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[Jaeger]

I'm gonna buy my first two LD today. I'll let you all know what it is after I get then, naturally. ;P

So purdy!

Picked it up, it was a Pioneer CLD-1080. It was 12 dollars.

Now all I need is an actual Laserdisc to see if it actually reads...

Nice! I wish I could have found a player in person, but I guess it varies from city to city. I had no luck in mine. Congrats and keep us posted!

Yeah, I'll send you a pm later. Thanks!

Excellent. I'll be waiting.

 

[RadioHeadAche]

How long did LD last in Japan?

 

[MJPIA]

I've got a fairly late model laserdisc I picked up from a thrift store for 10 bucks.
Also got somewhere between 30-40 laserdisc's that I got from a thrift store silent auction for $40.
Got dracula for it and one of these days I'll get around to watching it.
They are a pain to store.

 

[Jaeger]

How long did LD last in Japan?

Until mid 2000 IIRC.

 

[karobit]

I only trust Danny DeVito.

 

[entremet]

Until mid 2000 IIRC.

Japan loves their physical formats.

They still have Tower Records over there. RIP.

 

[psylah]

How long did LD last in Japan?

Until mid 2000 IIRC.

I don't know about discs, but Pioneer was the last major producer of Laserdisc players, and finally discontinued them in 2009.

http://www.soundandvision.com/content/pioneer-discontinues-laserdisc-players

 

[Jaeger]

I don't know about discs, but Pioneer was the last major producer of Laserdisc players, and finally discontinued them in 2009.

http://www.soundandvision.com/content/pioneer-discontinues-laserdisc-players

It's actually 2001 for disc. But yea, players were still being made much later than disc.

The last Japanese released movie was the Hong Kong film Tokyo Raiders from Golden Harvest. A dozen or so more titles continued to be released in Japan, until the end of 2001.

 

[RadioHeadAche]

Wow 2001? Hot damn

 

[Snaku]

Yay, lookie what came in the mail!

Can't wait for my player to arrive.

 

[Jaeger]

Yay, lookie what came in the mail!



Can't wait for my player to arrive.

Dude!! And what player did you end up going with?

 

[Jaeger]

Finally made it to my local flea market (which is AWESOME btw) and grabbed 4 LDs from up there. Plenty more on the way. Nothing particularly rare, but the sheer volume at great low prices I have access to now is awesome.

There was a brand new and sealed Predator up there, but he wanted more than what I was willing to pay for it!

 

[AlteredBeast]

Picked these bad boys up last night. $10 for all 3.

 

[Jaeger]

Picked these bad boys up last night. $10 for all 3.

Awesome price! I can't wait till Sunday so I can grab a few more. I need to get the original Terminator, and Predator, and some horror films.

 

[Snaku]

Nice pickups guys! I got a few too, but haven't been able to make it down to Fat Kat yet. And the Laserdisc player I ordered was dead on arrival which was a big disappointment.

 

[Jaeger]

Nice pickups guys! I got a few too, but haven't been able to make it down to Fat Kat yet. And the Laserdisc player I ordered was dead on arrival which was a big disappointment.

Robocop! Dragon Ball! Great pickups. How much they end up hitting you for?

 

[Snaku]

Robocop! Dragon Ball! Great pickups. How much they end up hitting you for?

$20 each, both were still new.

 

[TheAdmiester]

So I know plenty of people go back to old formats like vinyl for music because supposedly the analog sound is much warmer and better, but LD is an old digital format, not analog. Is there any advantage to going back to it? Is there anything it did better than recent tech?

 

[MultiCore]

So I know plenty of people go back to old formats like vinyl for music because supposedly the analog sound is much warmer and better, but LD is an old digital format, not analog. Is there any advantage to going back to it? Is there anything it did better than recent tech?

LD is actually analog, believe it or not.

 

[TheAdmiester]

LD is actually analog, believe it or not.

How so?

 

[Beer Monkey]

How so?

The distance of the space between the pits (technically, the length and spacing OF the pits) modulates a signal.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mnc73s4n0A

 

[MultiCore]

How so?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserDisc#Design

 

[Snaku]

How so?

The video is analog, but the soundtrack is lossless digital. Before Blu-ray Laserdisc had the best sound of any home format. The appeal for collecting LD for me is that amazing artwork, and cuts of films that were never released on DVD or Blu. That Scream LD I posted above is the only way to watch the unrated directors cut in widescreen.

 

[MultiCore]

The video is analog, but the soundtrack is lossless digital. Before Blu-ray Laserdisc had the best sound of any home format. The appeal for collecting LD for me is that amazing artwork, and cuts of films that were never released on DVD or Blu. That Scream LD I posted above is the only way to watch the unrated directors cut in widescreen.

Some discs had FM stereo audio, some PCM.

The whole reason enthusiasts love the format is that it was analog.

 

[TheAdmiester]

The distance of the space between the pits (technically, the length and spacing OF the pits) modulates a signal.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mnc73s4n0A

The video is analog, but the soundtrack is lossless digital. Before Blu-ray Laserdisc had the best sound of any home format. The appeal for collecting LD for me is that amazing artwork, and cuts of films that were never released on DVD or Blu. That Scream LD I posted above is the only way to watch the unrated directors cut in widescreen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserDisc#Design

Interesting, I never knew that. I always thought it was an early-ish digital format with being CD-like and using lasers for reading.

What kind of resolutions can a Laserdisc put out? Speaking in terms of a feature length film with no compromises or special manufacturing going on, what resolution were they?

 

[Beer Monkey]

Interesting, I never knew that. I always thought it was an early-ish digital format with being CD-like and using lasers for reading.

What kind of resolutions can a Laserdisc put out? Speaking in terms of a feature length film with no compromises or special manufacturing going on, what resolution were they?

480i, period. It's all 480i.

Horizontal resolution varies. 425x480i maximum theoretical. VHS is 240x480i.

Do watch that YouTube video, it is great.

 

[MultiCore]

Interesting, I never knew that. I always thought it was an early-ish digital format with being CD-like and using lasers for reading.

What kind of resolutions can a Laserdisc put out? Speaking in terms of a feature length film with no compromises or special manufacturing going on, what resolution were they?

It was about 580x480, or double what VHS could do.

 

[TheAdmiester]

480i, period. It's all 480i.

Horizontal resolution varies. 425x480i maximum theoretical. VHS is 240x480i.

Do watch that YouTube video, it is great.

I'm about to watch it now.

Was it 480i all along since release? Because that sounds pretty ahead of its time for something apparently released in 1981. DVD releases are still 480i or 480p aren't they?

 

[MultiCore]

I'm about to watch it now.

Was it 480i all along since release? Because that sounds pretty ahead of its time for something apparently released in 1981. DVD releases are still 480i or 480p aren't they?

720x480p, yeah. Some cropped titles are slightly different.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

I'm about to watch it now.

Was it 480i all along since release? Because that sounds pretty ahead of its time for something apparently released in 1981. DVD releases are still 480i or 480p aren't they?

This got brought up back on the first page, but the picture never seemed to take full advantage of that resolution. Essentially - even really well mastered LD's look, in comparison, like slightly fuzzier versions of non-anamorphic DVDs. In some cases, that picture is actually more pleasing to the eye (especially if you're watching on an SD TV) than the DVD version, but there weren't too many LDs that actually looked as good as they theoretically/technically could.

 

[Beer Monkey]

I'm about to watch it now.

Was it 480i all along since release? Because that sounds pretty ahead of its time for something apparently released in 1981. DVD releases are still 480i or 480p aren't they?

NTSC is 480i.

You can't sync to an NTSC display device unless you output 480 scan lines every 30th of a second (I'm leaving VBI stuff out of here).

Because analog devices did not buffer output (some carrier was outputting a signal at all times and that signal was synched directly to an electron beam tracing a CRT), those 480 lines all have to be distinctly encoded in the media.

Now, there are various kinds of noise and bleed inherit in analog video formats, and color and luminance bandwith that can differ in the horizontal, and so on, but if it's NTSC, it's 480i, always.

(I'm leaving 240p from game consoles out of the discussion, but that's a tweak of the nature of analog video)

source: I'm almost 50 and a geek.

 

[Tesseract]

y'all are cavemen

 

[Bobby Roberts]

weirdo cavemen

 

[TheAdmiester]

This got brought up back on the first page, but the picture never seemed to take full advantage of that resolution. Essentially - even really well mastered LD's look, in comparison, like slightly fuzzier versions of non-anamorphic DVDs. In some cases, that picture is actually more pleasing to the eye (especially if you're watching on an SD TV) than the DVD version, but there weren't too many LDs that actually looked as good as they theoretically/technically could.

Still sounds pretty advanced considering LaserDisc was 1981 and DVD wasn't properly common until around 1998, apparently being developed in 1995. Being that close in resolution but 14 years behind isn't bad.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Still sounds pretty advanced

It was, definitely. But the drawbacks (price/flipping) kept that install base low. You basically had to be the kind of dork that even noticed that sorta shit, and most people didn't, and even those that did might not have had the income (or had the income and didn't want to part with hefty chunks of it) to indulge.

But a lot of movie nerds with the money did go all in on it, because it was as close as they were gonna get to theater-quality.

 

[Melon Husk]

...Laserdiscs?! Come on, it's 2015, time to let go

Packaging was nice, I guess. Most movies have better remasters on BD. Edit: Ah! You got me!

 

[Bobby Roberts]

They're like vinyl except the only redeeming factor is nice packaging.

They're not really like vinyl precisely because the argument can be made that well-pressed vinyl is better than cd/mp3. You can't make the argument that a well-mastered Laserdisc was better than DVD, much less blu-ray.

It's basically just the packaging, and the weird pull of curiosity and obsolescence.

The packaging IS fucking great though. And the odd alternate cut here and there that never survived the transition to digital.

 

[MultiCore]

They're not really like vinyl precisely because the argument can be made that well-pressed vinyl is better than cd/mp3. You can't make the argument that a well-mastered Laserdisc was better than DVD, much less blu-ray.

It's basically just the packaging, and the weird pull of curiosity and obsolescence.

The packaging IS fucking great though. And the odd alternate cut here and there that never survived the transition to digital.

Vinyl doesn't sound better than CD, from a technical standards viewpoint.

Here's a great video from Xiph.org about digital sampling. It explains how CD had all the bandwidth necessary to have perfect audio.

http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

If you want to talk about bad mastering, well, that's a problem everywhere.

 

[kess]

Laserdisc is still THE place for cartoons. I wish someone would get serious and remaster or collect all the Fleischer output someday. Warner Bros has finally collected the Vitaphone stuff.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Vinyl doesn't sound better than CD, from a technical standards viewpoint.

Hey, I'm not getting into that argument. Audiophile fights go deeper than the marianas, I've found. I'm just saying the argument could be made, and has been made. I might not necessarily agree, but I can at least see a lot of people making that case.

Not even the weirdo cavemen who still collect Laserdisc would try to argue the picture looks better on average than an anamorphic DVD, much less blu-ray. The vinyl > CD argument has way more traction than any possible LD > Blu-Ray argument. A very large majority of us would shrug and go "yeah, it is what it is."

 

[MultiCore]

Hey, I'm not getting into that argument. Audiophile fights go deeper than the marianas, I've found. I'm just saying the argument could be made, and has been made. I might not necessarily agree, but I can at least see a lot of people making that case.

Not even the weirdo cavemen who still collect Laserdisc would try to argue the picture looks better on average than an anamorphic DVD, much less blu-ray. The vinyl > CD argument has way more traction than any possible LD > Blu-Ray argument. A very large majority of us would shrug and go "yeah, it is what it is."

I know what you mean, but you should watch that video if there's any doubt in your mind. Monty is an amazing guy, and that video is worth several times what you invest to watch it.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

I know what you mean, but you should watch that video if there's any doubt in your mind. Monty is an amazing guy, and that video is worth several times what you invest to watch it.

Oh, no doubt: those videos are great. And thank you (and Beer Monkey) for posting them.

 

[Beer Monkey]

There are plenty of cartoons (as stated before), concerts, and specific editions of films and mixes of soundtracks that are still exclusive to Laserdisc today. It isn't really that odd of an idea that some people still collect them. I still have a couple hundred myself...

Here's Leonard Nimoy with a mustache learning about Laserdisc from a talking rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4pBk3-fduU

 

[Syriel]

They're not really like vinyl precisely because the argument can be made that well-pressed vinyl is better than cd/mp3. You can't make the argument that a well-mastered Laserdisc was better than DVD, much less blu-ray.

It's basically just the packaging, and the weird pull of curiosity and obsolescence.

The packaging IS fucking great though. And the odd alternate cut here and there that never survived the transition to digital.

On average a DVD will beat a LD, though there are notable exceptions.

The Criterion version of Seven (on LD) blows away the original DVD release in terms of quality simply because Criterion did a much better transfer.

 

[Beer Monkey]

The earliest DVDs usually used the same transfer as laserdisc but often to fit a movie on a single layer (DVD-5, as DVD-9 was still problematic/expensive to manufacture) the films were overcompressed, resulting in artifacts that were easy to spot even on a regular SD CRT.

Of course, most of these DVDs were remastered a few years later, but the first year or two of DVD was pretty hit and miss as to whether or not it was a true upgrade over the LD. Increased resolution and color bandwidth was often offset by macroblocking and other MPEG comrpession artifacts.

If you see a DVD from '97 or '98 and it was letterboxed 4:3, it's almost certainly mastered from the same video transfer as the LD.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

I remember the Blade Runner flipper disc being particularly shitty, right?

 

[kess]

I remember the Blade Runner flipper disc being particularly shitty, right?

A lot of laserdiscs from that era had terrible production. I wonder what people would have thought about the format if they had gotten Pioneer quality discs in the early 80s.

 

[psylah]

I made sure my first Laserdisc was appropriate for such cutting edge media technology.

My $12 Laserdisc player works great, BTW.

 

[Jaeger]

y'all are cavemen

And loving it. awesome vids and info diclosed too in here. I'll have to watch those vids.

 

[Dpp1978]

How so?

Composite analogue video and sound is stored in an FM waveform. That FM waveform is then sampled and digitised, much as an audio waveform is sampled and digitised in a .wav file. That digitised waveform is then put on to the disc.

The player reads the digital data and converts it back into the analogue waveform which is then output to the display.

The earliest discs only had 2 channel analogue audio. Later they added CD quality digital stereo audio, Dolby 5.1 audio and even full bitrate DTS audio (most DTS DVDs used half bitrate to save bandwidth).

Until Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Laserdisc had the highest quality sound available to consumers for many films. There are those who still contend the Laserdisc audio is superior for many films, as they use the theatrical mix while the DVDs and/or Blu-rays have a mix more designed for home viewing.