Author Topic: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-  (Read 29051 times)

laseractiveguy

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #270 on: May 15, 2013, 02:51:11 AM »
The Computer Pac is not required to make LaserActive games, I am almost certain.  The only reason developers had such machines was to see the different fields if the disc was multi-layered.  They used it to help 'line up' programming cues.   I was so close to buying (that one)... but financials are a huge problem at the moment.   I will be buying, probley the next one that comes up.  But I DO already have the floppy discs, or at least the data for them.  I was the supplier, if you remember 'Max' behind the LA Preservation project, he may have distributed a copy or two. 

Road Prosecutor for SNES?  Wow... the FMV one?  I bet its just as grainy as the Sega Cd version... but who knows, the technology from 'the future' aka now is amazing compared to stuff of old.   Theres even a Sega Cart game that can utalize the Sega CD for background music...

I have done hard core thinking on cdv...  it might be just that in name... do you suppose it is digital, or analog format?  If its digital, couldnt the person with the Sega link cable just 'download' it?   If you need a disc, I have one.... albeit its Frank Sinatra and Madonna...lol

laseractiveguy

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #271 on: May 15, 2013, 03:57:33 AM »
Ohh... that just gave me an idea....  making a LD with video is NO problem.   However, the problem I have is making it a digital LD. 

Would it be possible to make the game on a real LaserDisc using only footage.. and adding a Sega Gen cart to control the handling of LD video?

xelement5x

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #272 on: May 15, 2013, 04:09:33 AM »

Road Prosecutor for SNES?  Wow... the FMV one?  I bet its just as grainy as the Sega Cd version... but who knows, the technology from 'the future' aka now is amazing compared to stuff of old.   Theres even a Sega Cart game that can utalize the Sega CD for background music...


A bit off topic, but it looks pretty nice: http://www.destructoid.com/super-road-blaster-the-impossible-laserdisc-to-snes-port-228189.phtml
The larger color palette of the SNES may have something to do with that though.

I understand what you're saying now Zeta, I'd forgotten about the digital/analog difference in the video.  You could probably burn something in a modern burner that looks like a CAV disc or something, but there is still no information on what the formatting for an actual LD is?
Gredler: spread her legs and push her down to make her more lively<br>***<br>majors: You used to be the great man, this icon we all looked up to and now your just a pico collecting 'tard...oh, how the mighty have fallen...<br>***<br>_joshuaTurbo: Sex, Lies, Rape and Arkhan. A TurboGrafx love story

SignOfZeta

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #273 on: May 15, 2013, 04:54:59 AM »
I've played Road Prosecutor for SNES. The video is extremely good. It's made specifically for a certain type of flash cart with a powerful DSP chip that is probably more powerful than every chip in a SNES by several orders of magnitude. I don't remember which flash cart it is exactly, but my friend brought it to my house and we both played it. Its way beyond anything the SNES could do on its own, especially contemporaneously since the cart size would have been ridiculously huge by the standards of the day.

Regarding the whole idea of making LDs:

You aren't the first person to want to make LDs. There are many fans of LD in general (a surprising number of them didn't get into LD until it was dead for a decade) who want LDs. There has been a fair amount of discussion about this at lddb.com with some quite knowledgeable people contributing. The consensus is that the most realistic goal, but still quite difficult, is to press a CDV. The reason this is realistic is because if you can just get the stamper made then it can be pressed any anyplace that makes CDs, DVDs, and Blurays. Pressing a 12" disc is way more difficult because there probably isn't a single functioning LD press in the world and building would cost several hundred thousand bucks.

As for CDV, yes, its analog video. Its LD video. If it wasn't analog LD video then they wouldn't play in LD players from the 80s. The format is unique in that the center portions of the disc, the ones that would be where the label is on a 12/8" LD, are CDDA audio so the disc will play like a regular CD in a regular CD player. The video portion is only useable on a LD player. In an LD player the video plays first even though it's second physically. There is also an all video 5" format known as VSD which only has the video. I've never seen one of these but they must spin at a RPM that is f*cking ridiculous at the center because a CDV hauls major ass and often vibrates the shit out of players and those play 2cm more outbound than VSDs do.

So anyway, getting a CDR drive to burn analog video is technically possible but requires a very high level of expertise in how CD drives work. CDR drives only burn set lengths of pits and lands corresponding to digital ones and zeroes. LDs use constantly variable lengths to generate a sinusoidal wave which represents composite video but also has modulated within it analog video, digital video, digital frame information. Encoded into the analog audio part of the signal sometimes is a further disguised, AC-3 encoded, Dolby Digital 5.1 audio stream. When hacking, changing, making, digital shit the task might be difficult but its also a bit straightforward. There are things like error correction, header tags, obvious file structures, etc. With analog video everything is in flux. There are no absolutes. LD video was around for 25 years and while some perfect discs were made by the early 90s it was never really perfected industry-wide. There were always random quality fluctuations and bad decisions even on discs made by multi-million dollar companies in 2001.

Many game projects were difficult to pull off. Decrypting CPS2 for example, or figuring out all the memory mappers for Famicom. However, Famicom carts only do one thing; play Famicom games. Their construction betrays their function and once you correctly dump the ROM its all downhill from there. LD and LA are a whole different animal. You can't make a flash card for it. You can't edit a portion of it and run it to see what happens. LD was a decades long format that was constantly changing and heavily invested into by really really smart dudes at Pioneer and purchased by customers well off enough to fund all this work. Some things are easier to replicate with todays tech but a lot of it is nearly impossible for even the smartest dudes. The dudes that made a FC game knew or had understanding of every single bit of data that ended up on the cart. With analog formats you can record things even if you don't have equipment sensitive enough to see every aspect of the signal. You debug it by watching it on the TV.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2013, 07:25:24 AM by SignOfZeta »

SignOfZeta

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #274 on: May 15, 2013, 05:01:36 AM »
Ohh... that just gave me an idea....  making a LD with video is NO problem.   However, the problem I have is making it a digital LD. 

Would it be possible to make the game on a real LaserDisc using only footage.. and adding a Sega Gen cart to control the handling of LD video?

You could put crappy Sega CD video on a CDR and then use a flash cart to control it...but if you think about it, that's about totally pointless. Aside from it looking like shit, the same thing would also run on a Sega CD...or you could just make a huge flash cart and skip the disc part of it all together.

The whole point of the LA, the crux, is that it plays LD video and combines MD/PCE graphics. The only way the overlay system will work is with analog video. There is no way for a LA to play digital video unless it comes from the MD/PCE PAC and if its coming from the PAC in the first place then why have any overlaying going on at all? Why not just have the PAC generate the complete final product? And at that point, why use an LA at all?

SuperDeadite

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #275 on: May 15, 2013, 05:24:05 AM »
I have a couple VSDs.  They are exactly the same as CDVs, just no audio tracks.  The video is in the "outer" portion of the disk just like on all my CDVs.  They should spin at the same speed.
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SignOfZeta

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #276 on: May 15, 2013, 05:49:46 AM »
So they are half blank? Hilarious.

laseractiveguy

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #277 on: May 15, 2013, 08:53:37 AM »
New Scientist March 19, 1987
Snippets..    Philips also sees CD Video as a way of relaunching the technicaly acclaimed but commerical unsuccessful Laservison videodisc system.  A conventional compact disc record the sound as 16-bit digital code...yada yada...  so this is nowhere near fast enough for moving video pictures in digital code, unless comlex and expensive circuitry is build into the player to compress the digital data.  So the CDV system compromises by recording moving TV pictues as an analogue waveform.  The disc also spins faster while the video pictures are playing, around 2000 times a minute.  The Laser then tracks the disc surface at a linear velocity of around 10 meteres/second.  The high speed is a cheap way of providing clear pictures, but it limits video playing time to around 5 minutes.

The old Laservision videodiscs had analog sound, but the new CDV discs will have digital sound to accompany the picture.  In the NTSC television system, there is room in the recorded video signal for both analog and digital soundtrack.
----------------------
In a later artical in the same magazine, it actualy talks about Video CD technology, at least in prototype stages.  It mentions that General Electric's RCA Labs can get about 70 minutes of video out of cd's (which were original designed just for audio) and that it could have great potential because it does not have the HYBRID nature of CD Video... as its all digital.  It however, says dedicated 'chips' are needed due to its slow access speeds of 1500kb/s  ...which people have since developed faster 'drive' motors... lol.  52x anybody?

I also found another website going into details about nessasary wave-lenghts of 'pressing' CDV's... but its pretty technical.  Useless unless you had equipment you could modify to accomidate such adjustments.

Now, having said that, I dont think a CD burner could make CDV's... but could a LD burner do it?  Would really sensative 'cd-r's take the 'burning' signal?

Also.. are your VSD's... the mini-laserdiscs that have CDV format?  I have one of those... its a 'single sided' LD... but it doesnt make any sense to me why they would make such a thing... I'd just burn it in normal LD format?  My 'only one' has both a digital and analog soundtrack.  (It does say CD Video...not LD)
« Last Edit: May 15, 2013, 09:09:34 AM by laseractiveguy »

SignOfZeta

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #278 on: May 15, 2013, 09:29:15 AM »
The "CD Video" logo is used sometimes on things just because they have digital sound. When I say "CDV" I'm talking about 5" CDs with an LD video portion on them.

And no, you aren't going to be able to make one in an LD recorder since there is basically no chance that an LD recorder would even physically mount a 5" disc.

DragonmasterDan

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #279 on: May 15, 2013, 11:55:26 AM »
Just a side note on LaserDisc replication. Around 11 years ago a gentleman named Michael Fox got the rights and master tapes to the Dragon's Lair arcade game from Don Bluth/Dragon's Lair LLC for the purpose of making a reprint laserdisc capable of being played on the original arcade hardware to replace old and rotted copies of the disc.

He went around to various companies that could produce recordable laserdiscs (I believe these were called stamped or pressed) rather than going through the trouble of making a glass master. The problem with the pressed/recordable copies were that they were far too difficult to read on most LD players. He eventually wound up getting a glass master and made 400 of these discs and according to LDDB it was the last LD produced. I know imitation apparently got rid of the equipment shortly thereafter.

http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/43726/---/Dragon%27s-Lair-%281983%29

While recordable laserdiscs are out there, how well they'll actually play on Laseractive hardware is another matter entirely.
--DragonmasterDan

SignOfZeta

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #280 on: May 15, 2013, 01:00:30 PM »
I'm pretty sure that many many LDs in the Laserjuke (or whatever its called) line were made after the Dragon's Lair repress. These were music videos on 8" LDs than ran in juke boxes in Europe. I think these were made as late as 05 or maybe even 07.

DragonmasterDan

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #281 on: May 15, 2013, 01:33:06 PM »
I'm pretty sure that many many LDs in the Laserjuke (or whatever its called) line were made after the Dragon's Lair repress. These were music videos on 8" LDs than ran in juke boxes in Europe. I think these were made as late as 05 or maybe even 07.

Interesting, I was unaware those existed.

I'm curious who was manufacturing the discs for them.
--DragonmasterDan

SuperDeadite

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #282 on: May 15, 2013, 01:44:39 PM »
For fun, here's a pic.  VSDs are on the left, CDVs are on the right.  As you can see, they are really the same thing, I have a feeling an LD player is not possible to spin fast enough to have video on the inner portions of the disc.  But curiously all my CDVs are gold, while the VSDs are all silver.  My LA will play both formats fine, but my old cheapo player won't play the VSDs (it does play the CDVs)

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SignOfZeta

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #283 on: May 15, 2013, 02:00:14 PM »
I want that Best of BGC Vol. 1. I have the second one but the first seems to be much more expensive and hard to find.

BigusSchmuck

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Re: The Official Pioneer LaserActive Player thread-
« Reply #284 on: May 15, 2013, 02:51:37 PM »
I just want a Laseractive without paying the gouger price. :)