Star Wars Laserdisc Preservations. See 1st Post for Updates. — Page 14

althor1138 said:

Is there a Technidisc ROTJ and is it any different than the 2 previous pressings?

1. Yes; 2. No.

The Technidisc TESB and ROTJ are inferior to the Mitsubishi pressings as well.

Sweet. So really the only thing worth preserving from the Technidisc pressings is SW then?

althor1138 said:

Sweet. So really the only thing worth preserving from the Technidisc pressings is SW then?

Indeed. I unfortunately discovered this after hunting down 3 Technidisc pressings of each movie in the trilogy: 9 LDs in total! Ugh!

Well now if we can only confirm that the one for sale on tradera is a technidisc maybe I can get ahold of it.  He wants a high price for it but I guess I'd bite the bullet since it's local and unopened.

althor1138 said:

Well now if we can only confirm that the one for sale on tradera is a technidisc maybe I can get ahold of it.  He wants a high price for it but I guess I'd bite the bullet since it's local and unopened.

As it's unopened I don't recall exactly what to look for on the sleeve (Darth Mallwalker is the expert) but it looks to me like it's either a Pioneer USA or a Technidisc one. I'm only basing this on the "made in U.S.A". on the back. Apparently there was fox video sleeves without CBS on some Pioneer pressings as well IIRC. Maybe D_M or Antcufaalb can provide more info.

I actually found an old pm where I asked him this a long time ago.  Here's his Response:

Jacket should *PROBABLY* have "Fox Video" logo at at the bottom.
(Older ones said "CBS/FOX".) Auction photo looks correct.

Inner sleeves should *PROBABLY* be of 2-ply construction:
paper on the outside with polythene lining.

To be certain, you must ask the seller to check the mint markings.
See examples there:
http://www.blamld.com/LaserDisc/Technidisc.htm
Look for the name Technidisc with an icon resembling a CRT screen
etched into the 'dead wax'

I guess there is not a good way to know since they are unopened.

My Technidisc copies of ROTJ and TESB match the photos on the Star Wars Video Disc site, in that they have the "MADE IN USA" text in white on a black background on the back cover.  AFAIK that's the most obvious exterior clue.

My Technidisc trilogy have cardboard jackets made from bleached white pulp,
while my Pioneer jackets are brown-gray (unbleached) inside.

Probably could be seen through the shrink wrap

althor1138 said:

The R7G chops everything off above 255.  Side 1&2 of SW-JSC have some sort of weird mastering problem on my pressing where the black level starts at 16 even though it has the full range of a Japanese disc.  This means that there is white information all the way up to 260-265.  On the HF9G I could just extend the luma white point in virtualdub and recover everything.  On the R7G I have to turn on d-ext and bring most of it back down under 255 so it doesn't get chopped off by the player.  I guess there might be a tiny bit that gets clipped off but it is only in a couple of scenes on the tantive and maybe 1 or 2 elsewhere I think.  I've been able to write a script that masks that information and copies it from the HF9G to the R7G but honestly I can't see a difference at all other than I have set the white levels higher on the R7G capture. I've only ever seen this on swjsc side 1 & 2 so I don't think this will ever be an issue on any other disc.

Thanks for explaining. I think I just were tricked by the different levels of your captures. I've done a more serious comparison of the two averaged versions with tweaked levels and I'm surprised by the difference in fine detail. Dot crawl is also minimized. Your HF9G capture actually looks fuzzy now in comparison to your new R7G capture, and I thought that one was one of the best LD-captures I've ever seen. Awesome work Althor!

Well, I bid on the unopened swe on tradera hoping it was the technidisc.  It wasn't. It was the pioneer pressing from '92.  I already have the Mitsubishi pressings so I will get around to them both eventually. I don't really feel like trying to find the technidisc at this point.  I've tried 3 times now to acquire it and the first time mysycamore lost his copy in the mail on the way to me so for the time being I guess I will not try to purchase it anymore unless I find one that has clear enough pictures for me to be absolutely certain before purchasing it.

I am in the process of acquiring an PAL player so anybody that wants to donate PAL Star Wars discs to the cause please feel free to drop me a PM.

It looks like at this point that the software decoding method is going to work.  Once the PAL player arrives I'm going to mod it and use it for all future NTSC and PAL captures.  This has the potential to surpass any laserdisc player circuitry or capture card. It is about the best way to currently preserve a laserdisc too because it captures the full bandwidth of the RF stream before it ever hits any circuitry in the player. 

althor1138 said:

I don't really feel like trying to find the technidisc at this point.

Don't worry. I've got you covered. I can send you one or even all threefour of my copies when I'm done capturing them.

Awesome!

AntcuFaalb said:

when I'm done capturing them

This might take a while. I have to setup my new Leitch DPS-575 (finally! a 3D comb filter for AntcuFaalb!) and get comfortable with using it.

It's a monster.

nafroe said:

One hell of a collection you've got going there!!

Thanks. I can post images of the rest of it if althor1138 doesn't mind.

AntcuFaalb said:

nafroe said:

One hell of a collection you've got going there!!

Thanks. I can post images of the rest of it if althor1138 doesn't mind.

 Do it!  This thread is about laserdiscs after all!

These images exclude the following recent purchases:

  1. New/sealed Alice in Wonderland boxset

  2. New/sealed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs boxset (replacing my old destroyed one)

  3. New/sealed Fantasia boxset

  4. New/sealed So Dear to My Heart

  5. Make Mine Music (JP)

  6. Melody Time (JP)

  7. Cinderella pre-boxset CAV

  8. Peter Pan pre-THX CAV

  9. Robin Hood CAV

  10. Sleeping Beauty pre-boxset P&S

  11. Pete's Dragon

  12. A Fistful of Dollars (downstairs in the CLD-1010)

The reason for all of the Disney is that I'm planning a quick DVD recorder (Panasonic DMR-ES10) project for my son. He'll be 1 in April and will probably be interested in Disney in the near future, so I want to be prepared.

I call it "The Disney 30 in 40: 1937-1977". I'll be preserving the best LDs of Disney's first 30 films that—interestingly enough—were produced in their first 40 years of doing theatrical animated features.

I'll be preserving two alternate versions as well (The Lady and the Tramp fullscreen alternate version and Sleeping Beauty in P&S), so that makes it 32: a nice power of 2.

UPDATE: It's still doing the same crap.  I've asked over at lddb what I should do about it.  Maybe a new pickup will fix it. I have a feeling that either the gear on the motor is messed up or the motor itself is going bad.

I would tentatively say that the R7G is working again.  I got it all disassembled and was staring at the motor holder and noticed it was missing a screw!  The crazy bastard that serviced it last forgot to put a screw back in it! Anyway, I cannibalized a dvd burner and found a screw with the same thread size,pitch, and length and put it in. You could wiggle the motor around with your finger before inserting the screw so I can imagine that was the problem.  I'm not positive that the little shafts that hold the gears aren't broken at this point but I thought I'd test it first to see what happens. It seems like a newer motor holder because apparently the old ones are grey and this one looks black just like the ones I've got in the mail.

It's played successfully for an hour and is on side 2 now. I'll probably burn it in all night and see if it skips again.

I've got a pretty good idea of which star wars ntsc ld's are notable/desirable to own but no idea which pal versions are worth grabbing. Can somebody give me a list of notable pal releases and what is good about them?

BTW, the software decoding is working in Linux and I've done an RF tap on my newly acquired s315 and it works perfectly. The software is still in testing phase but it is already very functional. The guy doing it is updating it quite a lot now. He's working on the comb filter now and digital audio next. Once the comb filter is updated i will probably resume capturing. Also, I just picked up a couple of Japanese p&s versions of the trilogy. I will add them to the first post when they arrive.

althor1138 said:

I've got a pretty good idea of which star wars ntsc ld's are notable/desirable to own but no idea which pal versions are worth grabbing.

The French Coffret Trilogie is often considered the best around here. No DVNR, IIRC.