Anyone do Laserdiscs?

[knave]

Everything is so random...Last week I was helping my mom clear our my dads old barn...in it I found two boxes of laserdiscs...(no player) They had been there for at least 7-10 years.

Today I stumbled on a guy with a warehouse full of junk who had a player. So I bought it. $30 to play around. It is a pioneer cld-d503, a pretty average model but I don't even know if the movies play.

Do we have some LD folks around? Haters?

Most of the movies are action movies from the late 80's early nineties. I'm most stoked about "Aliens".

I'll take some picts to post later.

[spoot]

The 503 is a decent model.  You'll be missing AC3 output.....but only "newer" ld's used it anyways.

I have a collection of around 250 lds and I need to get around to fixing one of my players one of these days.

[DaveMMR]

I still have my LD player and a handful of discs but it's stuff you really can't find (or I don't feel like buying) on DVD and other little oddities. Honestly, it's just sitting on a shelf collecting dust but I feel I'm going to run into a title unavailable anywhere else (example: a lot of music stuff, particularly "The Complete Truth About De-Evolution WITHOUT "Are U Experienced" omitted) so I can't bring myself to part with it.

[Xiaou2]

When I was a young 17 yr old punk..  I was mouthing off to the bus driver about how ridiculous Laser Discs were, with their expensive prices and massive size... on my way to buy my first Stereo Receiver.

  Then, I walk into the malls Electronics store..  and after  Seeing + Hearing  a Demo of a Disc in action... I walked out with a brand new  Pioneer Surround Sound Receiver, and a Pioneer Laser disc player.

   Have to remember..  that back in those days, VCR was the Hotness...  and the quality wasnt the always the greatest..  especially after a bunch of plays / rentals.

 The Audio quality was crystal..  sounding very similar to DVD.  Flawless and Dynamic, no matter what volume I pushed.   I got around the high disc price issue, by renting them at the media stores...
and heck, even blockbuster video had some.

 Problem was.. that when I was like 20, I moved out of state..  and no longer could find any rental places / nearby.

 I fired it up a short while ago.. and It didnt sound too healthy.   Only have a few movies for it.  Wished I would have Ponied up for the Original Star Wars Trilogy back then.
But Ive seen them so much...  that I guess I dont care that much to revisit them.    Id probably sink down some good cash for a Stereoscopic version of the Original 3 films..
without the Horrible CGI and changes they made.  Otherwise, Lucus and the Studios can Byte me.   I refuse to pay for the Butchered variations, no matter how good the picture / sound is.

 Fun memories.   Too sad about buying the same movies over and over again..  due to obsolete / inferior  playing / display  technologies.

 The speed of changing formats these days is maddening.   And downright criminal in some cases...  (HDDVD)


 Anyways..  Some great memories still in my mind, of watching those beautiful Crystal-Frisbee's play...

[DaveMMR]

When I was a young 17 yr old punk..  I was mouthing off to the bus driver about how ridiculous Laser Discs were, with their expensive prices and massive size... on my way to buy my first Stereo Receiver.

Wait... why were you talking to a bus driver about Laserdiscs? Need some back story on that. 

[rpgposer]

I had a sony industrial ld player with BNC outputs in the late '80's.  My dad worked for IBM field service and the Oregon State DMV's were using LD players and IBM AS400's for driver's license tests.  He had to swap one out, and I ended up with it.  I had Aliens, it was totally awesome.  I still have an original Japanese Laputa - Castle in the Sky, studio Ghibli release.  The art is incredible, puts DVD's to shame.
Alas I don't have it any longer.  It was big and heavy, had to go light for a while, so I sold it, 32" CRT TV, receiver, sega cd with all the cool games (snatcher, lunar, vay, even warsong), an snes with all the squaresoft games and all my King Crimson CD's.
All that stuff is highly desirable now, sold it for pennies on the dollar...

[knave]

I have to be careful, this might start a new hobby. I watched "Total Recall" (1990) the other night. It was great. Now I have to test out the other discs.

I had never handled a laserdisc out of its sleeve before. It was heavier than I expected. I was thinking oversized DVD. Pretty cool that my player auto flips.

[rpgposer]

You are lucky to have one that flips discs for you.

[spoot]

You are lucky to have one that flips discs for you.

Indeed....specially with CAV discs.......

[Howard_Casto]

I could never get into it.  People kept telling me that the video quality was so much better and... well better than vhs yeah it was, but think about the quality of the TVs at the time.  They became obsolete around the time dvds came out.  That being said there are some laser-disc exclusive titles floating around... I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle, but if you happen to have such a nice unit already....

[pbj]

Yeah, but the ones better than VHS only got like 20 minutes to a side. 

PASS.

My school district sure blew a hell of a lot of money on them when I was a kid.  They'd drag out the demo disc for parent night.  "Look, it's just like being on a roller coaster!!"

Zzzz.

[DaveMMR]

Forget about picture/sound quality. In the 80's, at least, they used to be MUCH cheaper to purchase than VHS.  Until that whole "priced to own" and "Blockbuster preowned" structure in the 90's, tapes were regularly priced at around $99.99 while LDs were in the $50 or under range.  If you wanted a library of films, for a time Laserdiscs were actually the most cost-effective route.

(Of course, only the wealthy were really concerned with having a "library".  Everyone else just copied rentals using two decks or taped off of cable. So that's why LD was such a niche item in the US.)

[knave]

Most of what I've been reading is that Video Quality is largely dependent on the specific player and it's the audio quality that makes/made people want laserdiscs. Like the vinyl-philes swear records are better than CDs. 

I'm never going to go that far. But...since I've got a player I do want the Original un-altered Star Wars on Wide Screen Laserdisc. That would be pretty cool.

My Friends are all excited to come over for Summer Outdoor Movie night with the Laserdiscs...all of a sudden. I can't explain it other than in part it's cool because its laserdisc and the other is that it's cool because we found it in my dads barn 4 years after he passed away. We never had a laserdisc player so I have no idea where or why he got them. I surmise that he picked them up at a garage sale in the late 90s for $5 or something. It doesn't hurt that they are all movies from our youth. Hard to Kill, Total Recall, Terminator 2, etc...

[Howard_Casto]

Heh.  Maybe when the family got on his nerves he headed out to the barn to watch some T2.  ;-)

A few years back this guy I worked with knew I was into Daphne and gave me a laserdisc player he got for 2 or 3 bucks at a yard sale.  I immediately traded it to someone else because LD players are a pain, but what was interesting was the fact that it contained a classified "plant safety for a nuclear reactor" disc.  Imho it's kind of like finding a Betamax.  The idea of having a Betamax is cool and gives you the whole nostalgia vibe, in practice, however you'll get sick of it pretty quick and it'll sit on a shelf. 

I've been thinking that now that the 360 is on it's way out I might pick up a hddvd addon and the entire library just for the heck of it.  Right now I could get one cheaply and you know future generations of hipsters are going to pay top dollar for the thing. 

For the record I was pro-hddvd in the format wars... the players were cheaper and in theory boot times would be shorter as the technology progressed.  *sigh*  Just like Betamax was technically superior.  The public always seems to pick the wrong format. 

[Slippyblade]

For the record I was pro-hddvd in the format wars... the players were cheaper and in theory boot times would be shorter as the technology progressed.  *sigh*  Just like Betamax was technically superior.  The public always seems to pick the wrong format.

I was pro-hddvd as well.  It was a much more open format than Bluray.

[spoot]

*knave
The pic on the 503 is pretty good.....however, get used to seeing chromo noise now.     Now depending on the comb-filter on your TV you might actually get a better pic via composite instead of s-video out.  Audio is pretty damn good on those things via digital out to an outboard processor.

*howard
Yah, I did the same thing awhile back.  Got the hd-dvd drive for my 360 which included a remote which I used for netflix.     Then I picked up a lot of hddvd's from fleabay for cheap in one big lot.

[ark_ader]

I picked up a Panasonic LDP for $5.  Plays OK  and I get to watch my Star Wars Criterion Collection on the Projector.

I think the lens needs cleaning, but it spins up fine and ejects which is a blessing as they are the first to go.

I think they are great for discs that were not released on DVD.

[Xiaou2]

I could never get into it.  People kept telling me that the video quality was so much better and... well better than vhs yeah it was, but think about the quality of the TVs at the time.  They became obsolete around the time dvds came out.  That being said there are some laser-disc exclusive titles floating around... I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle, but if you happen to have such a nice unit already....

 The picture was outstandingly better... especially when you consider that VCRs tapes degraded quite quickly.  Im not even sure VCRs did widescreen..   And so being able to see the full display... even if it was small.. was quite great for the time period.

 I was blown away at how the thing could produce such incredible results over composite!  I can only guess that they found a way to dump 10x as much data over the line..  as well as a system of high quality components. That, and the fact that other composite source materials were always in a constant state of degradation.  Still, even then, I think the picture was better than many of the game consoles outputs to the same monitor.

 Personally,
 I think your problem was the lower end TVs you had.  Possibly also, poor picture adjustment.   I recall long long ago.. you telling people that there was no difference between Svideo and Composite.  Wow, was that ever untrue.

 Which leads me to also ask...  Do you have glasses?   Because I believe you may need them, or need an update.  While you think you are seeing fine... you would probably be in for a big shock, when you don a new set of specs.. and get a dramatic resolution adjustment.


 Over the years, I believe they found better ways to make VCR picture and sound better, and last longer.  Different tape, coatings, quad head vcrs, and more.   So eventually, VCRs with a brand new tape, may have looked pretty good.  But no tape would ever stay like that for long.

 I believe it was 30 min per side to a flip.  One of the first and few movies I bought, was T2.  2 discs, using 3 of the 4 sides.
The experience was still awesome.  The surround sound and CD/DVD quality audio... was phenomenal.

 Initially, at the time, I think I was watching the movies 'close range' on a commodore amiga monitor.  The thing was quite good, despite its small size.

 Sound quality is also relative to your:

1) Ears
2) Amp quality
3) Speaker Quality

 I often wonder if the sound on laser discs is better than modern discs... at very least, with the re-release discs, where master material is dated and possibly degraded.   Ill have to check the tech specs out audio out..

[pbj]

If only there was a medium that was more widespread and convenient with the capacity to make exact copies of what is contained on those laser discs..

[Howard_Casto]

I used to put a dollar in a jar every time X2 brought up that now 15+ year old argument, but I quickly ran out of money. 

[Xiaou2]

If only there was a medium that was more widespread and convenient with the capacity to make exact copies of what is contained on those laser discs..

 Sure, Laserdiscs are no longer valid.  (Starwars Discs are one exception)    They are huge, heavy, hard to store.

 But if your talking Hard Drives?   Well, personally Ive started collecting actual media.. due to the horrible reliability of hard drives.

 You can buy a brand new drive.. have it fail in a week..  or even right out of the box.   They then send you a USED drive..  as a replacement.  How wonderful is that?!   People really should be up in arms over this practice.

 If your new car has a problem..   and the warranty guys give you a used model, thats 1yr older..  would you be happy and accept that?!  You have no clue as to what level of repair has been done..  if its been cleaned enough internally..  and if the bearings and alignments are all precise as a brand new unit.


 And as has been told by the Mame team... the Audio and Video on the Laserdisc format is a sort of analog format.  They have to convert it to a digital format.. which means that a lot of the actual data is being cut out and thrown away... depending on the sample rates... and the depth of sample quality being extracted.

 This is why people still listen to records.  Because the original sounds are not chopped to bits in sections.  You are getting the full waveform as it was recorded... all of the time.  The only thing I can thing of that would be closer, would be to use a system that could turn the sound in vectors... then store the vectors in a compressed manor.  However, even then, Im not sure its possible to do that on such a level.

 The more samples you take per time unit... the more accurate the sound reproduction.. however.. that also means the media had better be quite robust to be able to store all of that data.  CDs fall far short of good accurate reproduction.

 Then again.. what is worth listening to these days?   Anything that IS decent... is compressed to hell at the studio, before it even gets to the CD..  all in the name of the power savings it will create.  Nice ehh?

 Its the same reason why they dont make good speakers anymore.

[pbj]

You're arguing with nobody on Saturday night, dude.


 

[yotsuya]

You're arguing with nobody on Saturday night, dude.


 

We don't need to know his kinks, bro...

[knave]

I think its all over for me now...LD is my new hobby. Stumbled on some movies, then a Player for $30 and after watching a few Daughter...Wife..and friends are asking me to find movies on Laserdisc for them. Before the week is out I will have a bunch more in my small collection. Oh well at least they are cheaper and easier to store than Arcade Cabinets.

[ark_ader]

Get yourself a ldv100 and a lasersctive. Mix those hobbies together. 

[dkersten]

I worked in the car and home audio business when laserdiscs made their brief comeback before HD tv  finally took hold in the U.S.  A buddy who I did some work for owned a high end home theater store and had about $10k into his laserdisc collection.  The theater he built in the store was pretty impressive, far better than the local theaters even though the screen was only about 18 foot diagonal.  With a line doubler and laserdisc, it was pretty close to HD quality though, so even at that size it was crystal clear.  Laserdiscs were still being created and sold (this is like 91-95ish) and had pro-logic and THX encoding in the audio track, so with a good THX system it was every bit as good as your run of the mill 5.1 system these days.  I don't recall LD's having AC3 encoding (for 5.1) but it may have come out at the end.. Anyway, laserdiscs were nothing compared to Blu-ray today, but every bit as comparable to regular DVD's..

Keep in mind that laserdiscs were 480 lines of resolution, and were ANALOG, not digital, so no A to D to A conversion and no compression.  Made a better picture than a dvd at the same resolution, and if you had a good tv or projector that could actually reproduce a GOOD 480 line picture, the quality was unmatched.  But DVD did eventually beat it out because of size and the fact that most people really don't care about picture quality, as long as it was better than VHS.

Also, VHS really maxed out around 360 lines, super VHS could exceed 360 lines, but composite video really couldn't do much better than 360 lines, and s-video could just hit 480 lines without loss.  On top of this, VHS, while also an analog format, degraded so fast that even a SVHS was about the quality of a 360 line VHS tape after just a few plays.  No degradation with laserdisc, as long as you didn't scratch it...

BTW, that was why Betamax was better than VHS, it could do 480 lines of resolution on a more compact format.  But it was Sony's format, and like the minidisc, they were looking for too much money to license the use for other manufacturers, so VHS won out.  I don't know the specifics on the HDDVD, but I imagine Sony finally figured out that they had to make BluRay appealing to every manufacturer and ended up out marketing and out pricing the competition (Toshiba I think, right?). 

As for converting your LD's to digital to store on hard drives or write to DVD's, it is the same idea as copying your vinyl albums to MP3s..  Sure, you get the content in a format you can save, but most people who have vinyl have it for the analog sound quality, not the content. 

The difference between vinyl for sound and LD for video is that there isn't a superior version of vinyl (in terms of quality reproduction), where BluRay (ie the 1080p format) blows analog 480 out of the water.  Thing is, you can collect vinyl all day long and you will always have a reason to have it (unless a multitrack format goes mainstream for music recording), but with video formats it will continue to improve until they have taken any possible screen size and give it a higher resolution than your eyes can see.  So although BluRay is the best out there now, in a few years 4k will be the standard and BluRay will be sitting next to your laserdiscs, Betamax tapes, and minidiscs, and our kids will be in their 40's and 50's sitting around joking about how their old parents still have a collection of BluRay discs..

I think I have a double sided LD player (Marantz) lying around somewhere.. wonder where I put that..

[Howard_Casto]

4k is a loooooong way off. 

In regards to tvs, what sets the standard is NOT the tvs themselves, but rather the bandwidth of your cable/sat provider.  HDTV's (well 720p at least) was around since the 80's... they didn't catch on until cable companies actually had data lines good enough to broadcast an hd signal.  Likewise, the only way you can get 4k content atm is via some convoluted box that downloads the very limited selection of programming... eating up your bandwidth. 

So it'll be a bit longer than a few years.... probably 10-20 unless some massive public works project comes along up upgrade the US tele-comm infrastructure. 

[DaveMMR]

This thread got me searching for some LD's that weren't released on Region 1 DVD and some sellers are asking a bit too much money for selections like "Electric Dreams" ($60), etc.  But that's eBay, of course. My local record store has a bunch of LDs and I think they may be a little more realistically priced.

[dkersten]

lol, I was being a little sarcastic when I said "a few years".. Funny thing is, a "few years ago" I started the job I have now, which I have been in for 15 years!  A "few years ago" I bought my house with my wife, but now that is 14 years ago and I have been divorced for 4.. Heck, it seems like bluray has been out only for a few years, but it has been 11 years since the first bluray player released in the U.S., and over 6 since it officially "won" over HD-DVD.   And in a "few years" we will be getting video piped directly into our brains through our "always on" neural-internet link.  Prepare to all be robots.. lol!

[Slippyblade]

I don't know the specifics on the HDDVD, but I imagine Sony finally figured out that they had to make BluRay appealing to every manufacturer and ended up out marketing and out pricing the competition (Toshiba I think, right?). 

BluRay won because of the PlayStation.  When the PS3 launched it was a bargain basement price point BluRay player; at $600 the PS3 was literally HALF the cost of a stand-alone player.  I was a key holder at a GameStop for the launch and people were buying the PS3 for use as a BR player and not getting games because of that price point.

[yotsuya]

I don't know the specifics on the HDDVD, but I imagine Sony finally figured out that they had to make BluRay appealing to every manufacturer and ended up out marketing and out pricing the competition (Toshiba I think, right?). 

BluRay won because of the PlayStation.  When the PS3 launched it was a bargain basement price point BluRay player; at $600 the PS3 was literally HALF the cost of a stand-alone player.  I was a key holder at a GameStop for the launch and people were buying the PS3 for use as a BR player and not getting games because of that price point.

That's funny. This year, I've picked up two nice Sony Blu-Ray players with built in Wi-Fi for less that $90 each.

[Slippyblade]

That's funny. This year, I've picked up two nice Sony Blu-Ray players with built in Wi-Fi for less that $90 each.

Yep, insane huh?  Those things, at the time, were over a grand for decent models.  And the PS3 BR player was one of the best available.

[knave]

I never really got into Blu-ray...as a geek I like the idea of it but it was never worth it for me until I picked up a used PS3 a few years ago.
Perhaps that's why I am so accepting of the laserdiscs...

[dkersten]

So it'll be a bit longer than a few years.... probably 10-20 unless some massive public works project comes along up upgrade the US tele-comm infrastructure.

I had to comment on this.. I tried to leave it alone, lol, but I couldn't resist.. I don't disagree that 4k is a ways off, but I do disagree that the same things that held back HDTV are holding 4k back.

Actually, there is more than enough bandwidth, the overhaul has been going on for nearly 2 decades and is closer than you think.  There hasn't been much fiber optic laid in the last 8 years, but that is because every major telecom company spent BILLIONS dropping fiber everywhere, right up until about a year before the recession hit hard, much of which is in the ground and not even being used yet.  At one point in about 2008 it was estimated that 75% of the fiber optic in the ground was "unlit" and laying dormant.  Cable and phone companies have been going under left and right and billions of dollars was lost in bankruptcies as these companies tried to stay afloat and eventually sold off for pennies on the dollar after getting protection from the debts in bankruptcy court.  Now you have a handful of larger cable and phone companies holding the ball and they are starting to utilize it.  Most major metro areas have 50Mbps of bandwidth available through cable for around $50 per month.  Even here in the middle of nowhere, we get 30 Mbps for what I used to pay for 5Mbps.  And on the business front where you have QoS and 10 mbps is 10 mbps guaranteed (and usually a little more), the prices have dropped even further (in comparison) and the larger pipes have become super affordable comparitively.  I can get 20-30 Mbps (up AND down simultaneously) with full QoS and bursts up to twice that for the price I paid for 4Mbps 10 years ago. 

So what is holding it back?  Well, for starters, right now, there isn't a 4k standard format.  It is just like the beginning of HD where the owners of the media want major copyright protections built in, there are a lot of players trying to push their own version of what they think the format should be, and as a result, there is virtually no media available.  Furthermore, unlike bluray and HD-dvd, there isn't a portable storage format already on the market.  They are relying on hard drive or solid state storage, and while it is getting cheaper, it is severely limiting the flexibility of the format.  Only enthusiasts keep large media storage at home, and there isn't any mass produced retail set top boxes available to store your content.  Even with the bandwidth infrastructure available outside the home, too many people don't have adequate infrastructure inside the home to support streaming it to their TV.  And even if content and infrastructure in the home WAS ready and available, the companies set up to deliver media through streaming are not yet capable doing 4k, which will take 4 times the bandwidth as 1080p, which takes twice the bandwidth that most "HD" streams take (which are mostly 1080i or 720p upscaled), which takes 4 times the bandwidth that a normal resolution (480 line) "dvd quality" stream (ie what Netflix does now) takes.. Until these things are all worked out, the content will not be available or easily accessible.  It is something of a catch 22, but despite these issues, I believe something is coming that will break this loose...

I would put money on it that within 5 years, a 1080p lcd tv will be "entry level", and 4k will be the standard resolution.  In the next couple years you won't see but a handful of titles come out for 4k specifically, and it will be at least 4 years before "4k" starts to become a desirable format for media companies to embrace.  But people won't even care that when they spend all the money to get a 4k tv and a receiver capable of 4k, and cables capable of 4k that they still won't see any improvement in quality.  They will be "future proofed" for another decade, and that will be worth the price they paid to "upgrade" their tv, simply because they got burned on VHS, they got burned on DVD, and they know they will be burned on BluRay when the format shifts again, and this time they want to be prepared.  By the time the format is "standard" though, titles will be flooding the shelves (or the virtual storage spaces), and everyone with a VHS, DVD, and BluRay of their favorite movies will once again be paying $30 to get it in the latest format.  The irony is that unless they have over a 60" screen, they won't even notice the difference even once they HAVE a true "4k" source. 

So while I do indeed believe it is going to be 10 years or maybe a little more before your BluRay collection is looked at the same way a VHS collection is looked at now, I defer back to my earlier post - it is only "a few years" away.  You will wake up tomorrow and it will be 2018 and you will turn on your 32" 4k tv to watch a 480p broadcast of the morning news...

[dkersten]

BluRay won because of the PlayStation.

That and the movie studios and retailers, who shifted over to BluRay support when they got their way with the content copyright issues, which was a big part of the behind the scenes battle. IIRC, there were some 4 titles out on BluRay when the PS3 came out, and over 100 titles on HDdvd, so at the time it looked grim for BluRay and it kept HDDVD alive longer than necessary.  But over time, because of the PS3, there were 10 times more bluray players out than HDdvd.  When the weight of the studios and retailers started to shift, it was the final nail in the coffin for HD-DVD.

[pbj]

Wow, welcome to our new Xiaou2 clone.

Bluray is a joke at our current tv sizes.  DVDs look "good enough" until you get to projector territory.

[Howard_Casto]

Well BluRay won because of Sony.  At the time at least, Sony Pictures was the largest movie studio in the world.  They pretty much refused to support hddvd.  Couple that with the ps3 thing and yeah it ended up swaying things in their favor. 

In response to the 8 page long thesis that I'm not going to read.  We have areas of the country right now that don't have adequate bandwidth for the CURRENT tech.  Hell most cable companies still broadcast at 1080i because 1080p takes up too much room.  So yeah they are constantly upgrading... but it's a game of catchup and they haven't even caught up to what is out there now.  It's why we have b.s. laws running through congress to try to make you pay extra on your cable bill for accessing Netflix and ect.... the pipes just can't keep up. 

So like I said, 4k is a ways off.  Now if you mean rich --bags of cream-filled twinkies-- who have more money than time forking over 10k on a tv to impress their hipster friends and watch scar face on it.  Sure we'll have those before that.  I'm talking about the technology becoming so affordable and commonplace that the previous tech becomes obsolete.  That is a ways off. 

Remember, DVDs aren't even fully obsolete yet.  Mind you I wouldn't buy one, but you can still get a DVD version of your latest releases at your local s-mart just as easily as the bluray version and most bluray purchases also come with the dvd version.

[Slippyblade]

Well, BluRay tech was developed and is owned by Sony.  So it would make sense that Sony pictures would support it. 

[Howard_Casto]

Well, BluRay tech was developed and is owned by Sony.  So it would make sense that Sony pictures would support it.

Well yeah, I thought that bit was obvious.  When the largest studio in the world also just happens to be one of the largest consumer electronic manufacturers in the world... you have a bit of a conflict of interest. 

[pbj]

You do realize that 4K TVs are like $500-600 nowadays.... right?