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Laserdisc: I've made a huge mistake.
- Thread starter Foxix Von
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CRT or OLED would be best. Anything that can do black blacks will help them not look too washed out. Remember the biggest issue with them has less to do with the resolution and more to do with the fact that they are at their core limited to composite video out. Even the S-video models just push the output through a crummy signal processor into s-video format. The reduced color resolution (chroma/luma) is to me the biggest issue with the format.
Patrick Bateman
Member
Wat?
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Oh shit, I missed the dude w/ a Geek Show avatar belittling Laserdisc/Vinyl hobbyists.
MrCunningham
Member
Flipping discs over in the middle of a movie never gets old.
Maybe for those who don't have an auto side changer....
Naked Snake
Member
I just barfed
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Yeah, never use the S-video. The chances your TV doesn't have better filtering built into it than your player ever did is almost zero now.
just run the yellow cord into the back of your flat panel
just run the yellow cord into the back of your flat panel
To be fair it was a format that was developed in the mid 70's. Composite was fucking space age at the time. The fact that they came up with a way to get 5.1/6.1 AC-3 audio and other things in there is shows just how impressive the format could be.
Also can't off the top of my head think of any other format in AV that used a laser to read analogue content.
Do laser turntables count?
Naked Snake
Member
Whoa I didn't know it was analog, or that it was developed in the 70s... that is very cool.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
There were some anamorphic laserdiscs. The only one that I actually saw in person was Goldeneye.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
They called it MUSE, didn't they?
They only came out in Japan, and there were like, 6 of em? Cliffhanger was one, I think. You had to have a super-expensive player to play 'em, too. One of those 100lb behemoths.
Also, I believe the last Laserdisc made for the American market was Bringing out the Dead.
Nicolas Cage laid Laserdisc to rest in the States.
They only came out in Japan, and there were like, 6 of em? Cliffhanger was one, I think. You had to have a super-expensive player to play 'em, too. One of those 100lb behemoths.
Also, I believe the last Laserdisc made for the American market was Bringing out the Dead.
Nicolas Cage laid Laserdisc to rest in the States.
sixteen-bit
Member
Here is a photo of my HD-DVD collection.
at least get the trilogy
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Naw, that was actually HD.
This was just regular LD that was anamorphic. It was basically useless without a widescreen TV because the players had no way of squishing it down to regular shape.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Oh shit, thanks for the heads up!
I remember the dying days of CRTs (again, when I was schlepping shit around the Circuit City warehouse) and the higher-end flatscreen CRTs intermittently having that feature as well. Some advertised, some hidden in the service menu.
jetpacks was yes
Member
That's even worse than my older brother selling his SNES for a Lynx.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
And Disney and Fox were all in on that format and not DVD. Thankfully, they saw the light pretty quickly.
Shitty movie or not, that sound mix is fucking sublime.
OverBlood 3
Banned
I watched the same video too just recently!
What the fuck, don't just slip in the fact you have no sense of taste after reviewing something that cooks food! Great videos though.
Naked Snake
Member
My 21" Sony Trinitron CRT has this feature. I loved using it with DVDs and games that supported it. It increases the "pixel density" of the image (since the electron gun is focused on a smaller area) and made the image look crisper. I still have that TV and it's in great shape. Haven't used it in ages though.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I do believe that's also the highest resolution at which the theatrical cut of The Phantom Menace exists.
Ban Puncher
Member
2F2F has no place in either my home or my heart.
Yeah the first US Discovision players were 1978 I think. And I do believe it's an oddity not only for being a laser-read analogue format but also having so many bolted on additions like digital audio while still usually retaining a 2 track analogue option, and multitrack audio. And thus fairly good backwards compatibility.
DVD is very clearly inspired by LD even down to the bandwidth spec for digital audio where often LD provided a higher bitrate (it's only possible advantage over DVD).
Edit: For people who own an LD player without AC-3 decode there are options to put one in. If you know how to solder and have a compatible player it's a really obvious and worthwhile upgrade.
I've heard this, but haven't heard any confirmation. I do think the 6.1 has a bit of crosstalk though. But perhaps it's my set-up, I hardly optimized for a config almost nothing used.
Why do you think CD's are called Compact Discs in the first place?
I admit, I use to think the same before I looked into it myself a couple years back.
Yes, roughly, though they could come in other sized it was uncommon.
Here's an easy comparison. My Doom XB1 BR laid over my Daylight LD.
MUSE was actually an early High Definition (aka Hi-Vision) format in Japan. The MUSE LaserDiscs were digitally encoded and required a special MUSE decoder. If your TV didn't have a decoder, you'd have to buy a external box too (thereby making the cost of owning a whole MUSE LD set up rediculously expensive). The resolution was fairly high for the time, but it used a slightly different picture format than modern HDTV standards. I think the resolution was like 1035i or something (can't remember the aspect ratio either). What helped them fit an HD movie on the disc was that it used a narrower laser beam than normal LD players (the narrower laser, the more data per disc). The legendary HLD-X0 and HLD-X9, being MUSE players, had this narrower laser which is why they were better at playing regular LDs (the laser really helped playing rotted discs too).
In addtion, like TAJ said, there were also regular anamorphic LaserDiscs. These were predominantly released in Japan and marketed as "Squeeze" LDs. There were a couple of anamorphic discs released in the US too, but I believe they were primarily promotional items given away with certain widescreen TVs.
And naturally, T2 was also released on both formats.
LDDB has a list of all the known titles for each one:
MUSE
Anamorphic
Weren't they also abnormal because they used a blue spectrum modulated laser? The whole pitch was that they could use existing facilities that produced LDs. I think NEC and later the BR consortium took at least a handful of patents from that to create BR.
Any Questions
Member
Dude. It's an investment. Given time and if you sell those in a proper eBay listing, perhaps bundle up some cheaper titles with some gems and you will easily make more than you paid. Even the cheapest movie is going for £3.50 over here in the UK.
Noisepurge
Member
Nemesis has a LD release?! ...*sigh* (off to ebay ->)
I don't think this is true at all. Lots of times, buying in bulk when it is your hobby is the best way to go. You can mine all of the good stuff out, sell the rest and usually end up getting really good deals on the specifics you want.
Bought a lot of bulk Magic card lots, comics and games. Almost always ended up with doubles of stuff, keep the best one and sell/trade the other. Fill in gaps that I might be missing and might find cool oddities I didn't know existed. Sell or trade the rest and have never really been too disappointed.
Now, buying bulk in stuff you don't really know about and would like to start is probably not the best, but it is an instant collection and gives him a place to start from. Get rid of everything you don't want and keep the rest and he might have really ended up with a decent deal.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I had two TVs that did that (one automatically and one manually in the basic user menu) but that feature didn't start showing up until a few years after these LDs came out.
Spiral Insanity
Banned
Thats a nice get.
Reagan's BR
Banned
Isn't bit rot a huge problem with laser discs now compared to say CDs?
It's my understanding that MUSE LD used a red laser similar to DVD. For regular LD, a red-orange laser was used until the mid-'80s when infrared lasers became common in players (CD uses near infrared and Blu-ray and HD DVD use blue-violet lasers). As for the patents, I'm actually not sure.
Bit rot has always been a problem with LaserDisc. With LD, quality control was occasionally an issue, so sometimes you could buy a brand new one and it would be rotted (it was often one or two plants that were notorius for this. I think Sony's plant was one). The era also played a role as discs made in the earliest years were much more prone to rot--though there were certainly newer ones that were still susceptible.
soxinthebox
Member
I kinda want to pick up a minidisc player. What would you do OP?
J
JeremyEtcetera
Unconfirmed Member
In an alternate universe this media joined Vinyl in successfully becoming a billion dollar industry in 2016. Man, these really look cool.
StarCreator
Member
This thread is making me want to track down a copy of True Lies on LD.
My parents' original LD player (which also played DVDs and had karaoke features) died in a lightning strike, but I recently picked up a friend's old LD player and his set of Star Wars in his moving away sale. The player needed some coaxing to open and there is minor rot in the Star Wars discs, but LD is still the only medium I have the home video version of certain episodes of His and Her Circumstances on. (lol)
My parents' original LD player (which also played DVDs and had karaoke features) died in a lightning strike, but I recently picked up a friend's old LD player and his set of Star Wars in his moving away sale. The player needed some coaxing to open and there is minor rot in the Star Wars discs, but LD is still the only medium I have the home video version of certain episodes of His and Her Circumstances on. (lol)
Thanks, I have no clue where I got that bad info from.
Yeah it's certainly an issue. I have a few early discs including 48 Hours which are almost unwatchable thanks to bitrot.
n64coder
Member
That is a Nakamichi tape deck. They were the best cassette decks of the time. I think that model was around $1500 in 1980s dollars. I had one of their decks but only spent around $400 and it was probably one of their cheapest ones. They were more expensive than other brands but very good quality. I think their top of the line was the "Dragon" or something like that which went for $4000. That was half the cost of a new car back then.
NekoFever
Member
It had a solid enthusiast following basically from its introduction until DVD took off in the late 90s. After all, it had the best picture and sound, and was generally the only way to get your movies uncropped in widescreen.
Probably would be considered a flop by modern standards but in the context of the home video market back then, before people were building huge libraries like they did with DVD and when a lot of VHS consumption came from rental, it was a solid seller.
Yeah I think a lot of people are too young to remember, or have forgotten that widescreen non pan and scan movies were really rare before DVD. That combined with improved video quality and digital audio meant that companies could make up for lower volume with much higher pricing for LDs.
LaserDisc may have been a niche format compared to VHS and DVD, but it was still around for nearly 24 years. I'd say it was at least somewhat successful.
This is probably the same way current and future physical formats will survive. Even if they aren't dominant, they may still find success as a niche format for enthusiasts and collectors.
This is probably the same way current and future physical formats will survive. Even if they aren't dominant, they may still find success as a niche format for enthusiasts and collectors.
DeathoftheEndless
Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
Those are good points. I've never tried to maintain a high-volume collection, so my experience is a lot different. Also, I've only ever sold stuff to used stores and not through an online marketplace, which is why I'm more picky about what I buy.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I know that the theatrical wasn't on the DVD, and isn't on the blu-ray.
Yeah, and a lot of that higher pricing has, in retrospect, been a little overstated. Sure, the special editions were nuts (and it made sense considering how feature packed and elaborate some of those SEs were, especially since Laserdisc basically invented the Special Edition as we recognize it now) but more than a few of the Laserdiscs in her collection still have the accompanying leaflets and advertisements packed into them, and it really does seem that at the time (late 80s, early 90s for the most part) standard pricing for an LD was anywhere between 20-40 bucks. Which doesn't sound too bad, especially considering sell-thru VHS was only just starting to really be a thing around then, and a lot of those tapes occupied the same price range.
Parakeetman
No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
Highly disappointed that the OP never came back yet.
International Iron Man
Banned
I would love to paper my walls with Laserdiscs. It would actually make my office pretty dope.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
A Yamaha, huh? With the autoflip! Looking at the picture of it you originally posted it seemed too slim to have that. Or is that just a remote that will work with whatever you have, and not the actual remote for whatever you have?
Also, I see that Dreamcast in the background.
You were bound to become a Laserdisc owner, man. You already know how to see the good in the broken things that were ahead of their time.
Also, I see that Dreamcast in the background.
You were bound to become a Laserdisc owner, man. You already know how to see the good in the broken things that were ahead of their time.
Parakeetman
No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
Sorry! It's been a long couple of days. 😰
I think a karaoke bar I used to go to had that same remote lol. Was kinda weird back when LDs fell out of being the popular tech item lots of bars that had karaoke machines still used them and such. Must have been hell for owners considering as how you now know how much space the discs take up lol.
No, it mostly had to do with the quality control of the pressing factory, which was mostly only a problem in the early days of the format in the 70s. Some of the early Discovision titles had terrible QA and had rot right out of the factory. Some titles in the 90s suffer from shit QA and therefor rot, but only some of the effected movies from those factories ever developed rot. Fact is that if it doesn't have rot by now, it very likely will not develop it. I have 70 discs in my collection and not a single one has shown any signs of rot.
You got a great deal, OP. Enjoy the format of film enthusiasts. To quote Kevin Smith, "Fuck DVD."
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