Tomland,
1) Although it is important, I wouldn't worry about viewable area as much as the other picture quality issues - you'll lose more due to the overscan of your ancient TV than the difference between any of the LD caps;
THX, OK...thank you. Another misconception I apparently had was that a 4:3 widescreen transfer from the ld's wouldn't involve any "manipulation" at all by my setup...it would just "play it" like a VHS tape.
2) Both the TR47/Cowclops editions have PCM sound, I also remember hearing what Darth Mallwalker said about the clipping on v1 - I believe this was corrected on v2;
3) If you have a 4:3 TV, you definitely want a letterboxed transfer, not an anamorphised one - I'd stillrecommend the EditDroid in this category if you are in NTSC land;
OK I'm definitely shooting for letterboxed at this point. I'd ruled out a lot of transfers because of the sound not being PCM (although from what I've seen, I might pick tr47 over EditDroid just based on picture alone).
Moth3r:
About what you (and THX) have said about the sound on the tr47 set being analogue...that does make it less appealing, but if the clipping isn't too frequent I'd probably shoot for it anyway.
And that's even though I can't stand digital clipping...VERY unpleasant experience. But compressed audio for Star Wars is definitely a "last resort" in my humble opinion.
So now from what I gather, there really isn't a transfer set available that has sound digitally transferred from ld?
MeBeJedi, I know you did this but the disc(s?) you made isn't readily available.
X0, where are you when I need you?
Darth Mallwalker,
If that's true about older laserdiscs not being able to utilize optical out, that's an eye opener for me. I'd assumed any laserdisc could pass digital audio out, assuming you had a player that supported it (like any CD can pass audio through a player that has digital-out).
So I guess no one will ever have digital audio transfer from the pre-85 releases...shucks.
Grinder:
Not sure about the quality of my player...it's a Sony changer with built-in DTS decoder and 5.1 analogue outs, so I love it, but it's not audiophile I'm sure.
4) Although bitrate is limited by the size of the media, Cowclops made the point that the source material, being soft analogue SD, is easily compressed and therefore DL media is not necessary, even if you want PCM sound. However, if you want to put together the best picture and sound on one disc from those that are already out there for 4:3 NTSC, you might look into combining the EditDroid picture with the Cowclops v2 sound, although this would probably push you into needing DL media. If you're not interested in or able to do re-authoring or DL burning, get TR47/Cowclops v1 or EditDroid for the best overall quality for your set-up (assuming you're NTSC and an OT purist).
3) If you have a 4:3 TV, you definitely want a letterboxed transfer, not an anamorphised one - I'd stillrecommend the EditDroid in this category if you are in NTSC land;
OK I'm definitely shooting for letterboxed at this point. I'd ruled out a lot of transfers because of the sound not being PCM (although from what I've seen, I might pick tr47 over EditDroid just based on picture alone).
Moth3r:
About what you (and THX) have said about the sound on the tr47 set being analogue...that does make it less appealing, but if the clipping isn't too frequent I'd probably shoot for it anyway.
And that's even though I can't stand digital clipping...VERY unpleasant experience. But compressed audio for Star Wars is definitely a "last resort" in my humble opinion.
So now from what I gather, there really isn't a transfer set available that has sound digitally transferred from ld?
MeBeJedi, I know you did this but the disc(s?) you made isn't readily available.
X0, where are you when I need you?
Darth Mallwalker,
If that's true about older laserdiscs not being able to utilize optical out, that's an eye opener for me. I'd assumed any laserdisc could pass digital audio out, assuming you had a player that supported it (like any CD can pass audio through a player that has digital-out).
So I guess no one will ever have digital audio transfer from the pre-85 releases...shucks.
Grinder:
Not sure about the quality of my player...it's a Sony changer with built-in DTS decoder and 5.1 analogue outs, so I love it, but it's not audiophile I'm sure.
4) Although bitrate is limited by the size of the media, Cowclops made the point that the source material, being soft analogue SD, is easily compressed and therefore DL media is not necessary, even if you want PCM sound. However, if you want to put together the best picture and sound on one disc from those that are already out there for 4:3 NTSC, you might look into combining the EditDroid picture with the Cowclops v2 sound, although this would probably push you into needing DL media. If you're not interested in or able to do re-authoring or DL burning, get TR47/Cowclops v1 or EditDroid for the best overall quality for your set-up (assuming you're NTSC and an OT purist).
I guess at this point I'm hoping to find Rowman or Cowclops v.1 (or even v.2) for sound reasons and because I unfortunately can't re-author (though I can burn DL).
Re: re-authoring, I would think someone would have combined MeBeJedi's digital audio rip with another picture source by now, but that's just me.
Maybe they're waiting for X0 like the rest of the natural world
Thanks everyone for your help!