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You Could Have Knocked Me Over With a Feather... (1 Viewer)

RobertR

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How short our memories!

MAR was nothing short of the scourge of the HTF for years! Right up their with DIVX and thread-killers! :laugh:

Modified Aspect Ratio.

Unfortunately, it wasn't always considered much of a scourge on HTF. I distinctly remember passive acceptance on HTF of MAR'd versions of titles such as Remo Williams and the Kung Fu TV series.
 

BobO'Link

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Probably ticked off some of the seniors when flippers started vanishing. My mom used to watch everything in full-screen. OAR and letter-boxing with black bars not allowed. It had to fill every inch of the TV, regardless of whether you were losing X% of the picture or how distorted it was if stretched. Painful to watch.
My brother-in-law and one of my Wife's uncles do this with their WS sets - everything is zoomed so there are no black bars on anything. I can't watch with them - drives me crazy. The worse part is the brother-in-law is a graphic designer and sign maker. The fact that circles on 4x3 product look like ovals doesn't bother him in the least and he claims he sees nothing "wrong" about the image. :huh:
Dual layer, with that wonderful brief freeze-frame when the shift would occur.

I don't watch many DVD movies any more and had largely forgotten about the layer shift change. I watched one a couple weeks ago and thought for a second the disc had frozen up on me ... then it continued.
Early in my collecting days I took a few such discs back as defective until I realized what was happening! One was taken back twice with a "This one does just like the other one at the same place" explanation (I think when the 3rd copy also did that I finally realized what was going on). No one ever questioned the returns... :laugh:
 

Tony Bensley

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Dual layer, with that wonderful brief freeze-frame when the shift would occur.

I don't watch many DVD movies any more and had largely forgotten about the layer shift change. I watched one a couple weeks ago and thought for a second the disc had frozen up on me ... then it continued.
I've noticed that brief (Although occasionally not quite so brief!) pause on releases as recent as at least 2012 with THE BOWERY BOYS: VOLUME 1 set, which I have on pressed DVDs. The pause on these would occur near the middle of the second of three features, that are on each disc. Over the years, I've noticed that some devices are less prone to these pauses than others. In fact, I don't recall dual layer triggered pauses ever being an issue on PC based disk drives, although these are of course sometimes prone to other varieties of pausing and freezing issues. :P

CHEERS! :)
 

Scott Merryfield

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Dual layer, with that wonderful brief freeze-frame when the shift would occur.

I don't watch many DVD movies any more and had largely forgotten about the layer shift change. I watched one a couple weeks ago and thought for a second the disc had frozen up on me ... then it continued.

Both my Oppo 980H DVD player and Sony X800 UHD player have a buffer to seamlessly handle DVD layer changes, so I never experience that dreaded "pause". My Panasonic BD player does not.

In years past with my older DVD players, I even had my wife saying "layer change" whenever we experienced a pause partway through a film. :rolling-smiley:
 

Malcolm R

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I was always amazed that the layer change usually would occur right in the middle of a crucial scene. Either they had no control over where to place the change when manufacturing the disc, or they didn't care. Seems like it could have been set to occur at an edit between scenes to minimize the disruption.
 

Stan

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Dual layer, with that wonderful brief freeze-frame when the shift would occur.

I don't watch many DVD movies any more and had largely forgotten about the layer shift change. I watched one a couple weeks ago and thought for a second the disc had frozen up on me ... then it continued.
That's what it was called, thank you.

Some of that older technology just fades into oblivion :rolleyes:

Can't find any dual layer, but know I have a few. Just looking through my "C" movies, old versions of "The Client", "Cliffhanger" and "Coma" that are all double format. Side "A" is widescreen, the flip side is "standard". At least we had a choice.

Still amazed people actually liked "standard", formatted to fit your screen. Some people will just never understand how much of the picture they're losing.
 

Ron1973

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I was always amazed that the layer change usually would occur right in the middle of a crucial scene. Either they had no control over where to place the change when manufacturing the disc, or they didn't care. Seems like it could have been set to occur at an edit between scenes to minimize the disruption.
About like an 8-track tape, eh? :cool:
 

Stan

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About like an 8-track tape, eh? :cool:

A tad bit off topic, but I was a young genius :D

My dad bought 8-track tapes. Sad, but I remember the Streisand version of "Hello Dolly" from my childhood. Being an up and coming nerd, I had to see how they worked, so opened one up.

What a horrible format. So obvious that the tape would stretch and warp as it was played. I was eight years old and realized how awful they were. Went straight to LPs and cassettes when I got older.
 

Ron1973

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A tad bit off topic, but I was a young genius :D

My dad bought 8-track tapes. Sad, but I remember the Streisand version of "Hello Dolly" from my childhood. Being an up and coming nerd, I had to see how they worked, so opened one up.

What a horrible format. So obvious that the tape would stretch and warp as it was played. I was eight years old and realized how awful they were. Went straight to LPs and cassettes when I got older.
I still own some, though they don't see everyday play. The record club releases were of decent quality, so those are usually keepers. My main thing, though, has been to catch them at thrift stores for 50¢ or $1 and see if I like it well enough to invest in another format of the tape. If not, it goes to Goodwill, and I'm out practically nothing.
 

Stan

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I still own some, though they don't see everyday play. The record club releases were of decent quality, so those are usually keepers. My main thing, though, has been to catch them at thrift stores for 50¢ or $1 and see if I like it well enough to invest in another format of the tape. If not, it goes to Goodwill, and I'm out practically nothing.
I'm shocked at the prices.Tried to sell some of my stuff at a yard sale, asking $10 or so and some snooty woman says you can buy these at Walmart for a couple of dollars.

Early adopter and I paid $30, even $40+ for a special edition. Now they're coffee table coasters.

Went to a pawn shop to unload some of my oldies. They offered me 25 cents each. Had the big "James Bond" set and they said they don't buy boxed sets. That thing cost me a fortune.
 

Tony Bensley

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A tad bit off topic, but I was a young genius :D

My dad bought 8-track tapes. Sad, but I remember the Streisand version of "Hello Dolly" from my childhood. Being an up and coming nerd, I had to see how they worked, so opened one up.

What a horrible format. So obvious that the tape would stretch and warp as it was played. I was eight years old and realized how awful they were. Went straight to LPs and cassettes when I got older.
I still own some, though they don't see everyday play. The record club releases were of decent quality, so those are usually keepers. My main thing, though, has been to catch them at thrift stores for 50¢ or $1 and see if I like it well enough to invest in another format of the tape. If not, it goes to Goodwill, and I'm out practically nothing.
In the mid '00s, I picked up a few 8 Track Cassettes, but could never quite score a player. When I finally did, I found that while a song from one program was playing, I could faintly, but clearly hear a different song from another program simultaneously. :P

As this issue turned out to be an unresolvable one, I eventually junked the whole thing.

CHEERS! :)
 

Stan

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In the mid '00s, I picked up a few 8 Track Cassettes, but could never quite score a player. When I finally did, I found that while a song from one program was playing, I could faintly, but clearly hear a different song from another program simultaneously. :P

As this issue turned out to be an unresolvable one, I eventually junked the whole thing.

CHEERS! :)
OMG, talk about old memories. I totally forgot about the "ghost" vocals. You could hear something in the background that wasn't quite right. Same singer, but it was like it was being played backwards.

I think it was cassettes, maybe things weren't aligned properly. Just so happy when CDs started to appear, quality was so much better.

I still play CDs. Other than that brief period where they put out a DVD on one layer, flip side was a CD. They were thicker than normal, jammed up the CD player in my car. Thank goodness for needle nose pliers. Never again. :(

I think that format vanished quickly.
 

Mike Frezon

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On both cassettes and 8-tracks, the "ghost vocals" that sounded backward WERE songs on the other sides being played backward. The reason you'd hear them was a slight head misalignment.

As an example, as you listened to the first song on Side 1, the last song on Side 2 would be heard faintly playing backward. That sort of thing.
 

Stan

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Both my Oppo 980H DVD player and Sony X800 UHD player have a buffer to seamlessly handle DVD layer changes, so I never experience that dreaded "pause". My Panasonic BD player does not.

In years past with my older DVD players, I even had my wife saying "layer change" whenever we experienced a pause partway through a film. :rolling-smiley:

Sold my last DVD player a year or so ago. Planning to upgrade to something better but never got around to it. Now I just play films from my laptop using its HDMI port. Perfectly fine, maybe not some super sound system, but it's tolerable.

The layer change is odd, have a few older films with it. Thankfully things have improved.
 

Ron1973

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On both cassettes and 8-tracks, the "ghost vocals" that sounded backward WERE songs on the other sides being played backward. The reason you'd hear them was a slight head misalignment.

As an example, as you listened to the first song on Side 1, the last song on Side 2 would be heard faintly playing backward. That sort of thing.
Not backwards. The tape only moved in one direction.
 

Mike Frezon

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Not backwards. The tape only moved in one direction.

No...it's backward.

The heads are only on one side of the player..coming in contact with the tape. When misaligned they would play part of the second track on the tape--backward-- because the head is coming in contact with the 2nd track which would be played when the cassette was flipped.
 

Tony Bensley

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Sold my last DVD player a year or so ago. Planning to upgrade to something better but never got around to it. Now I just play films from my laptop using its HDMI port. Perfectly fine, maybe not some super sound system, but it's tolerable.

The layer change is odd, have a few older films with it. Thankfully things have improved.
Tonight, we played our NOTTING HILL (1999) DVD for the first time in many years (For me, at least!). On our older DVD players, there was always a very slight pause at the end of the scene in which Hugh Grant's William Thacker character is leaning against the stairwell of his flat just after Julia Roberts' Anna Scott character retires to bed. On our 4 year old Samsung Blu-ray player, there was no pause at all.

CHEERS! :)
 

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