LaserDisc

[olzen]

Let's talk about LaserDisc. Any other fans of these outdated, yet charming, platters out there?

I got myself a used Pioneer CLD-S315 in excellent condition recently, and while this thing was an entry-level player, I was actually blown away by how good the picture looked on my first LaserDisc - the '97 Special Edition of "Star Wars." I was expecting something close to VHS-quality, but the picture was actually surprisingly close to DVD quality.

My parents also surprised me with an early Christmas present, consisting of a small LaserDisc collection of other films. My main intent had been to purchase the versions of the "Star Wars"-trilogy that are not yet available on DVD properly, but it's nice to have something else to watch. Not all of them have been stored properly, so they could probably have looked better, and some of them are rotters. But still, I continue to be fascinated by this format. Not even the sharpest VHS tapes I've seen can rival the a/v quality of LaserDiscs.

So those were my ramblings. Discuss!

[Stephen]

I never owned one of these but when they first became available I assumed they would replace the existing VHS and Betamax, as they seemed so futuristic at the time. What was it that led to their non-acceptance, was it the high cost, the inability to record at home on them or other factors?

[olzen]

Neither did my household. They were apparently mainly popular in the U.S. and in Japan. The Japanese even managed to develop a type of LaserDisc that could play back video at HD resolution. Sadly, that was near the lifespan of the format. But technically, not only was LaserDisc the predecessor for CD's and DVD's. As a high-def format, it actually predated Blu-ray.

LaserDiscs weren't even that futuristic; video disc prototypes have been around at least since the 1950's. Heck, RCA even had this format called "CED" which was a needle-and-groove system. Video LP's! How cool is that?

I imagine a combinations of the factors you listed led to their downfall. They were also quite unwieldy - can you imagine your children putting on a 12" disc without smearing their fingerprints all over it? In comparison, VHS was much sturdier. And of course, every child knows how to put on a DVD or Blu-ray these days. Then there's also the matter of changing sides and discs. While I see that as a nice little breather, a lot of people would probably disagree. So all in all, it was a kinda clunky format for video- and audiophiles.

However, a few fun facts that blow me away: letterboxing films to show them in their original aspect ratio wasn't commonplace until some manufacturers introduced that to LaserDiscs. They also made it possible to hear surround sound, if you had the right equipment, and the audio was (and is) actually higher quality than that of DVD's. So while the format was arguably destined to fail because of it practical shortcomings, I don't think home cinema would have been the same without those advances.

(reading through all of that, you may be able to tell I've overdone my homework!)

[snifferdog]

I never had any either but remember seeing them for sale in the early 1990s. They were exorbitantly expensive if I remember correctly. Around the same time there were some other sort of video discs for sale. VCDs maybe?

[Meandthem]

There were the Phillips-system, where the tape spool went up on top of it self as aposed to the VHS and Betamax that was more like ordinary tapecasettes.
A bigger format was an oversized version, guess it was called "Umatic" or something like that, where the tape was about 2-2½" wide. As with Beta, it didn't last...

[drafsack]

Pompeii was available on laser disc - my brother in law had it and it looked and sounded pretty good

[olzen]

That was actually a nice reminder, drafsack; of course I need that film on LaserDisc. It's probably the best way of seeing the film without being subjected to Maben's director's cut bullshit.

[walter5]

I bought into the Laserdisc format in 1984, about 2 years after it hit the market. At the time, when new videotape movies were selling for $59-79 a copy, a Laserdisc copy at $30 for a single disc didn't look too bad. And there was no encoding or 'block' on Laserdiscs, you could make VHS or Beta copies that looked as good or better than the commercial releases. They were Hi-Fi, if not Digital, and the amount of data that they *could* store was never utilized-- up to 16 tracks of audio were available, but they rarely utilized more than 2 audio tracks.

I have "Pompei" on Laserdisc, "Delicate Sound Of Thunder," "The Wall," and "Pulse." I *had* the Pan-American Road Race film where Pink Floyd did the soundtrack (which was never released on CD, you can find it on "A Tree Full Of Secrets) but I dropped it and it shattered when it hit a tile floor. I saw the "Make Love In London" footage once, but it was a Japanese import, and rather expensive ($50 or so, 20+ years ago). As I recall, there was one extra track on the U.S. version of 'DSOT' that was not on the Japanese version: "Money."

They were the future, all right! I remember when my dad took us to Walt Disney World the month that Space Mountain opened, back in 1974 (I think), when you exited via the Moving Sidewalk you were taken through the World Of Tomorrow, and you saw a teenage girl in her bedroom with one in her hand, while "Elvis Live" played on a big-screen TV on the wall behind her!

There are still some films (such as The Beatles "Let It Be" and "Magical Mystery Tour") that were/are available on Laserdisc that have never been available on DVD (other than pirated and bootlegged copies). They still look (and sound) *great* on my 50-inch 780p TV screen! I have about 300 of 'em, still pull 'em out and play 'em from time to time. A great format, that would have, should have, been a lot bigger if they had been marketed properly. A lot of mid-size and small-size markets never even saw them; whereas I had places that rented them in Boston and Houston, and I could rent and record titles I didn't neccesarily want to purchase!!