The Official LaserDisc Thread

[grodd]

The one killed D&D for many kids back in the 80's.
The Infamous Mazes and Monsters

[Abdrewes]

I know someone selling Laserdiscs here. A couple Pioneer players and 120+ laserdiscs for $100. Mostly action/blockbuster stuff. Aliens, T2, Star Wars, etc. Is it worth jumping into just for kicks?

[Weirded Wonder]

Anyone from Cleveland Ohio? I have a working Pioneer CLD-990 laserdisc player and some discs. Pickup only.

[slimdude]

Originally Posted by danny24

Oh yeah I hate that it's happened to us all. Click something you want on eBay and it's gone/sold. I am sure another one will pop up eventually.

If someone have a modern A/V receiver, they're not going to need a McIntosh Surround Processor.

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by slimdude

If someone have a modern A/V receiver, they're not going to need a McIntosh Surround Processor.

They will need a demodulator to decode AC-3 and if they're a McIntosh fanboy...the MAC-3 or MSD4 is the way to go! Totally not for everyone though! I am more than happy with my e800.

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

I know someone selling Laserdiscs here. A couple Pioneer players and 120+ laserdiscs for $100. Mostly action/blockbuster stuff. Aliens, T2, Star Wars, etc. Is it worth jumping into just for kicks?

That's entirely up to you but it sounds like a great deal to me as long as the players are functioning properly. It's a fun little hobby to get into and for $120...that's pretty darn good! It's worth it just for the sound mixes, imo.

[Vanguard]

Replaced the grip ring on my player. Resolved the slipping discs as it should have, but it did also resolve the delayed ejection of discs!
The old ring was very worn, almost smooth. Guessing this player got used pretty heavily. Should last much longer now, with proper TLC of course.

[Pondosinatra]

Originally Posted by grodd

The one killed D&D for many kids back in the 80's.
The Infamous Mazes and Monsters

Just wiki'd the guy this is based on - guessing the story is much more entertaining than the actual movie.

[meremortal]

Noticing an uptick in people starting to pay big money for sealed fan favorites and older pressings on LD. I'm guessing there may be another lame attempt in the works to add another format to the grading niche market and a handful of people may be trying to hoard what they believe will be the rarest titles before it goes public. Just a hunch, but it wouldn't surprise me after seeing what happened with vhs. I generally don't like to keep LDs sealed because of jacket ring-thru.

[grodd]

Fun Italian film with crazy special effects.

[sfmarine]

Finally got the Aliens AC-3 release. Looking forward to spinning it up soon!

[Vanguard]

Wow, I love that artwork for Spider Labyrinth! Looks wild.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by sfmarine

They will need a demodulator to decode AC-3 and if they're a McIntosh fanboy...the MAC-3 or MSD4 is the way to go! Totally not for everyone though! I am more than happy with my e800.


That's entirely up to you but it sounds like a great deal to me as long as the players are functioning properly. It's a fun little hobby to get into and for $120...that's pretty darn good! It's worth it just for the sound mixes, imo.

Thanks for the input. I ended up passing on the deal due to a lack of space (and a CRT set up) I literally have all my dvds and cds in cardboard boxes just collecting dust; the LDs would just join them in retro tech oblivion.

[Vanguard]

Yet again, LaserDisc teaches me a bit of audio/ video history.

Picked up a copy of Tom Jones on LD, and on the back it has a logo for something called 'Chace Surround Stereo'.

[Show spoiler]

Apparently it is a early process developed by Rick Chace, for taking a mono or stereo track and upmixing the elements into a surround type track, which is compatible with Dolby Surround/ Pro-Logic decoders. No idea if it is any good though, just never heard of this name before.

[jusmu]

Originally Posted by Vanguard

Yet again, LaserDisc teaches me a bit of audio/ video history.

Picked up a copy of Tom Jones on LD, and on the back it has a logo for something called 'Chace Surround Stereo'.

[Show spoiler]

Apparently it is a early process developed by Rick Chace, for taking a mono or stereo track and upmixing the elements into a surround type track, which is compatible with Dolby Surround/ Pro-Logic decoders. No idea if it is any good though, just never heard of this name before.

If I remember correctly, Anchor Bay tinbox-dvd:s has Chace surround sound and sounds pretty good (although it`s been years from last watch).

[SpazeBlue]

Originally Posted by Vanguard

Yet again, LaserDisc teaches me a bit of audio/ video history.

Picked up a copy of Tom Jones on LD, and on the back it has a logo for something called 'Chace Surround Stereo'.

[Show spoiler]

Apparently it is a early process developed by Rick Chace, for taking a mono or stereo track and upmixing the elements into a surround type track, which is compatible with Dolby Surround/ Pro-Logic decoders. No idea if it is any good though, just never heard of this name before.

Here's an article from 2000 interviewing one of the people working there. It's about their restoration on Rocky Horror Picture Show, but also talks about their work in general.

Here's a shortened version, which is about half the length,:

[Show spoiler]

In the 1980's, Chace Productions pioneered the conversion of older mono films into stereo with Chace Surround Stereo. The latest incarnation of this process is Chace Digital Stereo, designed to create 5.1 channel mixes. This technology has brought Chace plenty of remastering work in recent years. Titles as diverse as The Bridge On The River Kwai, Easy Rider, Hellraiser, The Muppet Movie and This Is Spinal Tap have recently passed through the doors of Chace's Burbank, California facilities on the way to DVD release. James Young works in restoration and remastering at Chace Productions. Young began at Chace in 1990 as a "stereo programmer," creating directional effects for the sound tracks of a number of Turner library titles. In 1992, he started Chace's restoration department, cleaning up and refurbishing audio tracks with digital tools such as Sonic Solutions" NoNoise. Young's sonic skills have been utilized in reissues such as Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

The first " and hardest " step, Young explains, "is the cataloging, and the tracking down of elements." The age of the film plays a big part in the availability and quality of sound elements. Finding all these pieces of the sound puzzle can be daunting not only because of deterioration, but also because the need for such materials was not originally anticipated. Remastering in stereo is made easier when sound track elements can be taken from discrete, non-composite sources. Many films are archived with three sound track "stems," one each for the dialog, the music and the sound effects " "DME" for short " and each stem may have multiple tracks. Sometimes, Young points out, "we are actually faced with evaluating three, or four, or five, or six different versions, or six different copies or formats of a film. [On] some films, there'll be mono, and two-channel stereo, and four-channel stereo elements, or four-channel and six-channel stereo. And that's the first step, getting together everything we can, evaluating it, finding the best stuff."

"Specifically, with Rocky Horror Picture Show," Young says, "we were working from the original mono mag master. It was a 35 millimeter three-track " Dialog, Music, and Effects. We also had access to the original 2-inch, 24-track music multi-tracks," Young explains. "It's the best scenario for integrating a stereo music source, when you have a DME, because then you can just swap [stereo] music for [mono] music and still have your dialog and your effects from your original master."

With the best elements for a project chosen, the next step is to perform any necessary restoration. "In restoration, we take our source and we try and return it to its original state," Young explains. "We try and remove the ravages of time, and wear and tear, and bad transfers and projection, or whatever " deterioration that's come into the element over time " eliminate that and leave behind something that is as close to the element's original state as possible." Restoration work at Chace is accomplished in Sonic Solutions" NoNoise, a software-based digital system. Young is quick to point out, however, that digital processes which can rescue an aging audio track can also ruin it. "One of my biggest kicks " one of my crusades, if you will " is to fight the overuse of digital restoration tools. Any audio process can destroy a track. And the more powerful digital tools can destroy them quicker and with more devastation if they're overused," Young says. "There's a great temptation, when you have this massive digital power at your fingertips, to take something beyond where it should [be]."

On The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the mono stems were first put through a sonic restoration in NoNoise. "We cleaned it up, took out subtle little problems here and there." Young explains. With the original mono stems in the best condition, attention turned to the music multi-tracks. "There was no real clean-up needed on the 2-inch 24-tracks. They just needed to be edited to match the picture," Young says. "Greg Faust was the gentleman who did the editorial in Pro Tools of the multi-track masters. It took a lot of hard work cutting that stuff."

Once cleaned up and properly edited, the music and vocal performances needed to be mixed down to create a finished stem. Young remixed the music himself, trying to remain faithful to the original mono stems, but taking into account the capabilities of the multi-channel audio format. "The multi-track music source had a lot wider frequency response and dynamic range than ended up on the mono mix. And that's because the mono mix was limited by the technology of its playback. So I used the mono mix as a template." The multi-track tapes, Young adds, "were great recordings and I did very little equalization. I did no dynamic processing whatsoever. I didn't compress it, or limit it, or anything like that. I stepped very lightly on the music. All I did was give it a stereo image, a little bit of ambience, and level adjust in the mix." Working on Rocky Horror, Young points out, "was a treat, because usually we don't get to remix." Most films, he notes, come in with music tracks already mixed for multi-channel, as was the case on recent Chace projects like Planet of the Apes and North by Northwest.

Because Young was essentially re-creating the musical portions of the film from original sources, some creative editing became necessary to maintain authenticity. "What I discovered as I started to scrutinize the multi-track tape was that there were vocal performances in the final mix that didn't exist on the multi-track," Young explains. "Additionally, there were some vocal performances that matched" but because the final mix had the vocals blended with other dialog sounds that I couldn't lose, essentially what I did was I built a dialog stem." This finished stem of vocal performances was pulled from both the 24-track studio tapes and the original mono dialog stem. After the 5.1 music stem was finished, it was time to add the dialog and sound effects, which existed only in mono on the DME. Chace Productions" solution for converting mono to 5.1 is the Chace Digital Stereo process. With this system, "stereo programmers" design cues which add directionality and ambience to mono sources. "Eric Johnson is the stereo programmer who programmed the Chace Digital Stereo for the track," Young says, adding that Chace's Chief Stereo Product Specialist, John Blum contributed as well."

The final step in remastering is to combine the restored and edited elements into a final mix master in a dubbing, or re-recording, stage. Chace Productions has their own facility for re-recording, and this is where The Rocky Horror Picture Show was completed. "We went to the Rick Chace Theatre, which is a THX [certified] dubbing stage. And we used the mono dialog and the mono effects " through the Chace Digital Stereo® processor " and the mixed stereo music " 5.1 music " and created a new 5.1 English master."

"Hopefully people listening to it will hear the same movie," Young says. "I spent a lot of time and effort trying to maintain editorial consistency. And again, at any time where we felt like maybe we were going too far, or whatever, we had the safety net of the original mono, which had been cleaned up as best we could. And it was going to be right there on the DVD." This kind of attention to detail and respect for the original work is important on all projects at Chace Productions. "Even if we take an old mono track and we create a new 5.1, when you sit down and listen to the 5.1 track, it should sound like the same movie it always has sounded like, in many respects," Young says. "As a company and as a remastering department, that's our primary guide in the way we approach something."

but the entire article is very interesting, and shows various examples of the kind of in-depth work they did.

[Pondosinatra]

Had a week off, so I had planned on hooking up the LD player and watching films from my collection I hadn't seen before....was going to update daily as to what I was watching and my thoughts.

But then I got banned for some reason...

So not as in depth as I was originally gonna do, but here's a summary.

First up I watched The Great Rock N Roll Swindle...which was a sort of documentary as to the Sex Pistols rise and fall.

I liked the first half, but then it took a weird turn as they went south to Brazil? and spent time with some felon named Ronni Briggs? Anyways, it was a weird tangent. But I liked most of it, and liked the soundtrack which included a number of Sid Vicious tracks.

Then I watched Chained Heat...which apparently is the Citizen Kane of Women's Prison breakout movies. I did enjoy Sybil Danning...and according to lore, this was not the movie Linda Blair signed up for lol.

Then I watched Russ Meyer's Black Snake...and having seen Vixen and Super Vixen, it was not what I expected. It was for the most part a fairly straightforward film. That's either a good thing or bad, depending on your tolerance for Russ Meyer.

Next was the apparently special version of The Wall....the one which is in THX and the most desirable. Sadly, I didn't realize it was AC-3 at the time, so I ended up watching it just in Dolby Digital. Still it sounded great. I got a kick out of seeing the iconic Pink Floyd songs as the backdrop to a film. That said, I don't get the big deal that was made out of this film. It was ok, but best musical ever? Sorry, no.

Last up was Flash Gordon. Yes it's iconic, especially with the Queen soundtrack...and I get at the time it was a big production. But it has not aged well at all. It's clearly now in the Camp category.

It was a fun week of firing up the LD player and going through my library.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Pondosinatra

Next was the apparently special version of The Wall....the one which is in THX and the most desirable. Sadly, I didn't realize it was AC-3 at the time, so I ended up watching it just in Dolby Digital.

Um, what?

AC-3 is Dolby Digital.

Do you mean standard PCM Dolby Surround?

[Pondosinatra]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Um, what?

AC-3 is Dolby Digital.

Do you mean standard PCM Dolby Surround?

Sound came via digital out vs AC-3 (demod wasn't hooked up)...

[sfmarine]

Watched Aliens this evening--got a minty copy from good 'ol eBay. Got very close to the end of side 3 and the film just went all crazy and basically skipped forward a good minute or so and then the end credits rolled. My first thought was that it was rot.

I put the disc in my S2 and it played fine. I believe this issue is due to a lack of grease. Can anyone confirm this is the likely cause?

Watching The Mummy (my goodness the AC-3) track is deafening good! So glad I finally got a demodulator, as I've been missing out on the incredible sound. We'll see what happens when it gets to the end of the disc.

Edit: Made it to the end no problem. Strange but at least I know it's not rot.

[bludarkknight]

70mm on laserdisc . this has been talked about in other threads . is six track mag on laserdisc , dvd ( maybe ) hd-dvd ? or bluray or uhd ?

west side story 70mm laserdisc . i wonder if same was for vhs release around the time this transfer was done ? thou letteboxing for vhs was rare . maybe if wise said laserdisc ? or then again the transfer is actually to master video tape .

West Side story 70mm Laserdisc - YouTube

rare i made copy of west side story format 40 , the mag stripe tracks transferred to digital file ? or maybe passing though as not familiar with the , Dolby being used in the video . looks like an encoder . the channels 7 and 8 are the Lc Rc inner channels that shows the left half right half panning of music singing levels . Ls Rs is the mono surround that stays at same level . L C R shows the other music singing levels .

Rare 70mm West Side story, format 40 five screen wide Lc Rc mono surround - YouTube

i been saying it for years , that it be easily possible if the left centre right centre was transferred to Dolby trueHD and use the ether the back surrounds for left-centre right-centre . and all need is just leaflet that comes with each disc to show how to simply re-wire the AVR with maybe speaker switcher box to swap the signal to same matching speakers as L C R m with new Lc Rc speakers .

the side surround which is actual the original surround channel . that would need extra speakers down the sidewall and use extra more on the back wall with speaker switcher box to add in the extra speakers as it would have been originally configured . levels for the surrounds simply spl dB balanced to few dB lower then a single screen speaker . the levels checked for L Lc C Rc R for matching tonal frequency spl dB level . then film can be sound rehearsal tested that the directional dialog and directional vocal signing all sounds in their correct speaker location .

that's all it needs . but studios and sound mixers they rather give us , west side story 7.1 ? ? what a waste of opportunity .
trouble is with , dolby labs . they never really placed extra sound formatting with Dolby with CP500 that left out format 40 41 , they just went a head with format 42 and 43 . they short of abandoned those formats , swept them under the rug . home AVR AVP are virtually useless they have no way of formatting the sound automatically or manually . we're stuck with L C R MS SS (depending on the mix ) some like releases in 70mm format 42 can be heard on laserdisc , dvd bluray ( blu/uhd seems questionable as some mixers butchered the MS later on with fake stereo or may have used steam tracks and created brand new ? )

i know " predator 1987 " on dvd has mono surrounds as that was format 42 , only heard 35mm optical format 04 in some cinemas other cinemas may have SR cards or SRA5 for SR soundtracks format 05 .