WOW! The newsgroup has died!
Kevin Hawerchuk
Back in the day I was a regular poster/reader of this newsgroup.
We would discuss the pros/cons of various players and discuss the rare
laserdiscs that still haven't made it to standard dvd, let alone hi def
dvd.
I haven't been out here in many months myself but thought I'd drop in
and see what is happening.
Talk about a ghost town!
Well, just in case any of the old crowd peak in, I'll let you guys know
what I've been up to.
I actually sold my beloved Pioneer Elite LD S2 about 8 months ago or
so.
I decided to jump while the market was hot for that particular player.
My main player now is a Duncan Hunter modified Pioneer DVL 909. Still
works great!
My personal collection is at a rock solid 250-275 titles that I'll
likely have until I die.
My main tv now is a 50" Pioneer Kuro plasma. I'm heavily into HD DVD
and blu-ray.
But, I think all of us "old" guys who progressed from Betamax video tape
to Laserdisc to DVD also took the hi def plunge.
The dream, back in the day, was for the best picture quality possible.
For many, many years laserdisc represented that.
And, let's face it...there's many movies, documentaries, and music
concerts on laserdisc that will never see the light of day on any other
format.
Laserdisc will always have a place in the world of high quality media
for simply that reason.
I often wondered what happened to the old regulars. I'm still in
contact with some of the old stalwarts like Kurtis, Josh and Todd.
The grand days of this newsgroup saw many lively and interesting
discussions with these fellows.
Can anyone forget the days of the Pioneer HLD X9? The acquistion of
that player was like the pursuit of the Holy Grail by the Knights
Templar!!
Actually getting my hands on one and owning it for a year, along with
other jewels like the vaunted Runco LJR, Faroudja LD1000 and MSB Silver,
was like sitting on Mount Olympus,looking down on all of the poor
pedestrian players :)
I hope all the old regulars are doing well and are up to their ears in
hi def movies!
Long live the pursuit of clearer movies!!!!!
Kevin
Thad Floryan
> WOW!
> Back in the day I was a regular poster/reader of this newsgroup.
> We would discuss the pros/cons of various players and discuss the rare
> laserdiscs that still haven't made it to standard dvd, let alone hi def
> dvd.
> I haven't been out here in many months myself but thought I'd drop in
> and see what is happening.
> Talk about a ghost town!
At this point I'd imagine those who have LD collections still play
them and realize there will be no new LDs available. Technology has
created a new playing ground.
I expect either "solid-state" media or Internet delivery to be
the next big thing, and have totally ignored both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray
(especially Blu-Ray since it's SONY and I'm sure we all remember
how SONY treated LD; I still boycott everything SONY and I laugh
when I hear/read of SONY products deteriorating).
[...]
> And, let's face it...there's many movies, documentaries, and music
> concerts on laserdisc that will never see the light of day on any other
> format.
> Laserdisc will always have a place in the world of high quality media
> for simply that reason.
That's for sure. Many visitors and friends are still amazed when
they view/hear the quality of some of my LDs compared to the DVD
versions.
> [...]
> Can anyone forget the days of the Pioneer HLD X9? The acquistion of
> that player was like the pursuit of the Holy Grail by the Knights
> Templar!!
Hah! I still have my two HLD-X9 and both still function perfectly
for over 10 years now. Now that's quality.
> [...]
> I hope all the old regulars are doing well and are up to their ears in
> hi def movies!
> Long live the pursuit of clearer movies!!!!!
Amazingly, there still are quite a number of daily hits on my LD info
page <http://thadlabs.com/LD_info/> even though I haven't updated it
in at least 2 years.
What I still want to do, since I now have a barcode reader that works
with all my computers thanks to an IOGEAR 16-port KVM switch, is
create a list of all my LDs. I'm guessing it's over 4000. But I
haven't
found a resource of UPC codes for LDs similar to the ones for DVDs at
<http://www.hometheaterinfo.com/dvdlist.htm> with which I can compile
a list as quickly as I can scan the barcodes. I suppose I'll have to
create my own "master database" of UPC codes and LD titles -- I just
don't have the time to do it now (esp. at my age and given the fact
I'm
looking for work since two employers went belly-up in the past 2 years
and the job situation in Silicon Valley is dismal).
publius
comprehensive, & a "bulk upload" function.
What I mean is, of course, that I frequently find myself having to
update listings with UPCs, but on the other hand I have none of the
titles in the "top 100 in collections" list. For someone whose LD
library doesn't consist almost exclusively of (obscure goes without
saying) Japanese animation, it ought to be possible to get at least
50% coverage in a hurry. The rest of them would require some work,
such as typing in the spine numbers.
--publius--
Laserdisc_machine
At leas not yet for me, i still like it alot. More than DVD. Blu Ray is
great, but besides that i take the LD, not the DVD.
Well call me crazy, guess i just like the big discs and those luxury
covers.
--
Message posted using http://www.talkaboutvideo.com/group/alt.video.laserdisc/
More information at http://www.talkaboutvideo.com/faq.html
Kevin Hawerchuk
you were one of the driving forces behind the HLD X9 craze here in the
newsgroup.
I can still remember the eagerness we had waiting to hear about your
acquisition of your first HD X9 and your impressions of the player!
I also remember you were one of the first, if not the first, person to
expose the fact that Sony had cat piss in their glue! The good ol'
Terre Haute plant, right?
Also, you were the pioneer behind using an Elite 99 as a door stop. Ha
ha!
I agree that Sony is an evil company. The first batch of blu-ray discs
were pitiful. Sony was using and still uses I guess, a crappy mpeg 2
encode.
I called it "hi def lite." Sure, the end result was better than
standard dvd, but didn't approach what one expected in regards to true
hi def.
Sony's response was that they were "good enough" for the general
public.
Talk about arrogance.
Anyway, I'm glad to see you are still out there!
Good luck with your future endeavors.
Kevin
Thad Floryan
> Thad,
> you were one of the driving forces behind the HLD X9 craze here in the
> newsgroup.
> I can still remember the eagerness we had waiting to hear about your
> acquisition of your first HD X9 and your impressions of the player!
Heh! That was back during June 1998. Both are still working fine.
> I also remember you were one of the first, if not the first, person to
> expose the fact that Sony had cat piss in their glue! The good ol'
> Terre Haute plant, right?
Probably the first to post it here. I'll have to fire-up one of my
older computers -- until Usenet spam became a problem, my systems
were archiving everything from some 50 groups of interest to me. I
believe I posted the URL from which I found that info about the
SONY plant (but I don't remember it offhand). There was a similar
story circa the same time about someone dropping a sandwich into
the gold plating solution at HP in Palo Alto. Cats and food do NOT
belong in manufacturing clean rooms.
> Also, you were the pioneer behind using an Elite 99 as a door stop. Ha
> ha!
That requires some clarification. When I got the HLD-X9s there wasn't
any space in either A/V rack to keep the CLD-99, so it went back into
its
box which just happened to conveniently prevent one door from closing
by itself. :-)
> I agree that Sony is an evil company. The first batch of blu-ray discs
> were pitiful. Sony was using and still uses I guess, a crappy mpeg 2
> encode.
> I called it "hi def lite." Sure, the end result was better than
> standard dvd, but didn't approach what one expected in regards to true
> hi def.
> Sony's response was that they were "good enough" for the general
> public.
> Talk about arrogance.
It's worse than that. Their quality (of everything they make) simply
is lower than the "good" SONY of 15+ years ago.
> Anyway, I'm glad to see you are still out there!
> Good luck with your future endeavors.
Thank you!
publius
Personally, I will have bought about 200 LDs by the end of this year,
& so far am up to a grand total of 3 Blu-Rays. I always claimed that
I never bought into DVD partly on account of waiting for High
Definition (because any fool could see that DVD was the technology for
HD discs cut down to NTSC resolution to serve as a VHS-killer) ; the
other part, that what I wanted to watch wasn't available, at least in
a comprehensive selection of decent versions, continues to be even
more true of BD. (The bulk of my library is Japanese animation from
the period 1984-1998, which isn't exactly rushing to BD, any more than
it rushed to DVD.) I expect to keep building my LD library for quite
a while to come.
--publius--
On Nov 2, 7:17 am, Kev...@webtv.net (Kevin Hawerchuk) wrote:
> WOW!
> Back in the day I was a regular poster/reader of this newsgroup.
> We would discuss the pros/cons of various players and discuss the rare
> laserdiscs that still haven't made it to standard dvd, let alone hi def
> dvd.
> I haven't been out here in many months myself but thought I'd drop in
> and see what is happening.
> Talk about a ghost town!
> My personal collection is at a rock solid 250-275 titles that I'll
> likely have until I die.
> My main tv now is a 50" Pioneer Kuro plasma. I'm heavily into HD DVD
> and blu-ray.
> But, I think all of us "old" guys who progressed from Betamax video tape
> to Laserdisc to DVD also took the hi def plunge.
> The dream, back in the day, was for the best picture quality possible.
> For many, many years laserdisc represented that.
> And, let's face it...there's many movies, documentaries, and music
> concerts on laserdisc that will never see the light of day on any other
> format.
> Laserdisc will always have a place in the world of high quality media
> for simply that reason.
Julien Wilk (LDDb.com)
Hello!
Not sure exactly what format would be needed but if you can generate
URLs, you may append the scanned UPC to:
http://www.lddb.com/search.php?UPC=
Ex: http://www.lddb.com/search.php?UPC=715515001236
Or use the bulk upload/matching (by batches of 50) here:
Making sure to check "UPC/Barcode" for matching.
Would that help?
Rgds,
Julien
Thad Floryan
wrote:
> [...]
> Not sure exactly what format would be needed but if you can generate
> URLs, you may append the scanned UPC to:
>
> http://www.lddb.com/search.php?UPC=
>
> Ex:http://www.lddb.com/search.php?UPC=715515001236
>
> Or use the bulk upload/matching (by batches of 50) here:
>
> http://www.lddb.com/bulk.php
>
> Making sure to check "UPC/Barcode" for matching.
>
> Would that help?
Not sure yet; I'll have to take a look at what you have there
at lddb.com. As I posted in another group recently, I have a
Wasp barcode pen that piggyback-connects to my KVM and it
simulates what could have been laboriously typed via keyboard.
The unit is described here (mine is the PS2 variant):
<http://www.waspbarcode.com/scanners/wandreader_barcode_scanner.asp>
My DVD database is updated by using the Wasp barcode reader to get
the UPC codes from the DVD cases into a flat ASCII file (trivial;
start any editor and just wand the DVD cases, then save the file
(named "upcodes" in the example below)), followed by the proverbial
one-liner shell script which reads the "upcodes" file per:
#!/bin/bash
while read upc
do
grep $upc 20081103_dvd.csv >> myDVDmovies
done < upcodes
exit 0
The file named "myDVDmovies" is the resultant database
For the curious, the "*.csv" file is all Region 1 DVD movies released
which I download weekly from:
Kevin Hawerchuk
account of waiting for High Definition (because any fool could see that
DVD was the technology for HD discs cut down to NTSC resolution to serve
as a VHS-killer)"
I agree totally with this statement. It never made sense to me that a
format that was only slightly better- at best- than laserdisc should
supplant laserdisc.
I also agree that the real format to wait for was hi def dvd.
I for one rarely upgraded from laserdisc to dvd. Only rarely.
For example, I avoided the Star Wars Trilogy, Indiana Jones films and
Back to the Future films on dvd.
I must admit I am enjoying the blu-ray Bond films that have just come
out. MGM actually put some real effort into the transfers. I've only
watched Dr.No so far but I was very impressed.
Torsten
No, this thread tells me that the newsgroup has not died! Admittedly,
the group has been quiet for some time, but this doesn't mean
anything. I stop by from time to time and enjoy reading about new/old
issues. My LD collection is ~400 titles, and still growing (slowly).
Just 2 weeks ago I got a shiny new HLD-1000 (in fact a used one ;)
from Japan. The fact that there hasn't been a new LD release since 6
years doesn't keep me from enjoying the LDs I have, and buying
additional stuff.
Kevin Hawerchuk
my hands on, especially music concert/video material from the 80's.
Some rare items are really going for peanuts on ebay. Sealed LD-only
stuff like The Incredible Shrinking Man is selling for alot less than
when I used to dabble with LDs on ebay.
With the drop in the market, I guess LD collecting has never really
been more affordable than it is right now.
Kevin
Julien Wilk (LDDb.com)
Wow, talk about obsolescence!
http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/article/default.aspx?objid=53481
From this reading, it would appear that there is only *ONE* LD player
left in UK...
<< Less than 20 years later, not only were the 30cm laserdiscs
obsolete, but also the necessary hardware. Separate projects were
launched by The National Archives of the UK and by Leeds University to
rescue this data and the software that made up the 1986 Domesday
project. This was only achieved thanks to a surviving laserdisc player
and more than a year’s effort by specialist teams. >>
Since when acquiring the sound and video from an analog source is a
national challenge?
On the other hand, is the disc could effectively play one year worth
of contents, then it was probably a technology imported from the 22nd
century by Klingons! ;-)
Rgds,
Julien
publius
The "Domesday Book" disc was not an ordinary video program, or even
the usual kind of industrial-type "interactive" disc at Level 1 or
Level 3. Rather, it was effectively a hybrid physical-hypertext
document. In addition to standard analog video & audio, it was
recorded with digital data in a special format -- I believe it was
stuck into one of the analog audio channels, although part of it may
have been hidden in the H & V intervals. This was then decoded with a
modem built into the BBC microcomputer, which used it in connexion
with user inputs to control the player, and to generate an RGB video
overlay which was mixed into the video from the LD. This requires a
working BBC Micro, which is not easy to find, with the special
software. It also requires one of the LD players which was specially
modified to output the data-stream, accept control & synch codes from
the computer, and deocde the composite video to RGB & then key in the
overlay video. Alternatively, you could find a copy of the software,
strip the video, audio, & data from the discs, and recompose the whole
thing as a hypertext data object. That's what accounts for the
difficulty.
It's really a case study in how systems become obsolete.
--publius--
On Nov 7, 1:49 pm, "Julien Wilk (LDDb.com)" <gener...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Adam Sampson
> This was then decoded with a modem built into the BBC microcomputer,
This isn't quite correct. The "LV-ROM" data track does indeed replace
one of the analogue audio tracks, but the Philips VP-415 Laserdisc
player that comes with the Domesday system includes some extra hardware
to decode the data track itself. The data format's very similar to Red
Book CD audio (and the later Laserdisc digital audio standard), and
Philips used an existing CD chipset to do the first stage of the
decoding. The player has a SCSI interface that lets a computer read data
and send commands to control video playback, turn the overlay on and
off, and so on.
The BBC Master AIV is essentially a Master Turbo with a SCSI card and a
filesystem ROM that makes the Laserdisc appear as a regular, bootable
(if rather large) disk drive. The SCSI card and Laserdisc player are the
hard-to-find pieces of the setup; the rest is common BBC hardware, or
can be easily reproduced. The whole bundle cost something like £4,000 in
1986, but a reasonable number were sold, and several survive in the
hands of BBC enthusiasts.
I have a Domesday system on my desk at work at the moment, waiting for
some free time so I can figure out what's up with the video overlay...
--
Adam Sampson <a...@offog.org> <http://offog.org/>
publius
I was a bit fuzzy on the details -- I am not certain that I ever
encountered a complete description of the system.
--publius--
Julien Wilk (LDDb.com)
Rgds,
Julien
film11
Kurtis).Of course, I wouldn't even have one if it weren't for Thad.
Although I often sell-off LDs on Ebay, I still have hundreds of
titles.
Like others here, I bought very few DVDs. I never thought that format
was any kind of upgrade (particularly in the audio department) and
preferred to wait for HD. Guess patience is a virtue after all!
By the way, one possible reason for less traffic on this site is that
some providers (Comcast, most notable) have recently eliminated access
to all Usenet groups.
Kevin Hawerchuk
eliminated.
It's a shame we won't be seeing Kurtis out here anymore!
Kevin
Samuel M. Goldwasser
There are several (man?) free or almost free USENET news servers.
For example, nntp.aioe.org
--
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Repair | Main Table of Contents: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/
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| Mirror Sites: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_mirror.html
Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header above is
ignored unless my full name AND either lasers or electronics is included in the
subject line. Or, you can contact me via the Feedback Form in the FAQs.
Kevin Hawerchuk
Thanks!
Thad Floryan
> [...]
> By the way, one possible reason for less traffic on this site is that
> some providers (Comcast, most notable) have recently eliminated access
> to all Usenet groups.
Only in the sense they have, or will shortly be, turning off their
own news servers.
I had to switch to Comcast after losing Sprint Broadband due to
FCC frequency reallocation on July 31, 2008, and, as you can see,
I'm posting to Usenet over a Comcast cable connection via Google
Groups. :-)
Though the Comcast speeds are incredible, I miss the Sprint
Broadband service with its fixed IP address. You can see my
antenna for the Sprint service here:
<http://thadlabs.com/PIX/LX200/>
For anyone thinking about getting the Comcast service, I
posted the following Friday in comp.dcom.cable.modems:
[...]
Here (Silicon Valley) at 7:45pm Friday night:
<http://sanjose.speedtest.comcast.net/speedtest/index.html>
19.247 Mbps down, 3.132 Mbps up
I "lost" my Sprint Broadband service on July 31, 2008, due to
FCC reallocation of the frequencies, so sought any replacement
other than DSL. I found this: <http://comcastoffers.com/> with
a Google search; $19.95/month, free Motorola SB5101 DOCSYS 2.0
modem, and over $200 in rebates. The $19.95/month is for the
first 6 months. The rebates were paid very quickly.
Checking <http://comcastoffers.com/> just now, the offer is
again repeated at $19.99/month, offer expires November 30, 2008.
Thad Floryan
> Kev...@webtv.net (Kevin Hawerchuk) writes:
> > Yes, Kurtis recently told me that his access to this group has been
> > eliminated.
> > It's a shame we won't be seeing Kurtis out here anymore!
> > Kevin
>
> There are several (man?) free or almost free USENET news servers.
>
> For example, nntp.aioe.org
Another freebie I signed up for but haven't used or setup
yet is: