Monolith149

Don’t know about the vault fire. If Universal had really wanted to create a 5.1 mix for the series, and the elements still existed, they would have done that for the DVD sets that were released around 2004 - about a year after the Battlestar Galactica (original series) DVD sets that first had the 5.1 mix. That 5.1 mix (and the HD scans that the DVDs were mastered from) were again used for the full frame Blu-Ray sets.

Yes, the TV pilot is on the Season One set of the KL box set. At a quick glance, the transfers for the series appear to be the same as the Australian set a few years ago - except with the added commentary tracks for some episodes. I will have to verify this when I have time to view the series.

Audio on the theatrical cut is two channel mono. I imagine a stereo version would require a “fan edit”… Anyone find a laserdisc free of laser-rot?

Well there are reviews of the new Kino Lorber Buck Rogers in the 25th Century blu-rays (both the theatrical cut and the box set) at The Digital Bits. Audio for all is reported as being two channel mono DTS-HD Master Audio. Now for the series, I am not surprised that it is mono. Universal never put in the effort to find the elements and remaster the audio for 5.1 as they did for the original Battlestar Galactica series. The Digital Bits review for the theatrical cut is curious: “The soundstage is front and center as you might expect, though modestly wide.” If one plays a two channel mono soundtrack in Dolby Pro-Logic, sound should only come from the center channel with low frequencies crossed over to the subwoofer(s) (as long as phase and amplitude of the two mono channels perfectly match), so the “modestly wide” comment is interesting. Kino Lorber just e-mailed me stating that my shipment is being prepared. Guess I will know for sure whether their theatrical cut is mono or stereo soon. I will post again when it arrives…

4throck is correct - VHS Hi-Fi specs were good; 20-20KHz frequency response along with a SN ratio of 80dB, definitely exceeding what one heard from the SVA tracks in the theater. Analog LD sound topped out at 19KHz and the Discovision disc would have been made before CX noise reduction was used on analog LD audio tracks. I have made lossless captures from both the VHS Hi-Fi tracks and the Discovision disc using very good equipment and setting manual recording levels and later checking the recordings to make sure that I did not clip any peaks. (I even had a fan restoration project in mind) The crackling on my LD is continuous and gets worse at times. Looking at the waveform of the capture, at best I would say there is only 20dB of dynamic range due to the crackling. The VHS Hi-Fi fares much better, although it does not use the entire 80dB that the Hi-Fi format has. Noise from the source recording comes in as the program starts and goes away after it ends with Hi-Fi pilot indicator being lit all the while.

But get this! I just read at the digital bits that Kino Lorber is planning a new blu-ray release of Buck Rogers - including the theatrical cut of the pilot! No audio specs at the moment. I did e-mail Bill Hunt as well as Kino Lorber to ask about this. Maybe if a few more people do the same we can finally have the stereo track on blu-ray. If I get a response I will post the answer(s).

Sorry for arriving late to this party. Yes the packaging for the Australian Buck Rogers Blu-ray set indicates 2 channel LPCM stereo, but all the audio is actually 2 channel mono (center channel/subwoofer only when DPL processed). The blu-rays have the broadcast version of the pilot in HD with the mono audio as expected for a television show of that time. It also has a PAL upscale of the theatrical cut, but again with mono audio. The region 1 DVD set has the theatrical cut with mono audio as well.

I recently tracked down a “Discovision” laserdisc to hear the stereo mix. The image on the disc was mostly OK - a bit of white noise dots, but nothing like badly rotted discs that I have encountered long before. The analog, non-CX audio on this disc is like what others here have stated - a lot of crackling noise. The audio is definitely stereo though - typical of a matrix encoded stereo track of that time. I had thought about trying to remove the noise, but this would probably be a huge task. An ebay search turned up a European laserdisc release. I don’t have an LD player that will play PAL laserdiscs. Then there is also the issue that PAL transfers speed up standard 24fps movies by four percent so they play back at PAL’s 25fps with noticeable difference in pitch for the audio and temporal motion for the video. Finally, I don’t know if the PAL disc would fare any better after all these years when it comes to laser rot. I was hoping there was a Japanese LD release (as there was with Mission Galactica - 1987-ish release for the LD) as this would readily play in US NTSC laserdisc players, but I have not found any evidence that Buck Rogers was ever released on Laserdisc in Japan.

I decided to try one other legacy format. I found an old VHS tape (yellow box). The side of the box was only marked “Hi-Fi” - without the word “stereo” which normally would mean that the audio was two channel mono. The cassette itself only had the Dolby “double D” mark; which alone only means that the linear audio tracks have “B-type” noise reduction. However the tape tracked and played back well through an old industrial Hi-Fi VTR and the audio was the same stereo as the Discovision LD. Unless someone can find a laserdisc without rot, this VHS Hi-Fi stereo may be the best audio available for the theatrical cut of Buck Rogers. This was also released on Beta back in the day as well, but those tapes are harder to find and I have never had any Beta decks.

Hi everyone, new member here (although I have been reading some of the posts for a while). I am a long time fan who remembers seeing each of the OT films in a theater when they were originally released. I am glad there are other fans who are dedicated to preserving them in projects such as 4K77 and Harmy’s Despecialized. I also appreciate other Sci-Fi shows and movies as well.