After many years of waiting the Pioneer CLD-D925 finally offers the digital effect features previously only found on the upmarket NTSC-only LaserDisc players. This allows freeze frames (well freeze fields actually) and slow motion on all discs, not just on those mastered for Active Play. The picture quality of the CLV freeze field is not as good as the freeze frame produced on CAV discs, but it does remove an annoying limitation. In addition, all of the Pioneer range capable of playing NTSC discs are now also fitted with AC-3 RF outputs to allow use of the latest 5.1 descrete channel sound systems. These provide six independant channels of sound in much the same way as SDDS, dts, and Dolby SR-D do in cinemas. AC-3 outputs can be retro-fitted to older players either by third party companies, or by using blueprints and doing the work yourself.
Both Pioneer and Sony also offer computer controllable multi-standard LaserDisc players through their commercial and industrial video divisions. These tend to be considerably more expensive than the domestic players, typically around UK#1,200; and are intended for use in interactive video applications.
Since LaserDiscs carry about an hour of program per side in Long Play (CLV),
most films need to be spread over both sides of the disc.
While many experienced LD owners, especially those with single side play
players, will tell you this is not a serious problem, it does never-the-less
interupt the viewing experience.
A number of players now include a dual-side play feature which means that the
LaserDisc player can play both sides of the disc without you having to turn
it over in the middle. Some of these mechanisms are now very fast with only
a few seconds of black while the player changes sides.
In recent years there have been major changes to the nature of cinema sound
systems with the introduction of quality assurance programs like
THX and of new digital multi-channel sound
systems such as Dolby SR-D, SDDS, and dts.
In parallel with this there has been an effort to bring these improvements
to Home Cinema as well; THX-certifed home cinema equipment and Dolby AC-3.
Dolby AC-3 is a system that allows a full discrete 5.1 channel sound source
direct into the home. At present, NTSC LaserDisc is the only system to
support AC-3, doing it by replacing one of the obsolete analogue sound
channels.
A seperate decoder is needed but this has to be fed by a raw "off-disc"
signal, hence the need for players to include an AC-3 output in order to
take advantage of the AC-3 soundtrack. The existing Digital Stereo/Surround
soundtrack is completely unaffected and will work fine on all existing
machines.
LaserDisc provides unparalleled slow motion and still frame pictures on
discs designed to be played in this way, the so-called Active Play
discs.
However on the more standard long play discs, none of these features
are available.
This feature uses a digital field memory to store the image retrieved from
the disc and to repeat it allowing the full range of slow motion and
freeze frame effects to be used on all discs.
With all High Resolution video sources there are problems when the fine
detail information in the picture intermixes with the colour information
causing undesirable patterning.
For SuperVHS and Hi-8 video formats, which also have a high enough
resolution to suffer from this problem, a new connection standard was
invented called S-Video that keeps the picture and colour information
seperate all the way to the TV.
Modern high end LaserDisc players now feature special processing circuits
which allow the two parts of the picture to be seperated properly and they
then provide the seperated S-Video output in the same way as SuperVHS VCRs
do.
The main two companies are VideoTech of Oxford, England and Video World Electronics of Swanage, England. While both companies will supply new machines already fitted with their modifications, they will sometimes (subject to workload) accept machines bought elsewhere for modification. Reinstatement of the PAL Analogue Disc replay typically costs UK#60, while the S-Video output can be as much as UK#180 depending on model.