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Anyone have an x0 laserdisc player?

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Hi,

If Molly didn't tell you, I'm one of the people working on the DisneyUnvaulted/VaultBreakers project to make DVDs of the OTV of Disney animated movies.

Films like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast have to come from laserdiscs, as those DVDs are equivalent to the 2004 Star Wars set as far as changes go.

Does anyone here have an x0 or x9 laserdisc player (and some sort of high-quality capture device) that could do us a favor and record some discs in a format higher quality than a typical DVD recorder?
We'd pay for shipping and everything, and send you the discs... Recording them with an entry-line player just doesn't look as good as it could. And reading around on the x0 Project page, it looks like our results could be infitessimally better with a rip from an x0/x9.

So is anyone interested? I'm sure at least one of you has one of those players... in order to get the Star Wars rips :)
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In the UK, we have this term "rocking horse shit" which would apply to finding someone with an X0 player...

However, there was actually an X0 owner who used to post here at one time, "nin" was his username IIRC. I don't know if he's still contactable.

By all accounts, the most practicable solution for the less-priviledged is to look for the Pioneer LD-V8000, an industrial player with apparently better image quality than any of the home players - bar the X0 and X9 of course.

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Might be worth a shot, if it's NTSC anyway...

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Hm, how does the video quality of the LD-V8000 compare? Is it still far better than your entry-line LD player?

Also, how does the RCA digital audio output work? If a disc has 5.1... and there's 2 plugs... do you need some special decoder?
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Take a look at this thread.

Laserman was our resident laserdisc expert (currently on a break from the forum due to illness) - he reckoned that certain industrial players give better video quality than the top-line US players.

Getting 5.1 off laserdisc is not easy. First your player needs to have an AC3 RF out - if it doesn't have one, it needs to be modded. Then you need to buy a demodulator that converts the AC3 RF into a pure AC3 digital stream. Finally you need a sound card that can record AC3 digital streams through a coaxial/SPDIF input.

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So how else would you play a 5.1 surround sound? A lot of newer laserdiscs seem to have it... so I figured it was easier than that.

What's the V8000 have output-wise? Would it work for getting 5.1 tracks?
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There isn't really any easier way to play 5.1 audio. A few amps that were built around the late '90s had AC3 RF inputs (i.e. no demodulator required), but these are probably very hard to find now. All modern 5.1 amps with digital inputs expect to receive a AC3/DTS/PCM bitstream, as output by a DVD player.

The V8000 does not have AC3 RF output, AFAIK.

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No, it doesn't. I have the 8000 (though I didn't know how awesome it was at the time.) It had been stepped on, and after "straightening out" the chassis, it stopped playing discs. Even if it still played, though, I don't know if the video quality would still be comparable to the X0.

And man, is that sucker heavy!

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So what is the "digital audio output" on the V8000? I saw a picture of the back of it in eBay...
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drfsupercenter said:

So what is the "digital audio output" on the V8000? I saw a picture of the back of it in eBay...

LD-V8000 doesn't have any digital outputs -- neither AC3 nor PCM nor S/PDIF -- only two sets of analog outputs.
It does contain a DAC circuit to decode PCM digital sound into analog and sends it out through those jacks labelled "digital".
They're analog signals coming out that set of jacks, but they're playing the soundtrack stored digitally on the disc.
The sound stored analog on the disc plays through the other set of jacks.

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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Oh, so if it's a 5.1 track, it gets downsampled to 2.0?

What are those other things on the back that look like coax mixed with RCA? Is that some sort of obsolete video thing?
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drfsupercenter said:

Oh, so if it's a 5.1 track, it gets downsampled to 2.0?

No it doesn't get downsampled. V8000 is incapable of decoding AC3. All it can do is play one of the other soundtracks on the disc, either stereo/matrixed PCM or analog mono.

drfsupercenter said:

What are those other things on the back that look like coax mixed with RCA? Is that some sort of obsolete video thing?

I guess you must be referring to the BNC jacks for sync signals in and out. They don't carry a video signal proper, only timing pulses.
In a professional environment where you might have several LD players under computer control (through the DB-15 serial port on the rear panel) you'd connect those BNC sync ports on all the players in daisy-chain fashion, keeping their respective video output signals in perfect synchronisation.
If you've got several players driving a single monitor that allows you to switch between them seamlessly. Or, if you've several players each driving its own monitor they won't drift out of sync with each other.

While LD-V8000 uses BNC ports only for sync signals, there are a few players that use BNC port for video output. Less noise than a yellow RCA video plug. (Because of its physical dimensions RCA plug can only approach 75 Ohms.) Among them are HLD-X0 and I think also LD-V4400.
reave, are you listening?

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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I think Moth3r and DarthMall covered it very succinctly, but I don't think you're quite getting what they were talking about with the AC3 output on LD players.

Basically AC3 is the old name for 'Dolby Digital'. Simply put, the old AC3 (DD) signal from the LD player is not the same as the signal that comes out of a modern DVD player, although it is still DD 5.1. The signal that comes out from the LD player requires a box to 'convert' it into the modern Dolby Digital format that we use today. This will enable your old LD player to hook up to a modern surround amp or even a soundcard on your PC if it has the right SPDIF connector. This 'converter' box is called an 'AC3 RF demodulator' and these units are quite often available on EBay. The AC3(DD) signal is still 5.1 and does not get down converted to 2 channel.

A lot of older consumer level LD players and most (all?) industrial LD players including the V800/V8000/V4300D do not have the AC3 RF output plug and consequently do not give Dolby Digital. Most LD players including the industrial players can be modified to give AC3 output if required though. There used to be quite a few companies advertising on the interweb who did these mods and there are still a few of the circuit diagrams floating around. If you did decide to get an industrial LD player, then chances are that it can be modified to give AC3/DD 5.1. It might actually work out cheaper and easier though to simply buy another cheaper consumer level player which already has the AC3 RF jack plug and grab the sound from that to sync up to a decent video capture from an industrial player like the V8000. ie: use the industrial player to capture the better picture and use the consumer level player to grab the sound.

Just to confuse things a bit more, LD also had available a 16bit digital PCM 2 channel audio track which is the same quality as CD. This is primarily used on the majority of LD discs that are available. Simply put, AC3 (DD) came out of the AC3 RF jack plug and the PCM audio came out of the 'digital optical audio' connector. When they mentioned the ‘digital audio output’ in that online auction, they were talking about the 2 channel PCM audio. If you were to buy that player, then you would have to modify it to get AC3 Dolby Digital.

Don't worry about the BNC sync plugs, you aren't likely to need or use them.

Hope this helps.

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Darth Mallwalker said:

... there are a few players that use BNC port for video output. Less noise than a yellow RCA video plug. (Because of its physical dimensions RCA plug can only approach 75 Ohms.) Among them are HLD-X0 and I think also LD-V4400.

Also, the LD-V800 - exactly the same player as the V8000, except with BNC connections.

Broadcast/professional equipment uses BNC connections for video cabling, to minimise signal degradation from back-reflection caused by impedance mismatch.

The X0 team actually modified their PDI Deluxe capture card to swap the RCA with a BNC connector.

Again, I would say that for us people who don't have X0-quality euipment, there is not really a noticeable advantage in using BNC connections over RCA, as long as you are using good quality video cables (i.e. not cheap audio RCA cables).

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And some notes on audio:

Laserdiscs have two separate audio tracks, one digital and one analogue. Normally, the digital track carries a 16-bit 44.1kHz PCM digital stereo signal and the other carries analogue stereo (usually with CX noise reduction).

For laserdiscs that include an AC3 5.1 track, that signal is contained in RF-modulated form in one of the analog channels. The other analog channel usually has either a mono sound mix or an audio commentary, and the digital track contains the 2-channel stereo or matrixed Dolby Surround mix.

Some discs even have a DTS bitstream on the digital track instead of 2-channel PCM. These discs are still sought-after and generally sell for a high price.

Now, there are various different connections you might find on the back of a laserdisc player. The most common are a pair of RCA jacks that output a standard analogue audio signal - colour coded red (right channel) and white (left channel). These could output either the analogue track or the digital track, selectable by the user (the V8000 actually has two sets of jacks, so it could output both tracks at the same time).

A single RCA labeled "AC3 RF" or similar outputs the RF-modulated AC3 off the analogue track. This needs to be demodulated to convert to an AC3 bitstream that can be decoded by a Dolby Digital decoder.

A digital optical TOSLINK or digital coaxial RCA jack outputs either 2-channel PCM or DTS in digital form (DTS does not need to be demodulated).

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So if I wanted to record the AC3 track of a laserdisc, I would need another player?

Are there any cheap ones that would suffice for that purpose?
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You can either get another player that includes an AC3 RF out, or have the V8000 modified - I suspect that getting another player would be the cheaper option.

In fact, take a look at this auction for a Pioneer CLD-D504 - a Yamaha demodulator is included.

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