trying to render them at 240p, I said you were going for a progressive scanline look, which isn't what laserdiscs look like on a CRT (unless, I guess, you have a progressive-scan TV that deinterlaces the video first). The lines that laserdiscs were designed to draw on a CRT as you put it were intended to alternate their vertical position with each field, making the illusion of an image without visible gaps between the lines. In this sense, straight deinterlacting without artificial scanlines is closer to the intended result.

Anyway, no hard feelings I hope, if it feels like we're dogpiling. I'm generally on board with trying to mitigate the inherent kludginess of different video sources, but in the case of analog video (unlike with video games), I've always found faux-CRT effects to distract from the actual picture. Just doesn't feel like watching a movie to me, even though I grew up with a cheap consumer CRT TV, a VCR, and a DVD player. Maybe that's because to me the TV was always just a poor substitute for the theater.


I won't say they can substitute for a CRT now because nothing from a flat-panel will ever look quite like a CRT, but I'm really happy with the granular scanline options in the RetroTink 5X's recent firmware update. Different shadow mask options, gamma/saturation compensation, variable line intensity (brighter pixels are taller), horizontal softening, and probably some other settings I'm forgetting. Takes a lot of futzing to get it right, but as someone with no space at present for a CRT TV, I thought it was worth it.

If nothing else it's neat to see what you can do with original hardware connected to a scaler now: https://twitter.com/5Xpixels/status/1467553393413701641

Cheers - no hard feelings! I find noise distracting, and wanted to try something out., I thought I’d share my results, that’s all! I had a feeling it’d be controversial!

I agree the RetroTink 5x looks great. I like the OSSC too (my TV is one of the rare ones that supports it well), and I’m looking forward to what happens with the new pro model. I work in the games industry, and have a couple of arcade machines. One of my hobbies is repairing old arcade PCB’s and consoles. Lots of interesting things to learn.

People don't really seem to understand that external video processors for analog video and video processors for retro videogames have vastly different endgoals in mind. That's why it always bothers me whenever someone asks for something for Laserdisc and people recommend stuff meant for retro games.

Totally agree, I certainly wouldn’t recommend a game scaler for film (which is why I use an Extron). Out of interest, what would you say your end goals are?

For video games my goals are: integer scaling with crisp edges, low latency, smooth scrolling without judder, and optionally (adjust to taste) scanlines.

For NTSC video: good deinterlacing, good comb filter, 3:2 pull down correction, and scaling while minimising noise artefacts. Also well calibrated display for the signal, so correct black level/brightness, contrast and chroma.

My opinion is that Laserdisc looks good on a CRT, but a bit pants on a flat screen. The question I want to answer is why? What’s your explanation?