Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Auricle (A) on July 19, 2004 at 13:15:07

In Reply to: Re: Laserdisc posted by rico on July 19, 2004 at 07:49:57:

However, if you have anything but a crt projector you may never notice the things laser is slightly better at.

Though DVD handles motion artifacts far better than it did originally, they still show up in long slow moving shots. At least they no longer give me headaches.

There are a couple of lasers I have where I also have DVDs that show up the other issue. A perfect example is the opening shot of "English Patient" where the paper being written on has depth, texture and dimension in laser whilst the DVD, though nominally sharper is flat.

I must say that these differences are not obvious on a digital projector but blatently obvious on a CRT. Having now moved from CRT to a Digital projector I only keep the best of my lasers and especially the DTS lasers which are almost always recorded to a higher standard than DVD's DTS. As Joe Murphy said in an exchange some time ago:
"They (lasers) sound better because the laserdisc was transferred at 1.4Mbs, as opposed to the majority of DTS DVDs that have a bitrate of 768 kbs (half the full DTS rate). The original DTS DVDs from Universal (about 10 DVDs) have a bitrate of 1.5Mbs. Because the studios wanted more room for the worthless extra features and languages, DTS "downgraded" its codec to give them room. Today, DVD manufacturing capability now allows for 1.5Mbs DTS bitrates on DVDs along with the Dolby Digital 448kbs 5.1 soundtrack, but half-rate DTS has become the accepted standard. Sad. "

Nevertheless, the future is here and with the convenience, the reduction (though not the elimination) of laser rot, better and more consistent colours and the new ability to scale to 1080i and/or 720p I will eventually replace most of the collection. Whatever laser's few benefits they have been overwhelmed by DVD's many advantages.