Domesday Project

[alleycat]

Saw this on Facebook:

I'm involved in a run of fully assembled and flashed Domesday86 Duplicator kits: these can be used to directly digitize your LaserDisc media and even VHS tapes! You can find more information about how it works and what it is at https://www.domesday86.com/?page_id=74

We've a large number of slots open, so we're hoping to  be able to meet the demands of the community for not only kits, but also completely assembled, individual parts such as the LD-V4x00 calibration board, and DomesDay86 duplicator board.

Let me note that I'm open to having conversations on a individual basis for larger or special projects if other considerations need to be made: please contact me as opposed to staying silent!

Price List

$400 = 1x Fully assembled and programmed DomesDay86 kit (assembled and  soldered DdD board, FX3, DE0 FPGA, and LD-V4x00 calibration board)
$267 = 1x Fully soldered DomesDay86 duplicator board.
$130 = 1x Calibration board

Please note the following:
- We will ship anywhere locally or internationally (from the Pacific Coast of the US).
- Prices do not include shipping (we'll request a second payment for  shipping and materials once the package is ready to be sent to you).
- While we're trying to take weeks at most, please plan around not receiving a unit for several months.

-- Why such a long lead time?
We're setting expectations to give buffer time to the fine chap soldering and assembling all this so they don't burn out, stress out, or have a passion and hobby meant to help the community, turn into a chore. This is also meant to plan around further stoppages or slow downs in shipping from China due to the Coronavirus.

Please message me if you're Interested!

--Noah

PS This run has the blessing of Simon Inns (though he is not responsible for it nor involved in any way) who is the creator and primary developer of the DomesDay86 project. He also noted that "for a full  stack of boards ready-to-roll; it's a very reasonable price imho" See attached screenshot for further confirmation.

[BusterD]

I've been following this project for a while, and a part of me really wants to mod one of my players, but it would take me forever to back up all my LDs (many of which I've already backed up the PCM), plus I'm really inexeperienced at using avisynth and it seems the decoding software still needs a lot of work. I could just save the RF captures for now, but that would take several hundred terabytes for all my LDs... maybe when hard disk prices come down some more.

Then again, I probably shouldn't feed my OCD by spending hundreds of dollars and countless hours trying to squeeze a few more drops of quality out of an analog video signal when I already have an HLD-X9 and a Sony Blu-ray recorder with a great comb filter...

[alleycat]

It certainly is an interesting project, especially now they are saying it can be used for VHS captures as well. I have a friend with a setup so I plan to use it only for really special discs. One I want to do is the Ransom Extended Version, then cut the extra footage into the regular blu ray.

[zoidberg]

The RF capture project started by happycube is very interesting, unfortunately it still requires a working player to stream the RF signal so the priority now is to keep the machines running

[Sabbelbacke]

This is great news. I just learned about this project a few days ago and still have to catch up a lot of reading.. I am intrigued, but not ready to say: "I´ll take one" A few thoughts came to mind:

- could this possibly extended to other analog Tape formats, too? I guess on the Software side there would have to happen implementations of Video8, Betacam, etc.. But as long as the nyquist of the sampling board doesn´t get in the way...
- Older professional format players often have "RF" outputs for tape2tape transfers - would this be an easy point to "plug" in the sampling board?
- How about S-VHS vs VHS - I assume it just takes a different apporach in the software but S-Video recordings should be possible with this, too?
- Hifi-Stereo Audio on VHS is recorded with two seperate heads on the rotating drum - do you know if the signal is also present in the RF Signal captured, so HIFI Audio could be restored as well? The "traditional" Sound is - just like on a normal MC Tape - recorded by sperate heads running parallel to the tape movement on the side of the tape - this would have to be recorded seperately with a soundcard - since it´s quality is not that great anyways (some dolby implementations were around), it´s fine....
- How about "the other way around"... I am thinking of feeding RF directly into the recorder - in theory a very high grad recording on analog tape could be possible this way... Where there some thoughts already put into this topic ? Getting teh signal from the tape of course is much more important, but it certainly would be fun or at least interesting to have a "high end mastering machine" for analog video tape formats this way (I am thiking of laser cutting vinyls as an analogy, which came up in the last few years)

Thanx for this great project and the effort you guys put into this!

[ilpubzo5ie]

There is already a "vhs-decode" software, so it works with that too.

The quality of the captures should be far superior to any video out of any player. Unfortunately, the decode software still requires some work. Analogue audio is very distorted and AC3 is not supported at all. DTS seems to work with a small adjustment to the software.