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.: The X0 Project Discussion Thread :. (* unfinished project *) — Page 33

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Just a question about LD players.

I know you guys are using the Pioneer X0 player, but how does this player [Mcintosh MLD7020] stand up to yours?

Just wondering since i saw it for sale for 9000 Swedish kronor = 1 139,17 USD and it seemed like a nice pice of equipment.

http://212.112.182.19/images/47/47126418.jpg
  • do or do not, there is no try -
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Plus the font of the name looks cool!

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Ok thanx. (now how to get a hold of a thousand buckaroos.....)
  • do or do not, there is no try -
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any updates? I have not seen a mailer in months...
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I'm new so i have a couple questions that weren't answered on the website. Since you guys are re coloring everthing will you fix all the lightsaber color issues so that Vaders is red (no pink lol) and lukes is blue and green? Like fixing the non colored saber of Vaders in SW and stuff like that? And will you guys remove the matte lines of the rancor?
Thanks
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Darth Richard:

This is a preservation project, not a reparation project. They are trying to preserve the original 1977, 1980 and 1983 theatrical releases as closely frame-for-frame as is humanly possible, not fix mistakes in the effects.
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Any news from the big wigs on recent progress? Sorry bug you guys, but I have been itchin' for more updates since that last newsletter with the improvements to the starfields...awesome! I just want to make sure that this is still the hottest thread for X0 info.

HARMY RULES

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There is some news, anyone who has signed up for the newsletter wil be getting it very shortly - we have been working our arses off trying to get everything bedded down so the real work can begin. You wouldn't believe the amount of groundwork that has gone into this so far.

I've been concentrating on the 'jaggies' issue over the last few weeks, while part of it is the low resolution - it mostly turns out to be a problem with field movement during the telecine process as far as I can tell, upscaling the video to a point where we can do sub-pixel horizontal adjustment between the fields almost eliminates it completely once it is adjusted and scaled to anamorphic. Even when scaled back for letterbox the effect is greatly reduced.
The other thing I am now very happy with is the almost total lack of noise in the image - we are really only left with the film grain to contend with now that we have got our processes sorted - there is no real video noise to speak of, but this is definately not at the expense of detail.

Unfortunately I have been *very* sick of late, as well as moving house which has slowed us down a little, but there has been an explosion of activity and we are making real progress now.
Zion is busy converting all of what we have been doing into something more coherent than my ramblings to share with you all via the website and newsletter.

We are just proofreading it all now and resizig pics etc. so you will see some real news very shortly.
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Just on the Mcintosh, it was a nice unit, very high build quality, but the composite output wasn't up to the standard of even the Pioneer S9. Had really nice audio though, and had AC3 output as standard.
They were selling in 1999 for just $1,500 new, and turn up on Audiogon/videogon from time to time at around the US$1000 mark. Like this one last year. http://audioweb.com/Ad/AdInfo.asp?adid=148842
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Yeah, except now I have put us all in it so we'd better get our fingers out
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Originally posted by: ChainsawAsh
Darth Richard:

This is a preservation project, not a reparation project. They are trying to preserve the original 1977, 1980 and 1983 theatrical releases as closely frame-for-frame as is humanly possible, not fix mistakes in the effects.


Thanks i jsut wasn't sure because of such a good way they resotred the star feilds etc...
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It is a preservation project first and foremost, so it will be preserved with all the original glitches intact whether people like 'em or not, so future generations can see what state of the art was back in '77.

But for my personal viewing pleasure, I will be making a glitch free version with all the little things that bug me fixed up so that I can watch it again without being thrown out of the movie when a glitch hits. So yeah, for mine it will be matte line fixes, garbage matte removal, sabre fixes, film jumps removed, tracked and stabilised where possible etc. etc.
Basically to get the movie how it would have been in 77 if they had endless time and money to finish it off, but certainly not with any special edition style additions.

But that is after the preservation is done and perfect, and is really just me.
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[edit] Posted to wrong thread, sorry [/edit]
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Laserman,

I'm guessing you'll find others will be very interested in the Laserman edition.
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I was wondering if there are major physical differences between NTSC and PAL discs. Since the signal is encoded onto the disc, the player needn't do any actual signal coding/decoding, just read it off the disc and output it. So my point is that what if it's possible to play back PAL discs on the X0 player. I would imagine at least PAL CAV discs could be played, although with an out of specs signal (625 lines at 60 fields per second). Maybe some highish-end capture cards could cope with such a signal. If not, the signal could be digitized with some general purpose ADC card (maybe even at 16-bit precision!). The signal could then be processed with software (flexibility in implementing the comb filter for example) to be the Ultimate Laserdisc transfer.

PS. the raw digitized signal (sampled at 20 MHz, 16 bits, which is enough for ~2000*625 at 30fps) would be ~270MB uncompressed on a hard drive. Dropping the blank lines would yield ~250GB, and lossless compression might halven that to ~125GB.
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Originally posted by: ripa
[W]hat if it's possible to play back PAL discs on the X0 player?


Unfortunately, if the X0 is anything like any other NTSC-only player (which it is), then it won't play PAL discs. Because it's NTSC-only. Which means it won't play PAL discs. Only NTSC ones. Not PAL.

I don't think there's such a huge difference in the discs, other than the frequency, frame rate, number of scan lines, and colour system. Other than that, they're pretty much identical. I don't know why a player would balk at playing something so nearly identical!

Geez, Laserman, how come you haven't tackled this already?

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OK, that was a bit harsh. I re-read Ripa's post, and it actually does sorta make sense. The idea isn't new, and is pretty much about the most difficult way of getting video off a PAL disc, but the "what if...?"-ness is pretty cool.

A lot of what makes the X0 player great, though, is exactly the part that definitely DOES NOT deal with PAL, and that's the NTSC decoders in parallel, and all that other sort of post-processing circuitry. If you have to ditch that, then why bother with an X0? It would probably be smarter to gut a 2950, which can already play PAL discs natively.
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Originally posted by: THX
Laserman,

I'm guessing you'll find others will be very interested in the Laserman edition.


Yeah, seconded. Actually I'll bet that what the majority would like is a seamless quality version of the originals with those fixes in them.
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A lot of what makes the X0 player great, though, is exactly the part that definitely DOES NOT deal with PAL, and that's the NTSC decoders in parallel, and all that other sort of post-processing circuitry. If you have to ditch that, then why bother with an X0? It would probably be smarter to gut a 2950, which can already play PAL discs natively.


I thought the big deal with the x0 player was that it didn't postprocess anything unlike other players and outputed the cleanest possible composite signal read from the disc with a special laser. And since the signal on the disc is already in the composite format it wouldn't need any coding/decoding (maybe those parallel NTSC thingies are used for s-video, component, and/or antenna outputs?). So unless the PAL discs are fundamentally different (not just a different signal format), I would imagine they can be read with an NTSC player, unless it has some PAL disc detection circuit that cuts off the output if PAL signal is detected. So what does happen when you put a PAL disc in an NTSC player? I guess this is a bit farfetched
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Originally posted by: ripaSo what does happen when you put a PAL disc in an NTSC player? I guess this is a bit farfetched


Most (all?) NTSC only LD players would not know what to do with a PAL disc and simply reject it like it was a damagade disc.

Although the signal is stored 'composite' on the discs it still needs quite a bit processing before it becomes a signal suited for capture. And I'm pretty sure that the X0 player is filled with unique and special circuits that are all by design made for NTSC only and trying to tweak them for PAL playback would be extremly difficult, and you also need to find the X0 service manual and schematics first.

Possibly with the schematics in hand the X0 could be made to accept and sync a PAL disc but IMO you would have to process the video through other circuits and maybe even the demodulation stage needs to be different.

But hey, who would like to have their X0 player dissected?, I'll have a go at it

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^ LOL...good luck finding someone willing to let you.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Originally posted by: ripa
I thought the big deal with the x0 player was that it didn't postprocess anything unlike other players and outputed the cleanest possible composite signal read from the disc with a special laser.


I must admit I sorta forgot about the laser, which you're right is different from your garden variety player. Still, as Warp99 points out, there's still a bunch of minimum processing that needs to be done to have even a composite signal out, which the X0 doesn't know how to do for a PAL disc.

I feel this line of speculation is a little bit like watching The Island or Frankenstein: it's fun to think about "what if...?" scenarios, but they pre-assume something (i.e. human cloning, making an NTSC player read a PAL disc) that is still out of the range of possibility. Even though all the theoretical steps might be known.

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I thought I covered most of this before?
It is not just like doing a PAL - NTSC conversion in the digital realm. The fundamental differences between PAL and NTSC laserdiscs are many,and require lots of totally separate circuitry.

1) PAL laserdiscs spin at a totally different speed - 1500RPM vs 1800RPM for CAV, and different again for CLV. This alone is a big issue.
2) They are not store in composite format directly, it is an analogue system of infinitely variable width pits and lands, which represent an FM modulated signal made up of the Video and audio and timing information, flags and all manner of other information all jumbled up into the one 'signal'
3) The FM signal is split out very early in the player into its component parts via a demodulation chip - you are then left with each part in a 'proto' form that needs a hell of a lot more work before it becomes anything like video. All of the circuitry in the X0 is about taking that proto video and turning it into a crisp clean NTSC signal, it does a small truckload of processing to that original FM signal to try and recover the NTSC signal as best as possible - none of that circuitry is applicable to PAL except the output amplification stages.

So if you could reprogram the X0 to spin accurately at a different speed, and were happy to design a totally new PAL signal processing path, and then work that design into an extremely low noise design then maybe you could get something top work - but the results would most likely be worse than what you would get out of a standard PAL player.
A good part of the kilograms of bulk in the unit is the processing circutry and shielding to keep the signal paths clean - it is an incredible amount of work to try and add this level of processing circuitry without adding noise to the signal.
That is why standard home players give a picture full of video noise, it is incredibly expensive and difficult to recover the image *and* keep the signal clean.
You would be far better off taking an excellent PAL player like the 2950 or even the 925 and redesigning its circuitry to minimise noise than trying to turn the X0 into a PAL player.
I'm pretty sure I went onto more detail here on the boards in the past about how NTSC and PAL laserdisc players work, but if not I can post more info if anyone is interested.