Interesting video on Archiving Laserdiscs

[Jimshoe]

Apologies if this is a little 'left field' for here - but this is interesting video on preserving Laserdiscs.

The video covers a hardware solution that can capture Laserdiscs data directly from the disc (by-passing the normal signal path) to produce highest quality archive files. This is increasingly important as the Laserdiscs themselves are increasingly prone to bit rot etc and often contain unique versions of films or content that was not released elsewhere.

Either way its a great watch for anyone interested in this kind of technology.

Doug

 

[little-endian]

Many thanks for sharing this. It's somewhat a pity that LaserDiscs are such a niche medium nowadays as it not only combines analog (video, FM audio) and digital user "applications" (PCM, AC3, DTS) but perfectly demonstrates the "duality" which a single signal source may have in terms of its provided information.

Only as a side note as he mentions this in the video with the variable length of pits and lands -

It is amazing how many are confused that the video part is always analog on LaserDiscs "despite" making use of a laser pickup. Most don't anticipate that any digital interpretation requires a deliberate introduction of numbers at some point. The source just "is", which includes "digital looking" signals such as PWM, often leading to misnomers like "digital amplifiers". Which don't exist as one cannot amplify numbers.

What is technically astonishing by this project is not only the probably a lot better video quality, but also the introduced possibility to capture all the video and audio tracks "at once", as he explains.

Great finding!