I’m staying with the EditDroid documentary from the previous post. Warning: This will be extremely nerdy.
Hidden and forgotten in George Lucas’ archives is the last EditDroid system. Why do those two Pioneer LD-V8000 LaserDisc players look familiar?
That’s because I also have two of them. One to play and one that I hope will be useful for parts, now that I’m having a mechanical problem with the other player.
A composite video source, like LaserDisc, must have the color portion of the signal separated from the brightness, aka chroma and luminance. Towards the end of the analog video era, the best comb filters (some LD players had a built-in filter) were doing a decent job of separation, but there were still artifacts. The digital comb filter in the Onkyo receiver shown above achieves essentially perfect separation of chroma from luminance, converting the composite signal to HDMI.
Why does that poster in Ben Burtt’s studio look familiar?
That’s because I also have one.
What became of the EditDroid? It was a case of “hey, you got chocolate in my peanut butter!” Lucas sold his financial interest to Avid Technologies, which saw synergy between the EditDroid and what they were doing with Pro Tools. My first house was in the town where Avid had its headquarters. I read in the paper that Avid had a satellite link to Skywalker Ranch.
Joe Kane’s groundbreaking LaserDisc A Video Standard was hugely influential on the television and video industry. Kane did more than anyone else to raise awareness about poor television picture quality and getting manufacturers to move away from their grossly inaccurate “improvements.” Kane’s influence is seen today in the Filmmaker Mode setting in new TV’s.
I used to follow a magazine called Widescreen Review, with “widescreen” in those pre-DVD days referring to letterboxed movies on LaserDisc. I enjoyed reading the magazine so much, it inspired me to draw this cartoon.
Joe Kane was a Widescreen Review contributor, and in one of his articles he praised the picture quality of the Pioneer LD-V8000 LaserDisc player. Between that and being aware the deck was used in the EditDroid system, I was determined to own one.
Finally, in case someone stumbles on this post wondering if I am the Doug Pratt of The LaserDisc Newsletter, I am not him. Along with yet another Doug Pratt, who used to moderate the Cartooning and Animation Forum, the LaserDisc Doug Pratt is one of the reasons why my Internet handle is DOuG pRATt.