MOTM

On Thu, 27 Jul 2000, Tkacs, Ken wrote:

> 
> At least with upgraded modules, the old ones are still useful! The
> more modules, the better. I was one of those people who bought heavily
> into laserdiscs for YEARS before DVD, and it's sad to have to replace
> all those laserdiscs with DVDs whose quality increase, I'm sorry, is
> questionable at best.

  I have about $50K invested in imported laserdiscs, mostly animation from
Japan. The key feature I enjoy about LDs are that my imports drop in and
run in my LD players without any marketing-control problems (read: region
code issues).  Now, I like DVDs for their much-improved capabilities in
the audio area, referring to multiple language tracks, etc. that go far
beyond the 2 choices for audio you get on LD.  My major complaint is that
an import DVD doesn't just drop in and run on a cots DVD player.  You have
to do something like I did and go in and hack the OS ROM of the player to
find and instruct the system to "ignore" things like disc regions.

  The big problem now is that LDs are being dropped in Japan in favor of
DVD.  Japan was by far the largest consumer of the LD format; the US had
about 3% of an equivalent LD market at its *peak*.  Gone are the days of
grabbing a title and knowing your machine will have no problems playing
it.  Arrgh!

  (As far as image quality goes, it depends on the quality of the encoder
at the disc production end.  I've seen discs with glorious images, and
I've seen discs with images that were total crap, content
notwithstanding).

Crow

/**/