CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[CJP1]

I'm looking to put a couple of titles on DVD and I'm wondering about getting maximum resolution from the CED player.

First question, where a title is available on both CED and VHS, what would give me a better picture, video from a CED player's RCA composite video jack, or video from a VHS player's S-Video (aka Y/C) connector?

Is there a way to tap into the board of a CED player to install an S-Video (or Component video) connector(s) ahead of the stream where the composite video is constructed?

If the above is possible, are there any players that are easier to make the change to?

Thanks,

Chris

[Smoky Pond]

Whether or not a movie title will be of higher quality from a CED or VHS tape depends on the quality of the CED and the quality AND age of the pre-recorded VHS tape.

In regards to CED quality, some were mastered better than others. There are many CED's that have me asking "What were they thinking? Did they ever view this on a television or any type of monitor?" Luminance dynamic range is compressed significantly. This forces you to adjust your black level setting to a point that gives up true black in exchange for a visible gray mid-tone range. Then there are others that are spot-on, like the CBS-FOX Video release of Star Wars and Fleetwood Mac's Mirage Tour '82 (excellent audio on both of these stereo discs as well).

When comparing pre-recorded VHS tapes to CED's, it really comes down to when the title was committed to tape. Most VHS titles from the CED era will appear to have a bit less detail (look more cartoon-ish) then the same title on CED (if it's a well mastered CED). But by the '90's, new digital mastering techniques and production methods moved pre-recorded VHS a quantum leap forward quality-wise. Find the best CED you can and compare it to the VHS release of Jurassic Park played on a high quality player. I'm sorry CED Magic forum folks, but as much as I love the old CED technology, there is no comparison.

As far as trying to seperate the luminance and chroma for S-Video, I believe that would be a dead-end. First, there is some significant video noise reduction processing that occurs AFTER the luminance and chroma have been combined in the player circuitry. Second, even if you could do it, there just isn't anything there to enhance, except noise. You'll just make it harder for your DVD MPEG encoder to compress the video, since you'll be adding shimmering and crawling black to white edge transitions to the picture detail, in addition to millions of specs of "enhanced" noise that changes continuosly from frame to the frame.

Matt
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"Born after my time!"
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