I bought and rec'd KF: A Legend Reborn. There have been several on Ebay recently. It is ACTUALLY THE KFTLC PILOT that we're accustomed to seeing, with DC and CP on VIDEO CD. It did not play on the DVD player in my living room, but it did play on my daughter's Cyberhome DVD player. Boy, was I relieved!

The package is confusing because it refers to John Caine and the son, Peter, he had as a result of an affair, but I think the company that put out the video CD was confused. I think Carradine did have a series in the works about John Caine, but CP wasn't in that one.

I'm glad I bought it, although the digital quality is 1992 quality (not super), not the 21st century technology we're used to. Also, it comes out of the Phillipines, so S&H is higher.

However, it's the closest I've gotten to DVD and, it's better quality than the copy of a copy of a copy VCR tapes I have.

>The package is confusing because it refers to John Caine and
>the son, Peter, he had as a result of an affair, but I think
>the company that put out the video CD was confused. I think
>Carradine did have a series in the works about John Caine,
>but CP wasn't in that one.

They actually were considering calling him John Caine initially, but changed it to Kwai Chang.

Hey Monica:

I think you're right. I even found this DVD at AtlanticDVD.com listed as Kung Fu: A Legend Reborn, with the following summary:

Movie Description
Action/Martial Arts, 2004, 89 minutes.

"The modern version of the classic ?Kung Fu? brings back David Carradine as John Caine, great grandson of Kwai Chang Caine, the role Carradine brilliantly portrayed in the original. KUNG FU: A LEGEND REBORN thrust two strong men together as unwilling partners ? John, a mysterious Shaolin champion, and Peter Caine, his Metro cop son who bitterly resents him. Together they battle a sophisticated crime syndicate rapidly gaining control of the city. An outgoing, action-oriented, fast-track cop inclined toward materialism. Peter has little in common with his father. Yet despite his picture of John as an outcast, Peter will gradually realize there is much more to learn from him ? like the need for serenity or how to make the mind and body work as one. But, most of all, he?ll grow to value the mystical teachings and the spirit of Kung Fu."

I was in a way disappointed that the VCD was actually the KFTLC pilot and not what was shown above. It would have been neat to see a different version of the story.

>I was in a way disappointed that the VCD was actually the
>KFTLC pilot and not what was shown above. It would have
>been neat to see a different version of the story.

Yeah, while it would be nice to see something different, both the VCD and the DVD from Australia are the pilot (aka Initiation ) Personally, I'm thrilled to be able to move from tapes to disc. I wish they'd do the same for the rest of the series.

You mentioned the poor quality of the VCD. From my experience with VCDs they're usually not the greatest in quality. Lots of pixilation when there's any kind of motion. Still, it's better than having nothing at all

A VCD is poorer quality than a DVD because these two types of disks, while they may look similiar to the naked eye, have content that is actually quite different.

A VCD is a video file in MPEG 1 format burned onto a CDROM (ie, not a DVD disk). Yep, it's the same type of disk you use to also burn audio (music) CDs, but instead of WAVE files, it is formatted with MPEG 1 video files on it. That also explains why VCDs can store only about an hour of video. CDROMs can't store as much information as DVDs because a CDROM is not as dense a disk.

DVDs are higher density disks (although they are physically the same size as CDROMs). DVDs store their video files in MPEG 2 (or sometimes MPEG 4 for fancy custom stuff) format -- not MPEG 1. MPEG 2 has better resolution than MPEG 1. MPEG 1 is not even as good as a VCR tape (whereas MPEG 2 is better than that. MPEG 2 resolution is not nearly as good as high definition TV though. So a HDTV broadcast is better than a DVD).

A "region" is sort of a form of "copy protection" that may (or may not -- at the manufacturer's discretion) be applied to a DVD disk. VCDs don't have any regions, so you don't have to worry about that nonsense. (But not all older DVD players will play VCD disks. Newer ones definitely should. Your computer's DVD or even CDROM drive should play a VCD disk if you have a software MPEG 1 player. You could even use Windows Media Player which will play such files). The VCD may look better on the computer because it is usually shown in a small window that is the actual size of the video source. When played on a TV, usually the DVD player "stretches" the video source so it fills the TV screen, but since a VCD's resolution is less than a standard TV, that is like taking a magnifying glass to newsprint. You see a bunch of graininess magnified as well.

You can burn mpeg1 files to a dvd disk as long as the video is vcd-compliant and the audio is dvd-compliant and you can find burner software that will accept the mpeg1 file.

I use Tmpg's DVD author to burn mpeg1s to dvds (playable in standalone dvd players). The resulting quality is the equivalent of a dvd recorder's EP setting.

Oh sure. You can burn lots of stuff to a DVD disk. But it's kind of pointless to buy a DVD disk and then burn MPEG 1 files to it. They are so crappy.

But the point is that DVD disks look better than VCD disks because VCD historically uses MPEG 1 as its standard, and DVD uses MPEG 2 (and I've encountered players that will not deal with a VCD or DVD that uses something other than the expected standard).

I've also had more trouble with +R media than -R media. The new players should handle both, but older ones seem more inclined to like -R.

Oh yeah. And I use TMPG also to create the layout of the DVD (ie, menus and chapters).

So I recommend that program as well.

Unfortunately, TMPG does not seem capable of capturing from an external digicam. It deals only with video files that have already been imported into your computer, or are already on some DVD video disk. So, I had to use a ULead program called Movie Studio to capture the output of the digicam (connected to my computer's Firewire card), trim the video into standard DVD-compliant video files, and save them to the hard drive. Then I was able to load those files into TMPG and create the menus and chapters. I then saved the TMPG layout to a final set of DVD files on my hard drive. Then I used Nero to create a DVD video disk from those files.

The results came out well.

I would recommend the same approach for anyone else wishing to transfer some digicam tapes to a DVD disk.

>Oh sure. You can burn lots of stuff to a DVD disk. But it's
>kind of pointless to buy a DVD disk and then burn MPEG 1
>files to it. They are so crappy.

I've actually found that if you watch the video far enough away from the tv screen, both mpeg1 and mpeg2 look the same. But you're right, there are times when only mpeg2 will do }>

if you watch the video far enough away from the tv screen, both mpeg1 and mpeg2 look the same.

Yeah, but who wants to watch his bedroom TV set from the roof of his neighbor's house?

ROTF!

>I think you're right. I even found this DVD at
>AtlanticDVD.com listed as Kung Fu: A Legend Reborn

Is this a region 1 DVD?

Jan

>Is this a region 1 DVD?

Nope. Sorry. It's region 4, playable in Australia, New Zealand and South America...and on a multi-regional DVD player.

Monica

I was lucky enough to obtain 2 copies of this pilot episode on VHS a few years ago, both had different covers!.

The newest one shows Peter as right handed- they stupidly printed it in reverse!

I will be getting my copy of the DVD this week, I suppose there are no extras on it?

Was not able to get AWIT yet.

Monica, are you in Oz now?

Maria

Like I said, one of my DVD players wouldn't play the VCD and my daughter's cheap (less than $50) Cyberhome player we got her a few years ago played it fine. This is the one I got off E-Bay. There are a few more like it on Ebay, except note that one of the sellers is charging a ton in shipping, will report neg. feedback on you if you don't respond & pay pronto, and yet is free to take a month to ship to you and delete HIS own neg. feedback.

I went with a slightly more expensive "normal" seller. His "ad" said it would play on US players, so I guess it's not one of the out of region discs. The FBI warning and dollar amounts before the pilot had "P" in front of it. Phillipines?

>I went with a slightly more expensive "normal" seller. His
>"ad" said it would play on US players, so I guess it's not
>one of the out of region discs.

VCDs don't have regions on them, so they should play on any machine that states that it can play VCDs (best bet is to check the machine itself, or the manual) - VCDs should play in any country:-)

They also play fairly well on computers using Windows Media Player. The picture is usually much better on there too, since it's smaller:-)

Monica

The dvd player may not recognize vcd's, or it may have been a PAL dvd player while the vcd was in NTSC format (or vice versa).

>The dvd player may not recognize vcd's, or it may have been
>a PAL dvd player while the vcd was in NTSC format (or vice
>versa).

Like with region coding (as JG nicely explained above), I don't think VCDs can be set to PAL or NTSC. I could be wrong.

I have a multi-regional DVD player. I don't have to set it on anything, as it automatically can read the discs of any type and region and convert them (if needed) to run perfectly on my NTSC television:-)

Monica

VCD Pal is 352x288, 25 frames per second, while NTSC 352x240, 29.97 frames per second, but that's VCD2.0. I've tried to make PAL vcd's and had the picture look weird - the interlacing on North American tv was almost visible. I'm sure I did something wrong, but still can't figure out what it was.

I've got 4 of the Star Wars movies on vcd, without all of the Lucas revisions, and they look pretty good. Got 'em on Ebay from Taiwan.

http://www.videohelp.com/vcd#tech talks waaaay too much about vcds and all the technical details.

>VCD Pal is 352x288, 25 frames per second, while NTSC
>352x240, 29.97 frames per second, but that's VCD2.0.

Ah. Okay:-)

>I will be getting my copy of the DVD this week, I suppose
>there are no extras on it?

Nope. None.

>Monica, are you in Oz now?

Nope. I'll be there in a couple of months:-) I have relatives in Melbourne, so I will be visiting seeing them while I'm there, but I wanted to know what's worth visiting otherwise. I'll be in Sydney for a week and Melbourne for a week:-)

Monica

SAVE THAT VHS COVER!! The one with Peter shown as RIGHT HANDED! That will be VALUABLE as a collector's item some day. Like album covers, VHS Covers will probably become hot collectibles in the future, especially when there will be no more VHS movies made. The covers will be collected for the artwork as well as any other interesting feature, such as mistakes.

If you have any old 45s or 33 albums, the albums themselves won't be valuable because the music is available in another format, but the ALBUM and RECORD covers ARE. People collect album covers for their artwork, and evetually VHS covers will go the same route.

(@

Alisa

>>If you have any old 45s or 33 albums, the albums themselves
>won't be valuable because the music is available in another
>format, but the ALBUM and RECORD covers ARE. People collect
>album covers for their artwork, and evetually VHS covers
>will go the same route.
>
>(@
>
>Alisa
[font size=3] I knew there was a reason I never got rid of those old Monkees albums, and the one and only Richard Chamberlain album. Guess I'd better go rescue them from the barn.;-)
Barb

Oooops,

too late,
when I moved a few weeks ago the old records went to the local dump!
well after 11 years in the shed from the last move, and not even having a record player, they were high on the sacrifice list!

I do not think that Kftlc video cover will ever become a collecters item here, they sold a whole carton of them just in my store!

I have the older copy to view so the new one is still sealed up.

I cannot believe my luck, I finally got my TV fixed after months of being broken- then reconnected my DVD player to find that it is also broken!

Maria