[rescue] Laserdisc players Re: Hello?

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 02:28:16PM -0500, Grant Stevens wrote:

> Side opinion:  Don't knock the Dolby Surround that's encoded on laser 
> discs.  I think it sounds a lot better than VHS.  There's probably more 
> channel separation (so the surround channels works better), and the 
> frequency range is better.  

Are you talking about Dolby surround encoded into the analog tracks, or
digital?  Even if it is better than VCRs, it is still a cheap hack (a quite
clever one, I'll grant you), that isn't all that great.  Real systems like
DTS and Dolby Digital are far superior.  I'm not really sure how ProLogic
works.

The reports I've seen indicate that HiFi VCRs sound better than analog laser
discs.  But, from the sounds of it, HiFi VCRs either didn't exist or were
extremely uncommon at the time that people still used analog audio laserdiscs,
which makes it an unfair comparison.  

On a side note, people are starting to talk about HD DVDs.  The word had been
sounding like they were thinking of switching to blue lasers for more 
capacity, but now it sounds like they are thinking of more aggresive 
compression instead.  That also sucks.  The compression already used in DVDs
can be problematic.  Especially for low budget films for some reason.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd