DTS Laserdiscs....... (1 Viewer)

[Dan Rudolph]

It seems to me that unless you have very specialized equipment, synching would be a huge pain in the ass and not worth the trouble.

 

[Lee_eel]

I apologise to everyone in this post for my behaviour and take on board everyones opinion. No more LD bashing!

 

[RobD]

Could DVD handle the slighly lower than full rate LD DTS signal? Just thought it might be possible to burn a DVD with an LD DTS track.

 

[Lyle_JP]

While there is no technical barrier preventing anyone from putting a PCM-wrapped DTS signal on a DVD (like laserdisc), it is my understanding that the DVD Consortium decreed that such a soundtrack would be "outside" the DVD spec and could not carry the DVD-Video symbol.

-Lyle J.P.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

It's a cool idea, but how would you extract the DTS signal from an LD?

 

[RobD]

Just run an optical cable from the LD player to a pc and capture it in digital form, not sure what software to use but Im sure its quite possible. Also any amp that can handle the DTS LD should be able to handle this proposed "Bastard DVD." Just a thought on how to do what Jacinto suggested without the need for synching.

I dont really want to go into much more detail cos its kinda related to copying which according to the description of this forum is a banned subject besides I don't have a dvd burner.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Yeah but I have one

It would be fun to try it as an experiment.

 

[Jonathan Burk]

One problem with getting the DTS track off the Laserdisc and into your computer is the habit some sound cards have of resampling the digital inputs to 48Khz. Especially some of the Sound Blaster cards.

I've been thinking about trying this very thing, but I don't actually have any DTS laserdiscs!

Edited: I do have some DTS CD's, so I could at least see if my equipment is up to the task.

 

[RobD]

I know from some friends that are into music creation and things that the Terratec cards are solid and not too expensive (A much better choice than Creative).

 

[Tim Glover]

Lee__eel,

Thanks for realizing that Laserdisc owners are always right and never wrong. :wink:

No, seriously, your apology is a nice gesture.

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Cool, what the warning say?

Something like The digital audio tracks on this laserdisc contain significantly higher level passages than the analog tracks. Care should be taken to avoid damage etc etc.

When I read that in the store I knew I had to buy the disc.

 

[Sergio Z.]

all this talk of DTS lds has my head spinning
i nver bought one because i did not have a decoder, have several regular pro-logic ones. do all of you guys have a dts decoder for the lds? can you use the same ac-3 rf demodulator or whatever it's called to decode dts if the receiver decodes dts?

 

[greg_t]

For DTS laserdisc, all you need is a digital output on your LD player and a receiver with a DTS decoder. An RF demodulator can ONLY be used for AC3 (Dolby digital) laserdiscs.

 

[Sergio Z.]

thx greg, maybe i will start my hunt for dts lds then, as i do have a a digital out on the ld player and dts on the receiver

 

[DeanWalsh]

It would be fun to try it as an experiment.

I plan to give it a go as soon as I get a new soundcard that has optical input... I just want to find a card though that doesn't resample to 48khz. Problem is spec sheets on all the cards neglect to mention this.
I've successfully resynced DTS tracks from other regions with anamorphic video from r1 titles for the best of both worlds... next I'll be turning to LD.

 

[AlexBC]

Hi guys, I'm new to this forum. But I'm a total movie and home theater buff. But unfortunately I was too young during the heydays of Laserdisc. When I seriously got into home theater stuff it was about 1998 (I was 16) and I never got a chance to give LDs a real spin.
But considering that I'm now full devoted to hi-end audio/video, I'm desperately trying to track down some LDs.

Enough of talking here's my question: I'm just trying to understand technically why LDs sound better than DVDs? As much as I've gathered so far, they are full bit-rate, and uncompressed. But since there's been some DVDs in full bit rate and even higher sampling 48KHz/24bits, why do they still sound better? and doesn't DVD have more storage capacity? so how can the LDs have more "space" for the audio tracks (being uncompressed)?

Sorry for this long post, hope some of you more experienced viewers can help me with those. Thanks in advance.

 

[greg_t]

Most LD came with four audio tracks, two digital (left and right) and two analog (left and right). The digital tracks contained uncompressed PCM stereo on regular LD. On DTS LD, the DTS track replaces the PCM on the digital tracks. DTS on LD is compressed, and uses a bitrate of 1235kbps. Dolby Digital on LD is actually stored on the right analog track and is stored in RF modulated mode. It is also compressed and I believe the bitrate for DD on LD was 384kbps. So both DTS and Dolby Digital were compressed on LD. So theoretically, LD should have no real technical advantage over DVD in regards to DTS and Dolby digital.

What I believe is that more care was taken in creating LD mixes, especially with the DTS LD as these were mixed by DTS themselves. LD was a high end market, with the mass consumers using VHS. LD soundtracks were made to be played on the higher end equipment of the time. DVD on the other hand, is in my opinion, dumbed down for the mass consumer market. Dolby 2.0 tracks on dvd are generally 192kbps, when on LD they would have been uncompressed PCM stereo. Since dolby is now the standard for dvd, it must downconvert to any source, even a mono tv speaker. Dolby Digital on LD never had to deal with that.

So in my opinion, the reasons why LD sound is generally better is that the mixes were made more with audio quality in mind, and that DVD has been dumbed down for the mass market and seems to have less emphasis on audio quality that LD did. An example of this is the fact that early DTS dvd used 1509kbps bitrate, but now uses 754kbps. The bitrate was cut in half so that the space saved could be used for supplemental materials, hence the lesser emphasis on sound quality. I could be way off base, but these are the reasons why dvd sound just isn't as strong as LD. Now video is another story. Here is a link to some good material on this subject.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=113014

 

[AlexBC]

Thanks Greg. It's been of great help

 

[AlexBC]

BTW, does anyone know where to find a list of all DTS realeased LDs?

 

[David Norman]

DTS Laserdisc Complete List


This should work. This lists all the DTS LD's released in the NTSC US and Japan. For some reason, I want to think there were 1 or 2 DTS PAL discs released in Germany, but that may be faulty memory.