Review:Japanese Mosaic Killer
Sammy Lu
Finally, I was able to get hold of one of these "devices" which claims to
have the ability to remove those dreaded "Mosaic" censorship blocks on all
Japanese AV laserdiscs.
This model is called "AV-8500 Special" and was advertised in a full-page
color advertisement in the latest issues of most Japanese AV magazines. It
claims to be the latest generation and has a success ratio of 90%. It's
size is also the smallest I have seen, slightly smaller but taller than a
Pro-Logic receiver's remote control unit.
The unit costs around Yen 38,000 or roughly US$400.
No manufacturer's name was listed, I believe they are targetted for
domestic Japanese buyers only.
The entire package contains the basic unit, AC adaptor, two connecting
cables, a page of operating instructions and advertisement for discounted
video tapes.
Connecting the unit is easy, just plug your LD player's video out (RCA
jacks only, no S-VHS nor fibre-optics) into it's input jack and in turn
connect it's output end to your receiver's LD video in.
The unit is made from high quality metal and painted in military brown.
It consists of three rotary buttons, four on-off switches and a small
joystick.
The on-off switches toggles the following features: Power, Cursor, Mosaic
remover, reverse chroma-key. The rotary switches controls the cursor
size, Mosaic remover intensity and reverse chroma-key level. The joystick
controls where the cursor will appear on the screen, movement is 360 degrees.
Now, the most important question: Does it really work?
Well, to be honest, the answer is Yes and No. I have sampled a fair
amount of discs from my collection. The Mosaic remover does allow you to
cancel out those with small to medium mosaic blocks. The effect is
similar to placing a piece of brown tinted glass over the mosaics, they
mosaics will appear transparent and you can see fairly well what goes on
behind it. However, since these movies are shot with high-quality
professional digital 8mm recorders, it certainly cannot reproduce the
decoded image areas back to it's original quality.
The following sampled disks have the best results:
Rei Miwa - 2nd movie (Cosmos Disc BLS-03)
Natsumi Nosaka - Close Up Natsumi Nosaka (Diamond LDVI-36)
Rohza Tanaka - 24 hours (Diamond LDVI-20)
In fact, I seemed to have all-out success with the Diamond label,
including those starring Rui Sakuragi, Miai Kobato and Himiko. Too bad
they are now out of business.
However, I have absolutely no luck with those releases on the SAMM label.
The reverse chroma-key function are not satisfactory either, it can
decode at most 15% of those images hidden by the chroma key effect.
So, I guess the conclusion is that if you are a real die-hard fan of
Japanese AV LaserDiscs, this is a toy you might like to play with. It's
not expensive, but do not expect really satisfactory results (at least fo
r the AV-8500 Special).
I hope I have brought out the truth on these "Mosaic Killers" which a lot
of people seemed to have interests on them. And if someone out there
actually has a unit that can remove every single type of "Mosaic",
please let me know.
Sam