Big Ball O' Wax MUSE Thread

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11/8/04 at 11:17pm

ChristopherDAC
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Now that the advent of 12cm High Definition optical disc media is nearly upon us, and digital broadcasting is being implemented in Japan, I thought it was time to take a last look at the first HD video system for home use.
I know there are a number of HTF members who have had some contact with MUSE HiVision, and I would like to start a discussion about it. I am putting this in "Software" because I hope, among other things, to collect reviews, and there are more items of software available than of hardware. So come on, let's talk about it!

To start with, here is the first draught of an article I'm writing about it, in hopes of starting a detailed FAQ/description section at LDDb. Anyone care to comment?

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any MUSE equipment, and have not observed the system in operation. I am simply a LaserDisc collector, a lover of technology for its own sake, and someone who is vexed by the long wait for high definition television and video products. My information is gathered chiefly from print sources, with a little recollection of old Internet searches and the occasional Wild Ass Guess thrown in for good measure. Since I am a collector of Japanese animation LDs primarily, MUSE equipment is mostly of practical interest to me as a means of improving my NTSC playback quality, albeit the old curiosity [technolust?

] starts to kick in after a while; and it is primarily in hopes of satisfing that, as it were, disinterested curiosity that I am posting this.

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#2

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11/9/04 at 7:51am

Davin D
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Very informative. Thanks

#3

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11/9/04 at 6:32pm

Rachael B
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Muse was going to be the U.S.'s first HD system but got canceled. We could of all had the opportunity for Muse TV in the early 90's. I'd suggest that the prevalent reason for canceling Muse was to buy time to invent a TV system that could easily accomodate draconian copy-guard systems, like we're getting.

I have a Victor Muse decoder that I only use for Muse LD's. It will do the Muse broadcasts and appears to accomodate one other component, proably a VCR...?

The best Muse LD's out-perform DVD. That's only a few titles though. I've never seen Muse done by the legendary HLD-X0 though. Reportedly, it cleans up most of the video noise that I see using an HLD-X9. Muse LD has 2 caveats, video noise and motion artifacts. A really good Muse LD, of a Hollywood film, will only have 2 or 3 little, hard to notice motion artifacts (the nonfilm Muse LD's I have have no noticable artfacts). Some others have 23-30 little episodes of such and some fairly noticable. IMO, this may be more a function of relatively lousy transfers offered to the encoders of the format. I believe this because some Muse LD's really look good.

My favourite film to watch on Muse LD is CHAPLIN. It's a good'un and is much more detailed than the DVD. I like STARGATE n Muse too. It's more detailed than the DVD, but the DVD has a better colour balance. When I got my X9 I decided to get a decoder and about 10 discs. I've ended up with 14, proably??? There's a concert disc I'd like to have but refuse to pay heavily for, which means I'll likely not ever get it but who knows?

I'm ready to recieve Muse telecasts over hare en far West Oak-A-Na-Wah.

I know where the delivery cable goes anyways... Has Muse broadcasting ended early in Nippon? I thought it was to go till about 2010...?

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

favourite saying: hard feelings are for park benches... sit on that!

#4

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11/9/04 at 7:41pm

ChristopherDAC
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I'm pretty sure MUSE satellite broadcasting is still going on in Japan, side by side with developmental digital terrestrial broadcasts, and I don't know if the digital satellite broadcasts are all 525/30 or some are HD. NHK's website is singularly uninformative about what format they are using for HD transmission, all I really gained is that terrestrial analog [that is, NTSC] broadcasts will end in 2010.
My reason for saying it is obsolete is an idiotic technicality. MUSE was designed to use the 1125/30/2:1 HiVision standard which was worked out carefully by the Japanese television manufacturers over a long period of time. When the CCIR got hold of it, over in Europe, there was some discussion over whether to use a 1250/50/2:1 standard instead, and in all the confusion the sampling frequency for digital processing got standardised so that, with the timing diagramme they used, there were 1920 samples in the active line period. EDIT: Specifically, the 1920 active samples/line number was chosen to make a simple relationship to the CCIR.601 format for 4:2:2 Standard Definition component video, the basis for DVD.
Eventually our SMPTE started discussing High Definition, and they took the European recommendation as a starting point. Well, then the fur started to fly! Sun Microsystems pitched a screaming fit because 1035 times 16/9 does not equal 1920, and unsquare pixels are ungood for computer graphics applications. Instead of the obvious step, reducing the horizontal resolution slightly to the correct figure of 1840 pixels, SMTPE proceeded to royally screw things up by increasing the number of active lines to fit their incorrect horizontal spec.
The result is that all the old HiVision program material, and some of the equipment, and the MUSE transmission standard, is incompatible with the so-called Common Image Format of 1080*1920. Whenever you want to televise anything which doesn't go analog or digital all the way, you have to do a set of transcodings, which everybody knows is wonderful for picture quality. Better yet, there are technical problems. The Japanese didn't allocate a full 90 scan lines to the vertical retrace because they were feeling generous that day; a trawl through the Display Devices forum here will reveal serious issues with sync and picture stability when viewing 1080i on a CRT, including some sources which have their own proprietary synchronisation pattern and won't work with some displays! I imagine even the digital displays would be grateful for an additional half-millisecond or so occasionally.
Can you describe the picture artefacts you see? The ATSC reports mention haloing, blurring, loss of contrast and saturation, and leading ghosts, but that is using Narrow MUSE. They also say that a reduction in the transmitted signal-noise ratio leads to "graceful degradation" as opposed to the sudden blocking and freezing we are all so familiar with now from digital systems.

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#5

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11/9/04 at 9:07pm

Rachael B
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A good example of a Muse motion artifact is when they fly on their bikes in E.T. When they first take off, the pic breaks up a bit about the riders. Sudden motion or fast camera zooms seem to promote them. Some films have very few. Others like A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT have many, beaucoups!

I see no motion artifacts in Okinawa Underwater ( aka: Fishface). It would pass for 1080i with most folks. It looks good! The colour is competative with anything. Close inspection reveals great detail with just the slightest bit of video noise, but you really have to look closely to see it.

You should read Ivan's posts about Muse, X9's, and X0's over at AVS. Last time he visited he was studin' up on how to give video shielding to the X9 that would move it closer to the X0 on Muse LD's. His visits are infrequent but vary anter-esting. He like front projection for Muse, BTW.

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

favourite saying: hard feelings are for park benches... sit on that!

#6

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11/10/04 at 9:35am

ChristopherDAC
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I don't believe there is such a thing as a consumer MUSE VCR. Signal bandwidth is just too great, although it just might fit onto U-Matic using metal tape. Also, many MUSE recievers apparently had MUSE-to-NTSC transcoders built in, to allow recording onto VCRs! I have no idea what a VHS downconversion from HiVision would be useful for, but there you are.

I wonder what that extra jack could be for. One for the satellite tuner, one for LD, leaves what... terrestrial Narrow MUSE?

If the inputs are labelled, I could make a guess by reading the Japanese writing [although it's more likely to have Roman letter abbreviations, e.g. "VTR" and "LD"] if you would like to send me a picture.
The artefacts you're describing suggest to me that the sudden reduction of resolution around moving objects, and the stitching-together action of the motion compensator, is the trouble. I would guess that part of the problem is the encoder, since the movie titles with better PQ are later ones mostly? I believe you are on to something with the transfers, for instance the Obi on SHOWGIRLS [per LDDB cover photo] fairly trumpets its new HiVision internegative telecine [which was apparently used to prepare a PAL anamorphic version for German release]! Standards for transfer quality have improved considerably in recent years. On the other hand, with anything resembling a lossy compression scheme the encoder parameters come into play; surely we've seen this often enough with DVD, that the same transfer can yield a good and a bad disc from different releasers.

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#7

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11/10/04 at 9:52pm

ChristopherDAC
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Okay, so as far as reviews go, we have so far:

Player: Pioneer HLD-X9
Decoder: Victor [model number?]

Significant Artefacts:
A River Runs Through It

Noticable Artefacts:
E.T.

Minor Artefacts:
Stargate
Chaplin

Negligible Artefacts:
Okinawa Underwater

Let's have some more, somebody.

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#8

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11/10/04 at 10:12pm

ChristopherDAC
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Technical tidbits:
In 1996 a new MUSE encoder was introduced which reduced motion artefacts, and increased chroma and motion detail. This is said to be "highly compatible" with then-existing decoders, but to have a new decoder which went even better with it. So, it's possible a later box is better for later discs... tho' I wouldn't bet on it.

I've figured out exactly what was done to come up with the 1035*1920 snafu. The Europeans appear to have specified 2200 samples per scan line period [which incidentally bumps up the bandwidth to 37.125 MHz], and then alloted a full 280 to the horizontal blanking interval. Our present system thus gives the horizontal retrace 12.5% of the scan line period, and the vertical retrace only 4% of the frame period!

Meanwhile in the Blu-Ray thread they're talking about massive draconian content-management measures; dunno about anybody else, but count me out. If this is the future of media I'm glad to be living in the past. Now, MUSE encoders and LD mastering/pressing equipment either are now, or soon will be, obsolete with nil salvage value. A modified Nipkow scanner would require an arc lamp, a collimator, two mirror drums, three photodetectors and a set of dichroic filters, and some miscellaneous mechanical parts... I'd better not take this idea any further, lest I get caught up in trying to justify it! "But officer, it's only for my friend, he owns the 35mm print I'm transferring..." No. No bootlegging for me, or anything like it. Time to get out the ol' wet noodle.

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#9

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11/10/04 at 10:55pm

RobertR
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Quote:

I'd suggest that the prevalent reason for canceling Muse was to buy time to invent a TV system that could easily accomodate draconian copy-guard systems, like we're getting.

Possibly, Rachael, but what I kept reading was that the refusal to adopt Muse was based on U.S. nationalism, ie it was decided that we would use our own technology instead of a system developed by Japan.

I've been lucky enough to see Muse thanks to Brian Wiklem. I do think the U.S. digital Hidef is better (there's no substitute for lack of noise).

#10

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11/11/04 at 7:39am

Rachael B
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Robert, we've only seen the LD subspec. TK Chan over at AVS used to tell me that the broadcast version was pretty darn good, not quite 1080i good but fairly close.

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

favourite saying: hard feelings are for park benches... sit on that!

#11

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11/11/04 at 7:50am

Mark_Wilson
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Quote:

I'd suggest that the prevalent reason for canceling Muse was to buy time to invent a TV system that could easily accomodate draconian copy-guard systems, like we're getting.

RobertR is correct, it was a 'not invented here' attitude and the wanting to leapfrog the Japanese and do digital HD.

A great book that discusses this and the development and politics of ATSC is Defining Vision

#12

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11/11/04 at 10:10am

Brian-W
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Christopher, you should do a search both on this forum (Hometheaterforum) and also AVSForum not to mention Google (MUSE LD is a good key word start), there's more than enough info out there.

Also, the Sony HDL-2000 and Sharp players are NOT MUSE Hi-Vision players. They're analog uncompressed HD players, and hence why they only hold 7 minutes of video in CAV mode and 14 minutes in CLV mode per side.

http://home.q03.itscom.net/nsa/muse.htm

http://www.cinedrome.ch/hometheater/hdtv/muse/reviews/

You can find everything there is to know about MUSE and Hi-Vision in this book:

"High Definition Television: Hi-Vision Technology
by Nhk Science and Technical Research Laboratories"

Check Amazon, Barnes and Noble (online), etc.

* No longer looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs *
(I buried that format)

www.16cylinder.com
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#13

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11/11/04 at 11:03am

Brian-W
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Rachael, I've managed to catch Fish Face Okinawa, A Coral Story, Kamui of the Ohktosk, Sea Forest, Song of Africa on D-VHS. They've been having a "MUSE" fest of these scenery discs on InHD.

Waiting for them to rebroadcast Penguins so I can get that one too....

* No longer looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs *
(I buried that format)

www.16cylinder.com
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#14

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11/11/04 at 12:03pm

ChristopherDAC
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Ah-ha! I wondered when you would show up!

Actually I have done those searches, and not too much comes up [which is of any use to me]. Thanks for the book reference though.
I never implied that the Sony and Sanyo machines were MUSE based -- I thought it was plenty clear.

At a high enough speed with a short enough wavelength, uncompressed HiVision signals could be accomodated, and it appears that Sony [with the HDL-2000] and Sanyo [HVL-BM2000] both have machines of rather limited utility which do just that at the cost of a short playing time.

How would you reword that to make it clearer?
I figure that with the LDDB project up and running, now is the time to consolidate as much information as possible. Forgive me if I don't want to just snip together a collection of articles by other people I don't know much about.

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#15

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11/11/04 at 12:11pm

Brian-W
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i missed the uncompressed part.

Regarding this...:

Quote:

Forgive me if I don't want to just snip together a collection of articles by other people I don't know much about.

Well, you're asking for essentially that now.

Just rather than collect the information yourself, disseminate what you want more detail on and continuing your research, you are asking for many of us to repost what we've already posted previously.

Not trying to be combative, but I just don't have interest or time in regurgitating everything I've already posted on the MUSE subject.

* No longer looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs *
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#16

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11/11/04 at 12:48pm

ChristopherDAC
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I don't see that.
I've turned up a few posts here at the HTF, and a few posts over at the AVS. Mostly, though, it's about hardware, and the use of said hardware in viewing NTSC discs. Now, maybe my search criteria aren't what they should be, and maybe the various search functions aren't that helpful... but maybe you aren't understanding what I'm trying to do. If so, it's my fault, I tend to be a little diffuse.
There are really three things I'm trying to get:

1) Advice on this article I'm writing. Stylistic [e.g. about the baseband HiVision players, how to word it less confusingly] advice, and technical information which I have mistaken or overlooked. For example, that Swiss site you linked to claims that Breakfast at Tiffany's has an analog soundtrack. I don't know that such a thing is even possible, and since he might have made a mistake I'm not going to put that in my article unless I can get someone who has a copy to confirm it.

2) Reviews of MUSE programmes, identified as to the hardware being used, mostly from a technical standpoint but with description of what is in a programme if it's not obvious. I mean, Gaia's Daughter? Fish discs? Ursa Minor Blue? From what I have been able to gather, the last named is the only HiVision animation disc.

3) General discussion. It is a topic which interests me, and there have to be a few others in the world who are interested by it. Particularly, for people who've seen it work, what are their general impressions or specific comments?

Now, I guess I might be missing some of your previous posts, and certainly I can go and search and dig some more up. But part of what I want to think about, is sort of the "last look" at something. I get the impression, for instance, that you have basically lost interest because of the current or proximate availability of new HD formats with superior performance, and I guess that's the case with most people who were interested in it in the first place.

Anyway, so do you have any suggestions?
And don't worry about "seeming combative". I honestly don't care, my personality is abrasive enough that you could flame me if you wanted.

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#17

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11/11/04 at 2:27pm

Brian-W
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Quote:

For example, that Swiss site you linked to claims that Breakfast at Tiffany's has an analog soundtrack. I don't know that such a thing is even possible, and since he might have made a mistake I'm not going to put that in my article unless I can get someone who has a copy to confirm it.

I reviewed it. I verified the analog track was present (along with the B-Mode track). I owned the disc (but no longer own it).

Quote:

I mean, Gaia's Daughter? Fish discs? Ursa Minor Blue? From what I have been able to gather, the last named is the only HiVision animation disc.

The first disc is a scenery disc. As could the Fish discs also be described as. I don't know what other information you're looking for.

Quote:

I get the impression, for instance, that you have basically lost interest because of the current or proximate availability of new HD formats with superior performance, and I guess that's the case with most people who were interested in it in the first place.

Partially - I lost interest because:

A) I've seen basically every disc available with the exception of a couple of movies. I've owned 95% of the movies released on the format, and about 60% of the other discs (not counting the NEC Fish Club discs).

B) The transfers of newer HD material is significantly better.

C) There was only a handful of titles released on the MUSE Format. All told, less than 200 discs (including the NEC discs). Baseband HD less than 100 were released.

So selection is a large factor in it. I still have my HLD-X0 and Sony MUSE decoder. I've also owned the Sony HIL-C1 and -C2EX players, the HLD-X9, and most MUSE Decoders (Victor MD2, Sony MST 1000/2000, MSC 3000-4000, Panasonic MD100, Hitachi, etc.) so I have a fairly broad range of experience with the format.

Most of the transfers were utter crap. I even did a comparison between MUSE Close Encounters of Third Kind vs. DVD release vs. BS Hi-Vision broadcast (done in 2001 I believe) with screenshots.

If you have specific questions you want answered, you can email me off line. But you'll find the majority of information in posts I've done to Hometheaterforum and AVSForum about the subject along with others.

If you have the means to, you should pick up a set up so that you can experience it first hand.

Here are some old links of picture comparisons:

Fish of Okinawa comparison

Same, but Jurassic Park and another

* No longer looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs *
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#18

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11/11/04 at 2:39pm

RobertR
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Quote:

I lost interest because:

Then there was that censoring of nice parts in Showgirls...

#19

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11/11/04 at 5:33pm

Brian-W
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Quote:

Then there was that censoring of nice parts in Showgirls...

I know, can you believe that they ruined a perfectly watchable film with opaque circles??

* No longer looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs *
(I buried that format)

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#20

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11/11/04 at 6:36pm

Rachael B
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...gee, couldn't they have just changed the offending parts, digitally, into flashlights?

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

favourite saying: hard feelings are for park benches... sit on that!

#21

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11/11/04 at 8:36pm

ChristopherDAC
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Okay, so far I have gathered:

All MUSE players get about the same performance, except the HLD-X0 which is simply the best LDP ever built.
TOP GUN looks very bad, DANCES WITH WOLVES [the only one apparently without those stupid letterbox bars on the cover] very good.
Brian thinks A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT looks very good, Rachael thinks it looks very bad in dark scenes.
Everyone agrees BUGSY has zero picture quality, worse than NTSC.
On all players but the X0, film material has a tendency to exhibit a greenish tinge.
HDVS discs are chiefly scenery material, intended for broadcst use.
Fish discs are just that, a screwy virtual-aquarium deal; I asked Santini [bought a very late Japanese boxset from him, and figured I was entitled to a little extra info for the price] and he sent me a picture.

So:

Do wideband HDVS discs provide sound? Does their programme material duplicate largely what is on MUSE? EDIT: As near as I can make out, these are TCI format, with 20 MHz for Y and 7 [or 5.5] MHz for chroma, with Pr and Pb on a line-alternate basis, and PCM audio baseband-multiplexed into the vertical blanking interval. I really do not think, however, that they are of the type described in the HiVision book using 2 parallel tracks simultaneously like a UniHi VCR. Probably they just use a red laser and a very high rotational speed to obtain sufficient bandwidth, about 3 or 4 times that of even MUSE LD.
Do Fish Discs provide sound?
The blanket category "scenery disc" is very broad and I don't know what all is in it. The only LD of this type I have [my collection is almost exclusively animation, preponderately Japanese] is a 1986 demo for Digital Sound. Some of the scenes have young female models in them, there is a clip from a parade, some stunning pictures of food, &c. I guess some discs have just pictures of specific places, reports suggest there is at least one with nude female models posing in front of tourist attraction type sights. Just saying "scenery disc" tells me little about what's on it.

These kinds of questions are directed to anybody who is willing to answer them.
I undestand your reasons for losing interest, Brian. I'm just suggesting that now, as the Forum members take a "first look" at Blu-Ray, is a time to take a "last look" at MUSE. By the way, the Search function here only pulls up your posts back to 2001, and AVS similar, so this may be part of the reason I'm annoying you.

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#22

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11/11/04 at 9:19pm

ChristopherDAC
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Those screenshots are beautiful, but I can't tell a blessed thing. Except that the shadowmask on this monitor is far too coarse to run at 1024*768, but I already knew that.

And that the Jurassic Park DVD is way too bright. Amber isn't water-clear, and there's no way that woman could be so light-coloured.

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#23

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11/12/04 at 7:51am

ChristopherDAC
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Just to demonstrate that my thirst for knowledge is insatiable, I am going to pose some more questions for anyone who has any knowledge to answer.

I have posited that, since the LDP does not decode the MUSE signal, it cannot read the MUSE datastream, and that the subcode data must all come by way of the Redbook subcodes P and Q. If this is the case, a MUSE disc without EFM soundtrack cannot have chapter stops, frame numbers, or timecode; if it does have these, it must have at least the "shell" of a Redbook track, with the audio set to zero. It ought to be pretty easy to confirm the presence/absence of such a signal. Is my surmise corresct?

Does MUSE CAV provide trick effects? If so, are they any good? I would guess "no" or "yes, no" given that MUSE is interframe encoded; at best a single frame would have low resolution, and applying the motion vectors over and over again would give funny results, though reverse play might work.

Does the LDP digitise the MUSE signal for time-base correction? If so, are there two separate clock references for the two video systems, or just one?

Presumably these players incorporste a field-memory circuit for NTSC playback. If so, does it also provide trick effects on MUSE CLV? If so, are they any good, and does the necessarily larger capacity of the store provide any improvements to picture quality when used for NTSC CLV trick effects?

Looking at my timing diagrammes, it appears that there are about 640 lines per frame in which the Colour Difference signal is followed by something just termed "G". G for Green? If so, I think we have a winner!

EDIT No, I see it stands for Guard band, which is supposed to be Grey.

On NTSC LDs the analog and digital audio tracks are recorded in diferent frequency bands. Either MUSE players have a separate set of sound IF traps equivalent to those for PAL discs just in order to play BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, or else MUSE discs can have a total of three or more soundtracks: A or B mode DANCE, Redbook stereo or dual-channel [or dts encoded as such], and AFM stereo, dual-channel, or mono + AC-3. Think of the possibilities! A total of 15.2 available channels.

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#24

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11/12/04 at 10:40am

Rachael B
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Brian, I don't think I get that inHD channel, I have Direc. Do you have Voom or somethin'?

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

favourite saying: hard feelings are for park benches... sit on that!

#25

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11/12/04 at 4:01pm

Brian-W
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Quote:

Do wideband HDVS discs provide sound? Does their programme material duplicate largely what is on MUSE?
Do Fish Discs provide sound?

HDVS is the uncompressed discs, not MUSE discs. In any case, they provide sound on both formats.

The Fish discs have no sound.

All MUSE discs have chapters. And MUSE discs carry either an A-Mode (3-1 32KHz multichannel track) AND a PCM 44.1KHz track, or a B-Mode (2 channel 48KHz surround encoded) track. I've never seen a MUSE disc that had B-Mode + PCM, or A+B Modes, or A+B+PCM tracks. A couple of Sony scenery discs have A-Mode only.

I can't answer the rest of the MUSE questions, that book I recommended will answer all your MUSE questions in great detail.

Rachael, InHD is a cable only channel. Email me offline if you have a D-VHS deck.

* No longer looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs *
(I buried that format)

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#26

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11/12/04 at 7:08pm

Rachael B
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Location: Knoxville, TN
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Brian, have you read my signature lately?

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

favourite saying: hard feelings are for park benches... sit on that!

#27

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11/12/04 at 7:35pm

ChristopherDAC
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Joined: February 2004
Location: Beautiful Fort Worth
Post Count: 3,571

Well, today when the mail came there was a big grey envelope emblazoned with Domo-kun on it. This turned out to be about 45 11*17 sheets which some kind soul at NHK has sent in reply a request for information about MUSE I mailed them last month. I am going to have to write a nice note. :b
It tells me next to nothing about the MUSE LD, I guess I'll have to ask SONY about that, but I now have nearly enough information to construct my own second-generation MUSE encoder.

What it does say is that a pilot signal ought to be recorded on the disc, and I guess a sound carrier would suffice.
As a result, and taking into account input from the Honourable Membership, I have modified my article substantially, to this form.
It is impossible to have A and B modes together, and LDDb lists a couple of MUSE discs without chapters, including Dracula. It looks like Tony Kwong entered that data, I wish I could catch his attention. Seriously, Brian, thank you very much for the information, but I am not asking you to answer all these questions, though it may seem that way, and you'll notice I did differentiate between HDVS and MUSE. I'm going to try to grab that book through Interlibrary Loan. Edit: somebody else has checked out the nearest copy of this book! Hard to believe anybody else would be interested in this "obsoilete" technology.

Resources for :
Anime on LaserDisc
Everything on LaserDisc

#28

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12/12/04 at 7:06pm

ChristopherDAC
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Joined: February 2004
Location: Beautiful Fort Worth
Post Count: 3,571

Thanks to the wonders of Interlibrary Loan, I am now reading the Hi-Vision book. It is very interesting, and I have learned a good deal from this and the papers on such topics as pseudo-emphasis ["edge enhancement"] and auditory response; but it contains basically nothing on MUSE LD [although it contains rather substantial data on the 1/2" Uni-Hi VCR format, and a truly frightening block diagramme of the Tsukuba Expo 4-track VTR].

Resources for :
Anime on LaserDisc
Everything on LaserDisc

#29

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6/16/05 at 7:43pm

ChristopherDAC
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Joined: February 2004
Location: Beautiful Fort Worth
Post Count: 3,571

From a volume called the Proceedings of the 1993 NAB HDTV World Conference, I have extracted what is mostly an announcement of the MUSE Hi-Vision LD system, by a Pioneer representative. It contains some very interesting details, principally a confirmation that the signal format encoded on the disc is the same as satellite-broadcast MUSE-E.

MUSE LD specs out as follows:
Linear velocity [CLV]: ~14 m/s [roughly 25% greater than for NTSC]
Rotational velocity [CAV] 1800 RPM [same as for NTSC; vide infra]
ditto, CLV: 2700-900 RPM [50% higher at maximum than for NTSC]
Track Pitch: 1.1 micron
Inner radius, CLV discs: 55 mm
ditto, CAV: 76 mm [because at 1800 RPM the linear velocity is not high enough further in; we can see from this that about 15 minutes of the CLV play time is recorded inside of the play region for CAV, and the remaining 45 minutes overlaps it.]
Outer radius:
20 cm disc: 96 mm
30 cm disc: 145 mm
Play time:
20 cm: 20 min CLV, 10 min CAV
30 cm: 60 min CLV, 30 min CAV
Carrier Frequencies:
Video: 10.6-14.4 MHz [a very low index of modulation, but the best available within the technical restrictions]
Pilot Tone: 2.28 MHz [135/2 horizontal frequency]
EFM/CD Audio [optional]: baseband
Note there is no provision for analog audio.
Demodulated signal/noise ratio, CLV: ~36 dB typically [de-emphasis performed at MUSE decoder should provide ~9.5 dB improvement, but output picture is quoted at only 43 dB for some reason]
Bit error rate, DANCE audio signal: "well below 10^-4" [error correction code is changed from BCH(82,74) to BCH(82,67) to accomodate burst error correction]
Emphasis: same as for BS/MUSE-E
LD-specific control data is recorded on line 564, left vacant for just this purpose in the original MUSE spec.
Optical Pickup:
Laser Wavelength: 670 nm [vs. 780 for NTSC]
Lens Numerical Aperture: 0.55 [vs. 0.5 for NTSC]
The result of the above is to improve MTF of the optical system by about 30%, which of course provides an improved Carrier/Noise ratio when playing NTSC discs.
While the pilot signal allows for the reduction of playback jitter to tolerable levels using a phase-locked loop and a moving mirror, the players as actually produced incorporated a time-base corrector and frame store to allow for trick play modes [and, presumably, OSD]. Apparently the designers originally believed that Hi-Vision would achieve enough market penetration to engender a demand for barebones players. If only!

I have about come to the conclusion that the bad appearance of MUSE movie discs, which as I understand it does not extend to the material sourced from video, is largely a result of poor transfers. SONY's state-of-the-art facility used for making HDVS discs as well as MUSE LDs employed a projector/camera telecine. Of course, it is possible that film grain interferes with the motion-estimating routines at the encoder and decoder; I suspect that this could have been corrected with proper software changes.

Resources for :
Anime on LaserDisc
Everything on LaserDisc

#30

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8/11/06 at 10:03am