> As far as I understand, what this hardware is doing is EXACTLY what everyone who has > criticized LD captures said was required. > It records the actual signal from the laser of the LD player
Quite right, and it brings a tear to my eye to see that a small group of people (really just Simon and Ian) have finally made the hardware that I've said for years would be necessary to capture a laserdisc to MAME standards. In a way it feels vindicating.
I can personally vouch for Simon of the Domesday crew being an awesomely capable dude, who shares the same passion as the MAME team and the DU in terms of preserving history. I've been working on a Philips VP415 driver, which is the LV-ROM player used in the Domesday system. When I pointed out to Simon that the player dumps on the Domesday Project website lacked a couple of microcontroller dumps, he actually pulled apart his own priceless VP415 player, desoldered them, and dumped them.
As it happens, the dude also lives literally a 15-minute drive from my house, so at some point I'm going to have to check out his retro computer collection. I'll bring my camera.