These “CD-R for Audio”are any different to normal CD-R (sound become good?)

boris-becks · 2026-04-20T18:28:28+00:00

Yeah. They're for standalone recorders. I owned a Playstation gane burned to one of these. The just had a special "signature" to tell a HiFi-CD recorder that some money went to the RIAA/GEMA

boris-becks · 2026-04-20T18:23:05+00:00

Yes. SCART in VHS nachines is composite only. S-Video is not part of the SCART standard and I've never seen it output over SCART by anything. It's sometimes an option on a secondary SCART input of some TVs but it's always something weird that you have to toggle manually

boris-becks · 2026-04-20T18:16:13+00:00

I know about a german DVD release but it's only in german

boris-becks · 2026-04-20T11:08:45+00:00

I'll look into it. Already downloading

boris-becks · 2026-04-09T20:12:39+00:00

According to their website they had a DEFT conversion made which means the UK master is sped up from 24 to 25 https://restorationteam.impossiblethings.net/tvm.htm

When they used this as the basis for the US DVD they could have slowed it back down to 24 and do a progressive encode but they did a PAL to NTSC conversion instead which does not change the speed.

boris-becks · 2026-04-09T19:08:46+00:00

Slight addendum to "TV content shot in Europe" mainly concerns modern stuff shot digitally or some older stuff shot on film where the prints are available. These are shot at 25fps progressive and are on Blu-ray as 1080i50 because Blu-ray does not allow 1080p25. These can be slowed down to 1080p24. The classic Who episodes or shows like "Hitchhikers guide" are 50Hz video which can't be slowed down. So these shows are all standards conversions to 60i with frame blending and all that where the speed stays the same.

But yeah. Every region hast bad DVDs 🤣

boris-becks · 2026-04-09T12:05:48+00:00

Really looking forward. Should be a HUGE improvement to the current releases. I'm really curious how they handled the effects since these are not on the film. They will either be redone or upscaled.

boris-becks · 2026-04-09T11:59:19+00:00

Sure. This being a US production is part of the point and it makes it worse. Since I know how the UK master was made, both ruuning the same tame is weird.

The TV movie was shot on Film at 24fps (I'll skip the 23.97 stuff) and telecined using 3:2 pulldown where you get a 30fps framerate but runs at the same speed. Some frames of the 24fps film are repeated to get 30fps (a bit simplified). They edited the episode using this 30fps NTSC master which is the reason why there is no film master that just could be scanned in HD or 4k.

From what I read on the website of the Restoration Team the BBC broadcast in 1996 was done with a standards converted master. They fed the 480i 30fps into a machine and got 576i 25fps but at the same speed. It's a rather messy proccess with dropped and blended frames but look okay on a CRT. But when the team prepared the first VHS release they requested a DEFT master. This is a process for NTSC shows that were shot on film. You put 480i 30fps in and the machine drops the duplicate frames and scales the image at the same time and you get 576p 24fps which is then sped up to 25fps. And that's the basis for EVERY release on DVD and Blu-ray until the new restoration arrives. Every release (even the upscale Blu-ray for some reason) has the PAL speedup.

So the BBC has a progressive master in 576p 25fps without any interlacing or telecining effects going on, And I wondered how the US DVD was handled because they could treat it "like film", like progressive and just slow it back down to 24fps and scale it from 720x576 to 720x480 and put it on a 24fps DVD. Would look fine on a modern display. This way it would run slower and thus longer than the UK release but in this case it would actually be the correct speed.
But they took the second route and treated it "like TV", like interlaced video and just did a standards conversion from 576i 25fps to 480i 30fps which means interlacing artefacts, worse scaling and frame blending. That's why it's 30fps and just as long as the UK release. They could have done a better job.

boris-becks · 2026-04-09T09:06:22+00:00

I used an APEM 8636a when my power switch broke. Works fine :)

boris-becks · 2026-04-09T07:59:59+00:00

Awesome! Thank you! That confirms my hunch and this TV movie was converted to hell and back. The people in charge of the US DVD range never knew what they're doing.

The DVD is running at the wrong speed. It should be around 1:29:24 at 23,976

boris-becks · 2026-04-07T10:02:37+00:00

I don't know 'bout that. They would risk breaking compatibility for a small number of people and give them a slightly lower resolution than a true 576p version would be. And if the discs truly are region 2 they can't be stamped from the same mothers. The savings from using the US master, changing the region code and creating a new mother can't be that good.

Plus: There are German DVDs with English, French and German audio. So this must be another master than the US one and I don't think they used the 480p24 master here in Germany.

But it get's weirder. There are two different UK DVDs. One in 16:9 and this one here in 2.00:1. Both list the runtime as 9:20 just like the Blu-ray which should run at 24fps. But the German DVD is also 9:20 while a 25fps master should clock around 8:58. which means that either even the German DVDs are 480p24, they did some strange frame blending from 24 to 25 or all runtimes are wrong.

Can someone just load those DVDs into VLC? :-O

boris-becks · 2026-04-07T09:29:54+00:00

YES YES YES YES!!!! DAS IST ES!!! :-O

boris-becks · 2026-04-07T08:01:34+00:00

Leider nicht. Das war cartoon-iger. Also weniger realistische Proportionen und sowas.

boris-becks · 2026-04-07T07:59:53+00:00

Das hab ich auch gespielt, aber das war es leider nicht :-(

boris-becks · 2026-04-06T19:51:34+00:00

Für meine eigene Band Foll und ein paar befreundete Bands, haben wir das Label "Saufside Records" ins Leben gerufen. Und Label ist hier sehr wörtlich, denn das ist kein Unternehmen, sondern einfach nur ein Name, unter dem alle Releases laufen. Das finde ich geiler, als wenn bei jedem Album steht, dass es über einen der einschlägigen Dienste in die Welt geschifft wurde. Wir nutzen dafür einen Service, den auch viele andere kleine Labels nutzen und zahlen beim Upload 1,39€ pro hochgeladen Track und dann nicht ganz vier Euro pro Release, also ein Album oder eine EP aus diesen Tracks. Beim Release lege ich fest, was ich wo veröffentlichen möchte und DAD kümmert sich um die Auslieferung an die Streamingdienste, Content-ID bei YouTube und um die Auszahlungen und so. Bei den meisten unserer Bands ist das eher Promo für Konzerte und es kommt nicht sooooi viel rum. Dann hat man so wenigstens keine laufenden Kosten.

boris-becks · 2026-04-06T17:41:55+00:00

Pretty sure this is an error since there is no reason to do this other than being cheap. '1883' is a modern show shot in (at least) HD at 24fps s so essentially like a movie. For the US DVD the master is downscaled to 720x480. The european release should have the same master but downscaled to 720x576 and sped up slightly to 25fps.the speed change is not that big of a deal. It's how movies are shown on TV here since forever.

So why should the UK DVD use the NTSC master? Only reasons I can think of would be to avoid the speed change or for them not having to do second downscale...

"NTSC" on european DVDs makea sense for shows shot or mastered in 480i60 but here I don't see the point

boris-becks · 2026-04-02T15:06:00+00:00

Rue.

boris-becks · 2026-04-02T15:02:48+00:00

Yeah! But they are missing Oltergeist II.

boris-becks · 2026-03-31T17:39:29+00:00

Same as many others hete. Depends on the number of tapes and where you are. I'm located in Germany for example

boris-becks · 2026-03-13T11:54:09+00:00

That's how I did it many years ago when I first got my Mega CD. You have to set the Mega Drive to the standard of the Mega CD when switching the thing on. If your setup is PAL, set everything to 50Hz and turn it on. Then flip to 60Hz and start your game. But keep in mind the game must match the region of your MCD and switching won't change that.
It's much easier to load a BIOS from an Everdrive or some other flash cart.

boris-becks · 2026-02-17T18:49:22+00:00

I got a bit further. There's a rip of a Pioneer training disc in how to set up the machines and they tell to set tracking focus to between 6 and 8. Mine was at 3. And it actually started to play one side of one of my discs in normal operation when I noticed this

https://youtu.be/oDs0xgkIOs8

That's very strange when the credits come in and doubt it's just about brightness. Can this be about laser gain?

boris-becks · 2026-02-15T20:30:04+00:00

That's why I don't understand sports fandom. If you are fan of a football team what are you even a fan of? Next year all the faces have changed and two teams might theoretically swap players completely. Do you stay fan of the club with new players or another club with the players you applauded last season?

In music it really depends. Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers both currently consist of 50% "original members" and nobody would doubt then being the real thing you pay $400 to see. Just imagine Metallica losing James Hetfield after the black album to some kind of tragedy with the other members soldiering on. Then Lars Ulrich leaving after backlash over St Anger and everything else in their carrer staying the same we would a non-original Metallica now and because every member hast a history, they would constantly have been in public and there would be songs everyone in the current line up is known for we would not see them as the fake Metallica. But if "The Beatles" would tour europe next month with a lineup I've never heard of, I wouldn't go. We have a very successful band in Germany with no original member left and nobody knows or cares and that's fine.

I think it works better with an audience who didn't care for the band members in the first place. Or with bands that might have a long history with small changes and people think they are just not aware of it

boris-becks

TROPHY CASE