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18% of LD owners cite Star Wars as a main reason for keeping obsolete format

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According to a survey on lddb.com:
http://www.lddb.com/_misc/survey/2007/LDDb_Survey_2007.pdf

That would be my case - although I have a bit of a penchant for obsolete AV formats, home computers and games consoles, I wouldn't own a laserdisc player if it weren't for Star Wars.

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I like the part of the study that directly talks about the Star Wars factor. Written by somebody who knows the problem.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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There are a few select titles that I've kept other than Star Wars on LD, like Akira by Criterion, but I wouldn't have those if Star Wars hadn't forced me to keep my LD player.

What sucks is that my TV, while gorgeous with DVD, HD, and gaming on my PS3, does a horrible job at deinterlacing. I've considered getting a processor, but that would be yet another piece of equipment whose sole job is to play Star Wars once or twice a year.
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Is the OOT Laserdisk better quality then the OOT DVD? I don't own the laserdisk, so I am not sure of the quality.
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CO said:

Is the OOT Laserdisk better quality then the OOT DVD? I don't own the laserdisk, so I am not sure of the quality.


There was a discussion about this in one of the threads recently. Someone mentioned that they're pretty much the same if you're playing the LD on a top of the line player.
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This is no surprise. I was thinking about cruising eBay for a LD player and the DC set back in 2005. With the availability of the GOUT (or the plethora of LD transfers for the more stubborn among us) I can't really see why anybody would keep their LD player anymore. Maybe I'm missing something though.
My preference is simple. I want remastered versions of precisely what we saw and heard for each Star Wars film on opening day.
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Eh, they were limited editions.

Also, the LD soundtrack is pretty much superior to the GOUT's, or so I'm told.
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plus the pre thx laserdiscs are free from all the dvnr bullshit that happened to the 1993-1995 THX releases.

too bad the pre 1995 jedi is misframed.

oh well, i still have pretty perfect copies of star wars and empire strikes back.

perfect in terms of being letterboxed and only good on 4:3 20th century tv sets, lol.

plus on laserdisc you have every flavor of sound mixes for the films but the 70mm and
mono mixes. for star wars on laserdisc you get the 35mm stereo dolby surround mix analog only, the 1985 digital remix, the 1993 THX restoration, the 1997 restoration.

the 2004 cut being the only one never released on laserdisc.

heck even the phantom menace got a japan only laserdisc release. it had a phenomonal dolby digital 5.1 ex soundtrack if you had the expensive equipment to reproduce it. you needed an rf out and a ac3 demodulator which i don't have.

the theatrical dts mixes for the special edition from 1997 were never released.

i have read that some of those presentations were in 70mm 6 channel dts sound.

Jay mentioned the akira on criterion. which features the original streamline dub in glorious PCM. noticeably absent from the pioneer dvd release. The colors on the laserdisc transfer are also faded a bit but closer to the original theatrical release, digital recoloring be damned.

the real gem and beauty of my collection is the studio ghibli gai ippai boxset.

it may be on laserdisc but it still features Hi Vision remasters, nausicaa of the valley of the wind has the best laserdisc transfer i have ever seen, limited by the fact that it is letterboxed and interlaced.

I aLso have the japan star wars definitive collection which is rot free unlike its american counterpart. which oddly has a darker transfer.

I have the japan special collection trilogy as well but never watch them since they have burned in japanese subtitles and the picture is shifted to the top of the screen.

the picture on them are very faded and look like from very old film print. still i am told they are closer to the original release in color definition.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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This thread only further convinces me that we'll get what we want eventually. The fact that he released a very nice looking altered version and then a shit looking laserdisc-sourced unaltered version is just another way in which Star Wars is practically unique.

It was just exploiting people's ignorance of how dvd video works. He won't be able to do that with the blu-ray, and we might even get it reverse-ported to dvd in nice anamorphic video.

And before you all say "but Lucas only cares about the PT," I'll tell you "yea, but he knows what people want and are willing to pay for."
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skyjedi2005 said:

I aLso have the japan star wars definitive collection which is rot free unlike its american counterpart. which oddly has a darker transfer.


actually, it's probably not darker. while i may not get all the technicalites exactly right, the reason japanese laserdiscs (& other home video formats) look lighter when played on american televisions is because the setting for "black" is different in each country. I don't remember the name of the scale or units used to measure this (i.r.e.? maybe?) but i believe "black" is zero in japan, while it's like 7 or 8 in the U.S.?
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Well, I feel like a broken record again...;-)...the reason I bought my Ld player about 5 or so years ago was to transfer my Faces Lds to DVD. However, since the Gout DVDs were released, those are my discs of choice to watch. My Pioneer cld-d703 was one of the better players, (no match for the Pioneer X0 or X9) but the Lds look fuzzy compared to the Gout DVDs.

So, the reason I've decided to keep my Ld player isn't because of the SW Lds, but because of all of the other Ld content out there that is not available on DVD, and may never be. I have the 1984 Moroder version of Metropolis on Ld- which is still my favorite version of the film, and I doubt if that will ever make it to DVD. I'm sure that I will discover other Lds in the future that contain films and bonus material, commentaries, etc., that will never be released on DVD.

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I have a Pionieer CLD-3070 and I've got a handful of discs I've copied to DVD the old fashioned way - patch cables from one machine to the other. I'm not going to throw out the player or discs...at least not anytime soon...but I'm at least working on getting to the point of being able to put it all into storage to save space.

My outlook on life - we’re all on the Hindenburg anyway…no point fighting over the window seat.

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I have the US Definitive Collection lasers and the 95' faces set. The definitive edition has the better picture quality. My laserdisc player is a Pioneer HLD-X9, so top of the line with new laser, spindle motor, etc. I also have the GOUT dvd's and used a program called DVD Rebuilder to encode them as anamaphoric. I play the DVD's on a Toshiba XA2 HD-DVD player. Without doubt, the DVD's have the better picture quality, even when using a high quality player like the X9. Audio however is a different story, even though they are the same mixes, the lasers audio is far more dynamic and agressive than the DVD"s. The DVD's are weak in comparison. So overall, the DVD's have slightly better pic quality without the need for side flipping, but the lasers audio wins hands down.
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skyjedi2005 said:

the 2004 cut being the only one never released on laserdisc.

the real gem and beauty of my collection is the studio ghibli gai ippai boxset.

it may be on laserdisc but it still features Hi Vision remasters, nausicaa of the valley of the wind has the best laserdisc transfer i have ever seen, limited by the fact that it is letterboxed and interlaced.


I don't think the 2004 version not being on laserdisc is any loss. That has gotta be the worst version of the films despite the fact that it's the only anamorphic transfer.
The version that looks interesting to me now is the Special Edition. It had a film restoration that actually featured a competant color timer. I think a 97 box set went for only $10 on eBay. Does that sound right, the version that's not on dvd still goes for less than the Definitive which somebody mentioned he recently got for $40?

How do the unaltered dvd's compare to the Special Collection or 97 Special Edition laserdiscs?

Do you have any more info on the Studio Ghibli lasers? Man, I'd love to see a picture of those. Don't some of them have older dubs that the Disney dvd's do not? How good was a Hi Vision transfer, are there any pictures around that compare it?

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

http://www.youtube.com/user/Knightmessenger

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http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/161/TKLO-50180/Ghibli-Ga-Ippai-Collection-(1996)

http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/video/ghibli/ippai.html#ld_box

http://www.ex.org/1.5/24-ghibli.html

no one as far as i know has done any screen grabs or even posted the laserdisc cover art which is all gatefold and superb.

D2 masters were used.

as for the quality difference between the gout and the japan special collection and 1997 special edition, is mostly in the sound department. the japan pressings have awesome digital audio, and the 97 set features ac3 5.1.

unlike the us first issue releases in widescreen the special collection is in CAV format not CLV, it is free of the dvnr that plagues the THX laserdisc pressings.

Again before the advent of better hi def audio aka in HD-DVD and Blu Ray which can contain uncompressed PCM. dvd could only one up laserdisc in terms of picture quality while laserdisc always had a more robust audio performance.

The one time dvd tried to come close was in the superbit dvd era when they were releasing dts tracks in full bitrate.

The very early preference of laserdisc over dvd was in dvd's early days when mpeg2 artifacting was very bad on a lot of improperly mastered releases. Indeed most of the releases were simply the same d1 or d2 masters used for laserdisc mastering and were single layer.

It gets even stranger when you consider that some Laserdiscs have the proper screen ratio for the movies they have while the dvd's do not, and some Laserdiscs have incorrect ratios and the dvd releases corrected that.

I know of certain cases in the release of James Bond vs DVD for instance where this occured.

Sometimes even letterboxing titles cropped the image on certain titles on laserdisc loosing parts of the top or bottom or even side frames.

As for what Hi Vision was i believe it was a japan mastering system considered to be an early form of HD, it was a widescreen tv set i believe as well.

Its ironic that there is an ad on youtube where george lucas advertises it for the japanese.

I not sure but i guess some who owned the muse players in japan like the X-0 or X-9 must have also owned a hi vision set at one point.

By the way did i point out how extremely envious i am of anyone who can afford the thousands of dollar machines like the X0 Player.

IT is funny since i cannot even find an elite pioneer player for a decent price.

A lot of people must still either own or transfer laserdisc to dvd. Watching ebay auctions daily on vhs and laserdisc titles still selling like they are means the formats are far from obsolete as long as the have titles not on Blu Ray or DVD.

The biggest difference between the 1997 and 2004 special edition restorations is that the 1997 was mostly done by hand and mechanical processes as well as photo chemical not done all on a computer like Lowry.

YCM laboratories did the image restoration, YCM of course being a reference to the yellow, cyan, and magenta seperation masters used in film.

As to why their restorations turned vaders saber pink is beyond my limited understanding.

Lowry Just Scanned the supplied altered film nagative into their computers at 4k resolution, they did not do any of the new color correction or timing that was done by ILM and supervised by LUCAS.

How the picture looked before it was tampered with to make the colors try to match the digital coloring of the prequels we will probably never know.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Knightmessenger said:


I don't think the 2004 version not being on laserdisc is any loss. That has gotta be the worst version of the films despite the fact that it's the only anamorphic transfer.
The version that looks interesting to me now is the Special Edition. It had a film restoration that actually featured a competant color timer. I think a 97 box set went for only $10 on eBay. Does that sound right, the version that's not on dvd still goes for less than the Definitive which somebody mentioned he recently got for $40?

How do the unaltered dvd's compare to the Special Collection or 97 Special Edition laserdiscs?

I think Laserman (or maybe it was Zion) explained that they were using the Special Collection for the X0 project to fill in info that was compromised due to the DVNR smearing in the DC. I think they said that the SC had less detail than the DC, and the colors were more faded than the DC, but the SC discs were pre-DVNR so they were useful in that regard.

It's hard to find a DC set that doesn't have some laser rot. My set has at least one disc (last I checked) that was showing signs of rot. I really like the Faces discs better for that reason (and the fewer side breaks). I know that there's supposed to be a difference in PQ between the DC and Faces discs because one is CAV and one is CLV, but I can't really say that I've seen a difference on my player.

The '97 SE lasers have a "cooler" (color-wise) look to them, but not nearly as blue as the DVDs (and no Hayden!)
skyjedi2005 said:


IT is funny since i cannot even find an elite pioneer player for a decent price.

A lot of people must still either own or transfer laserdisc to dvd. Watching ebay auctions daily on vhs and laserdisc titles still selling like they are means the formats are far from obsolete as long as the have titles not on Blu Ray or DVD.


What kind of player do you have now? Some of the mid-level players have a sharper picture than some of the Elite models.

Several years ago, I got an Elite cld-95 on eBay for $500, with a bunch of discs included. Unfortunately, it was damaged by UPS so I had to return it. I later was able to get a cld-d703 for about $250. The 703 isn't as pretty as the cld-95, but it's supposed to have a sharper picture (I don't know from personal experience since I never even got to watch anything on the cld-95).

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cld-d703 i read is exactly the same as the elite quality wise except it does not have an ac3-rf out unless yours is moded.


It is a combi player right?



cld-d704 had rf-out.

mine is very old and i only paid 60 dollars for it. it is a pioneer cld-v2800 industrial unit it does not have any comb filters does have digital sound but no rf-output, you have to flip discs manually and it does not have still mode on clv discs.

I don't have an HD tv or an expensive surround setup, just a standard def tv with stereo audio output. so i'm probably not equipped to be the best reviewer of things.

That being said the GOUT looks like shit even on a 4:3 tv set that is properly set up.

We are and were willing to forgive the limitations of the laserdisc format because that was pretty much built in an a given that the dc would look like that. There is absolutely no excuse for such on dvd however. releasing something only as a shoddy bonus disc and saying "theatrical versions" does not make them so.

The anamorphic prints in 35mm, on the big screen were better looking than these dvds.

I only ever saw the original Return of the Jedi in the Theaters and that was the 1985

Re-Release even then i can tell you how good it looked instead of the gout dvd version.

I had been looking forward to the restoration of the originals as rumored because i never saw star wars a new hope or empire in theaters. Low and Behold 1997 dawned and it was not the old ones being restored but added not necessary changed in cgi. I hated that Greedo shot first. I was kinda meh on the Jabba scene you could take it or leave it but it certianly did not ruin the entire movie for me.

I hated the dialogue changes and sound changes that i thought were not necessary like the colt 45 sound in star wars instead of the laser, or lukes line in empire being changed to "you were lucky to get out of there" a different take than "your lucky you don't taste very good" which is more funny and fits the scene better.

i had just better pretend the 2004 versions never happened. They changed boba fetts voice and replaced clive revill as the emperor., and had hayden and jar jar in rotj, very lame indeed.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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skyjedi2005 said:

cld-d703 i read is exactly the same as the elite quality wise except it does not have an ac3-rf out unless yours is moded.


It is a combi player right?



cld-d704 had rf-out.

mine is very old and i only paid 60 dollars for it. it is a pioneer cld-v2800 industrial unit it does not have any comb filters does have digital sound but no rf-output, you have to flip discs manually and it does not have still mode on clv discs.

I don't have an HD tv or an expensive surround setup, just a standard def tv with stereo audio output. so i'm probably not equipped to be the best reviewer of things.

That being said the GOUT looks like shit even on a 4:3 tv set that is properly set up.

We are and were willing to forgive the limitations of the laserdisc format because that was pretty much built in an a given that the dc would look like that. There is absolutely no excuse for such on dvd however. releasing something only as a shoddy bonus disc and saying "theatrical versions" does not make them so.

The anamorphic prints in 35mm, on the big screen were better looking than these dvds.

I only ever saw the original Return of the Jedi in the Theaters and that was the 1985 Re-Release even then i can tell you how good it looked instead of the gout dvd version.


Yes, the 703 is a combi-player and is identical to the 704 except for the lack of a ac3-out. I didn't care about that though, since I specifically bought it to make transfers of the Faces discs and as you know they're 2-channel.

Where did you see ROTJ in '85? I saw it 3 or 4 times in '83 and then of course again in '97 (which I'd like to forget altogether).

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Well, I've just gone and paid for the Japanese Special Collection of Star Wars and Jedi on eBay, and I'm blaming that on this thread. LOL

I've spent the last 3 years colecting the diffrent releases of the OT on Laserdisc and keep my player hooked up to the TV just to play them from time to time so I guess I'm part of that 18%.

I guess my collection is more for show than anything as the shelf where I keep my discs is on prominent display in my room.

That doesn't stop people from thinking I'm mad. I own 5 diffrent versions of a 30 year old film on an obsolete format. When I say it like that, I guess they have a valid point.

Now I've got to try and find myself a copy of the Empire JSC to complete the set.

Your brain just makes s**t up!

A fate worse than death? Having your head digitally replaced with that of Hayden Christensen!

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while Star Wars isn't really the reason i'm hanging on to my laserdisc player (i watch the GOUT much more than the DC box i have), it is the reason i ever got a player to begin with. The 2004 dvd release "inspired" me to seek out the best quality version of the OOT i could find, which happened to be LD. Thus, i got the Definitive Collection & a player off ebay at that time.
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skyjedi2005 said:

Again before the advent of better hi def audio aka in HD-DVD and Blu Ray which can contain uncompressed PCM. dvd could only one up laserdisc in terms of picture quality while laserdisc always had a more robust audio performance.

The one time dvd tried to come close was in the superbit dvd era when they were releasing dts tracks in full bitrate.

The very early preference of laserdisc over dvd was in dvd's early days when mpeg2 artifacting was very bad on a lot of improperly mastered releases. Indeed most of the releases were simply the same d1 or d2 masters used for laserdisc mastering and were single layer.

It gets even stranger when you consider that some Laserdiscs have the proper screen ratio for the movies they have while the dvd's do not, and some Laserdiscs have incorrect ratios and the dvd releases corrected that.

I know of certain cases in the release of James Bond vs DVD for instance where this occured.

Sometimes even letterboxing titles cropped the image on certain titles on laserdisc loosing parts of the top or bottom or even side frames.

As for what Hi Vision was i believe it was a japan mastering system considered to be an early form of HD, it was a widescreen tv set i believe as well.

Its ironic that there is an ad on youtube where george lucas advertises it for the japanese.

I not sure but i guess some who owned the muse players in japan like the X-0 or X-9 must have also owned a hi vision set at one point.

The biggest difference between the 1997 and 2004 special edition restorations is that the 1997 was mostly done by hand and mechanical processes as well as photo chemical not done all on a computer like Lowry.

YCM laboratories did the image restoration, YCM of course being a reference to the yellow, cyan, and magenta seperation masters used in film.

As to why their restorations turned vaders saber pink is beyond my limited understanding.

Lowry Just Scanned the supplied altered film nagative into their computers at 4k resolution, they did not do any of the new color correction or timing that was done by ILM and supervised by LUCAS.

How the picture looked before it was tampered with to make the colors try to match the digital coloring of the prequels we will probably never know.


After my first post here, I got to see some X0 screencaps (I think) from the special collection when I found a post of Zion that linked to his imageshack. Even with the X0, the special collection looks fuzzy and washed out. The film to video master transfer technology probably wasn't as sharp in 1986.
What was a D1 master anyway? What is different than the HD masters used today? The D1 master for the Definitive Collection still seems pretty detailed other than the smearing and letterbox format. I cannot stop thinking about how much of a bad idea the DVNR was. Considering how washed out and bad of shape the prints were, the THX color correction was pretty good. Was the smearing mentioned or noticed when the laserdiscs first came out? I had heard reviews about the set were very good. We would be in such better shape without the DVNR because modern computers could erase scratches so much better. Would the X0 team even need the special collection were it not for the smearing? I'm sure a lack of DVNR would have made any video restoration like the X0 and others much easier.
And it's again a classic example of dumbing down a video release for the average ignorant customer. Just because more people would notice scratches than an interpolated picture at normal speed doesn't mean it's a good idea to throw away detail. I guess the people making the transfer didn't think it would be noticed the majority of the time on the average laserdisc player. I had heard about it but never really noticed it on my bootleg dvd's. Though I did wonder why some scenes looked less sharp and had bad compression. The clarity of the unaltered dvd's made the DVNR so much more obvious.

As for overcompressed dvd's that didn't look as good as laserdisc, did any Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes get released on laserdisc? I have the first four seasons. 1 & 2 look bad. 3 looks much better but I see the same DVNR ghosting and smearing. 4 looks pretty good but there are still some times when I could spot DVNR at nomal speed.

Why didn't dvd's ever use PCM stereo? I mean, the bootleg dvd's do. But sorry, once digital compression improved enough, laserdisc (other than with an X0) could never be as sharp as dvd. The Gout is a good example because it uses the same master but the latest dvd mastering.

When you mention proper screen ratios, are you talking about matted films like The Shining? Or is this something else? The new Bond dvd's did feature some screwups but remember, those were also done by Lowry. Lowry has also screwed up some classic Disney. Lady and the Tramp is too shiny digital. The bonus showed a clip from the unrestored full screen version and I was like whoa, film grain and texture! I was really dissapointed with the newest Peter Pan platinum dvd. The picture looked so washed out and murky. I've seen screencaps of the first laserdisc and that looks most accurate in terms of color. Lowry's had a lot of screwups so I don't know how they don't have any responsibility for the Star Wars debacle. Surely they could have fixed some of the blatent color errors like the sabers if anyone was awake.
One of the reasons Empire of Dreams is so good is because most of the clips are from a '97 print anamorphic. The crossing sabers in front of the Emperor is shown early on and they actually have white cores.

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

http://www.youtube.com/user/Knightmessenger

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i will never give up on laserdisc, i have at least 100 of them, including movies (several variations of star wars trilogy)...

 

50+ music videos discs, that have NEVER been released on dvd, etc... oddly enough, i'm transferring them to DVD to watch/preserve, since i barely ever own/watch anything on DVD, and consider that a dead format....(and of course,by extension hd dvd)...

 

i guess i could keep them in digital only format, but other people keep asking for dvd's so i guess there's a reason for that... long live the laserdisc!!!! (and not anything by #*$#*9 SONY please, they've messed me up way too many times with their shoddy electronics, poor support, and lame releases)..

 

later

-1

[no GOUT in CED?-> GOUT CED]

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I'd love to be a Laserdisk collector but its just too damn expensive. I have a hard enough time calling myself a vinyl collector.