what do you guys think?
https://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/laserdisc-player-in-4k-home-theater/

I'm not ready to replace my plasma yet, which I felt brought new life to my LDs, but I'm drooling over the OLEDs.

I've had mine hooked up to my 4k TV for awhile, not as nostalgic as a CRT, but my 60 inch weighs 10 pounds compared to the ~300 my old one did.

I have a 4K Sony Projector firing at a multi format screen but Laserdisc will always be what I consider as the main format for my home theatre. Via the Lumagen Radiance 2144 it can look amazingly filmic and this includes letterboxed 2.35.1 movies displayed on the smaller 6 ft. wide screen, although I have a handful that still look quite decent when zoomed up to fit the larger 110" diagonal option. I never really took to DVD; even via the Lumagen I just find the compression artefacts too distracting but BD is a different story, the other thing for me is the LD PCM or DTS audio which I will take anytime compared to a DVD and quite often BD too.

Greetings to you,

My Collection of Laseridsc Players including an HLD X9 connected to my ZD9 75'' in the living room, are quite happy.

I have written about this at length before here

I shall be connecting my Laserdisc and Plasma screen in the bedroom in the coming weeks, pending the connection of the final two or three cables money has been tight.

The bedroom has the: CLD 925 / DVL 91 & DVL 909. Pioneer 503 50''

The living room set up has: HLD X9 / DVL 919 / CLD 99 / 97 & DVL 91 ZD9 75'' TV.

I shall look forward to this happening, as this has taken a long time.


Kindest Regards to all

Interesting article, he may be right that there is no room to have another format in the home theater.
But this is IF you have bottomless pockets and can afford to do another format for a film you only watched once on the 2 formats you own already.

These are really interesting times we live in for the home theater, its at its peak but then people are at a massive downsizing and others will just stream
what they want to.

This is all nice IF you can afford all these extra monthly subscriptions, if you have decided to go the old skool route then you are better off buying the films you want
on the cheaper formats.
I just bought 6 films on DVD from the bay for 16 bucks with free shipping, most are not on LD or if they are they are more expensive, but I don't have a 4K
setup and refuse to do the Bluray route, bought about 10 titles and sold them all off but one and I'm still listing it on ebay.

My 2 main formats are LD and DVD for personal, monetary and other reasons.
Why should I re-purchase a film that I already own on LD and have only watched once just to own it on bluray and watch it once to compare
and then never watch again for another 10+ years.

I will keep my LD collection as I will watch the titles and still do, and own some rare anime but even if it all comes out tomorrow on 4K I won't
re-purchase any as I'm happy with what I have and the little money I still own.

I may sell half my discs or thin the heard but only due to not really wanting that film anymore.
I never got into LD for Star Wars or 6th Day or End of days, I got into it because of anime first and then film I loved and widescreen and more recently silent films
that are not on DVD or other formats.
I guess if I got into LD for the other reasons I would have gotten rid of the format a long time ago.

The article seemed boring so I gave up.

From my own experience LD looks great on the one 4K TV I tried (Bravia circa 2017).

The only TVs that made LD look bad were 1080p or less LCDs, particularly non-Sony ones. If anything 4K will help save LDs usefulness because you don’t need any processing to make the signal look amazing.

I say this not as a person who has read a lot of stuff or watched a lot of YT videos but as someone who still has many displays of different generations still in use including a 27” JVC that makes almost anything SD look amazing, game or movie, with zero lag which is one kind of gold standard, an XBR960 which is possibly the best CRT for LD made, a 1080P Bravia, etc etc. In my opinion it is a tie between the HD CRT from Sony and their own 13 years newer 4K LCD. The tube is more subtle, the flat thing makes stuff pop more, both rule, IMO.

The issue is that in order to created the fuzz storm analog NTSC is supposed to live in you need more lines around the signal. CRTs don’t have lines that are as rigidly defined as LCD pixels are so you are quantizing stuff artificially in relation to the lines above and below it. I’m not describing this well but it’s something I imagined working out for LD fans and it seems to have.

Consider the Photoshop filter “Gaussian blur” and how it has to basically work at a lower res than the imagine (the chosen radius). That kind of thing. Hard to explain...

Room? Always room if you want to make it...

Those "more lines around the signal" (or fuzz storm) which with such discrete (or rigidly defined) displays is the "quantizing stuff artificially in relation to the lines above and below it" is exactly what good scaling is about - filling in the gaps which kind of didn't (but still did) exist with analogue SD CRT's. Do it well and things still look good, do it bad and it all goes to sh!t.

Yeah, but if you have double the res you have more to work with.

But also, yeah, quality of built-in scalers is important, otherwise you need the stack of stuff.

i still maintain that there are SOME LCD TV models out there, at least some somewhat older ones, such as this 2011/2012ish BEST BUY "INSIGNIA"
that can do a remarkably credible job on upscaling LD and other Legacy SD video sources...












i also had a SAMSUNG model for a brief time, that while looking alright with these TOP GUN screencaps,
also had horrible, intolerable issues with motion-blur on sources such my SEGA GENESIS;

And I still maintain that you are no judge of quality if you watch stuff stretched. Virtually any amount of signal degradation would be preferable to every frame of an episode of Moldiver being fat headed. Black and white, no sound...still better than circles rendered as ovals, squares rendered as rectangles, Pac Man traveling faster up and down than he does left and right, etc. etc. It also for sure makes NTSC look worse because your basically taking a magnifying glass to the lines.

Please correct the settings on your TV and repost the images and I swear I won’t mention this a third time.

I don't think I will get into 4K other than buying some titles to collect with my other formats like AKIRA. I also don't think I will replace my Hitachi unless I am force to but only from the era and not these new ones. I probably watch more DVD and BD but do what LD when I'm in the mood for that movie so my setup is fine. Hookup the stuff you like and watch.

I read it, but didn't care for it. He spends a few paragraphs highlighting the clunky workarounds of his HT setup, then discards laserdisc as a relic due to poor PQ. Is anyone (well, one or two on this forum) really claiming LD has a superior picture to modern tech? It seemed a pretty one-dimensional take, too. No discussion of sound quality, original cuts not available on later formats, the special features, Criterions, or cover art.

I have a modest but decent 4K setup in my living room, and I do dig the look of my UHDs, but I'm still buying laserdiscs and DVDs (my VCR finally gave up the ghost). I like having options, and even older formats can still look good. Streaming I am not into - just seems like too much of a compromise.

A lot of people consider picture quality portability and price over everything else.

If I have a favorite anime disc I blew a weeks pay on 25 years ago then I’m going to love it forever. I mean forever. I have cels from that movie. I can draw all the characters. I’ve driven thousands of miles to meet the people who made it. I have the OST in my car. That kind of thing. He doesn’t mention that. Yeah there’s a BR, cool. Yeah I have it, but I haven’t moved house with it 12 times like the LD. It’s not The Thing. Only the LD is The Thing.

But if you’re only 22 years old then nothing like that could be true so why would they care about LD? Same with people who mainly love Terminator type stuff, they see nothing in a LD compared to BR.

When mail order was two way (one trip for money order, one trip back for the item) people would sometimes wait like two months for a LD to arrive. These days people have already forgotten what they watched two months ago. They sure aren’t going to want to own it two months from now.

If you know, you know. If you don’t know then I can’t show it to you.

Always room for more



From Analog (LD, Vinyl, LD-G, MUSE) to Digital (DVD, HD DVD, BD, 4K BD).
Only backup units don't fit and are staying in storage.

Trying to upgrade the X9 to X0 whenever a good deal passes by.

Julien

Are those inifiniti kappas?

Good eyes!

80 in Front, 60 as Rear.

Julien

I was a big admirer of Arnie Nudel’s Infinity speakers in the 90s. I believe Paul McGowen of PS Audio was with Infinity back then too. Very nice speakers. Do these have the rear tweeter too or you needed to go one size up for those?

I think you had to go Kappa 90 or 100 to get extra stuff.

But they were just too big for my apartment at that time (small Japanese Tokyo mansion).
Also going low enough that I didn't have to buy a subwoofer while avoiding a war with the neighbors.

They're not the best speakers on the planet but I got used to their sound over the years and I'm quite happy with them.

Julien