sorry if this has been flogged to death or is just plain obvious, but LD was a little before my time. was it considered successful? i know it was always a niche product, but it had star wars, spawned the criterion collection, etc. seems like a success to me, even if it sold 10k's of copies instead of millions. i see people talking about the 1000+ titles they still have on LD and it sounds successful enough as a format for me.

i'm asking because i expect hd will hang on long enough until universal players are the norm, then both formats will stay alive (bd with region encoding and drm for the paranoid studios, hd for the cheap/small run studios, with maybe some of the red-laser hd sprinkled in for shorts/tv/indies/public domain publishers/personal HD recorders). all this, plus the fact that DVD is good enough for J6P and completely entrenched, tell me that both formats together will still just be niche players. but if my (admittedly ignorant) opinion of LD is correct, that's good enough for me.

for the record, i'm an early adopter only because i could get the HD add-on for $200. except for that bias, i'd be happy with either format dominant. if i can only get half of my future purchases in hi def, i'll be satisfied (with only around 150 SD's i'm not the collecting fiend some of you are).

the perspectives of you grizzled ancients are very much appreciated!

It was a niche product that never achieved mass market but was extremely powerful in setting future trends.

For many years, film directors fought for the priviledge of doing commentary tracks and director's cuts on LD, for example.

LD had an exclusive feel.

I have a collection of 600 LD's and really treasure them. It is hard to buy DVD's or Blu-rays to replace them in many cases. Beautiful packaging etc.

Yes. I still have some LD and still buying them especially the DTS versions.

LD was a hit. Let's not forget there were still many without VCRs of either kind then as well. I ran a video store then, and we carried LD until 1999-2000. We had thousands of titles, and there were over 10,000 available. From LD came all of your Special Editions, Commentary, Director's Cuts, extras, etc. LaserDisc was the great format of the late 80's and early 90's. There was no other way to experience the video and audio quality they delivered. When I saw the first public demonstration of what was to become DVD, I was shocked. It looked like a realy low-bitrate AVI or Quicktime. Sony's MMCD version was much better, but had its own set of issues. "Is this what you're giving us instead of LD?" I recall myself saying. The first DVDs were weak, and we had them long before most of the US (I found out later). The whole first batch was recalled, and meanwhile LD was still selling and renting well. Its really only when they decided to end it with "The Matrix," that the deal was done.

I still have quite a few obscure LDs that will likely never see the light of day on any HD format, and not that it would matter (SD origin, or quality not excellent from source). I am still suprised how many bizarre catalog titles finally made it to DVD, but for many, it took over 20 years from the original LD release.

I remember when they were filming a Mel Gibson movie in the parking lot, and I went to have Mel sign my Lethal Weapon LaserDisc. He looked at it, and said "what the hell is this?" (in Australian accent). "It's a movie!" I said. He was confused. He'd never seen one.

It was a specialty, but one store (Dave's) had LD exclusively for many years, and was quite profitable. Only when DVD came around, did it finally kill the independent video store.

Somewhere I have a photo of a hanging mobile comprised entirely of LDs. They sure were cool to look at.

People who had LD and collected them are definitely video hobbyists, and pioneered (pun intended) most of the innovations we see in video today. Widescreen movies, AC-3 audio, special features, we had them and the VHS types did not. I still have some outstanding LDs that have not made it to DVD (Tokyo Pop - where are you?).

Probably a lot of LD afficionados were Beta refugees who refused to submit to the VHS mediocrity.

We had mail order companies who specialized in importing LDs from Japan - the forerunners of Yesasia and CD Japan today. It was great fun to travel to Tokyo, and rummage through the shops in Akihabara and find hundreds of LDs you would want to bring back. Unfortunately, cost and weight usually limited you to only a few per trip.

Then along came DVD, with its Region Coding. That nearly killed the importing hobby, until region free DVD players came along. DVDs outclassed LDs in just about every way, but especially in the areas of anamorphic widescreen, and the ease of getting DD 5.1.

Now comes the high-def media. Both formats make DVD look bad, although scaling will redeem the legacy stuff. Videophiles can once again import from Asia with impunity, since Asia and North America are in the same region. But what about Europe? If the BBC releases Doctor Who box sets in HD on Blu-Ray, will they be playable in the US or not?

Even though LD fell to more advanced technology, so will DVD eventually. Internet downloading and the HD formats will move the marketplace away from regular DVDs just as surely as DVDs drew away the LD crowd.

People who had LD and collected them are definitely video hobbyists, and pioneered (pun intended) most of the innovations we see in video today. Widescreen movies, AC-3 audio, special features, we had them and the VHS types did not. I still have some outstanding LDs that have not made it to DVD (Tokyo Pop - where are you?).

Probably a lot of LD afficionados were Beta refugees who refused to submit to the VHS mediocrity.

We had mail order companies who specialized in importing LDs from Japan - the forerunners of Yesasia and CD Japan today. It was great fun to travel to Tokyo, and rummage through the shops in Akihabara and find hundreds of LDs you would want to bring back. Unfortunately, cost and weight usually limited you to only a few per trip.

Then along came DVD, with its Region Coding. That nearly killed the importing hobby, until region free DVD players came along. DVDs outclassed LDs in just about every way, but especially in the areas of anamorphic widescreen, and the ease of getting DD 5.1.

Now comes the high-def media. Both formats make DVD look bad, although scaling will redeem the legacy stuff. Videophiles can once again import from Asia with impunity, since Asia and North America are in the same region. But what about Europe? If the BBC releases Doctor Who box sets in HD on Blu-Ray, will they be playable in the US or not?

Even though LD fell to more advanced technology, so will DVD eventually. Internet downloading and the HD formats will move the marketplace away from regular DVDs just as surely as DVDs drew away the LD crowd.

Doctor Who is not in HD. It is done in widescreen SD. HD DVD has no region coding.

Even though LD fell to more advanced technology, so will DVD eventually. Internet downloading and the HD formats will move the marketplace away from regular DVDs just as surely as DVDs drew away the LD crowd.
well that's what i'm wondering. just looking for parallels between VHS/LD and DVD/HD-BD, it sounds to me like the hobbyists were enough to keep LD going in spite of the mass market VHS, until they were replaced by DVD.

so i'm hoping hobbyists will be able to keep HD-BD alive until they and DVD are both replaced by downloads or whatever. (and even then, i think there will still be a market for the ownership of the physical medium. collecting's just not the same if you're only filling up a hard drive)

thanks for the comments guys.

Doctor Who is not in HD. It is done in widescreen SD. HD DVD has no region coding.

Ok, I'll just download it from the Internet instead of buying the DVDs in the future, then.

I heard that HD DVD is studying implementing region coding at the behest of the MPAA.

The "hobbiest" keeping the LD format alive was one of the reasons for the cost of titles( disc approx $6 ea for small qty), most noteabily the special editions. As the take a lot more work with very little profit, due to amount of buyers, thus increasing prices even more. I dont want to see higher prices for BD and HD DVD. But this format war may prevent the further increase in price.

The "hobbiest" keeping the LD format alive was one of the reasons for the cost of titles( disc approx $6 ea for small qty), most noteabily the special editions. As the take a lot more work with very little profit, due to amount of buyers, thus increasing prices even more. I dont want to see higher prices for BD and HD DVD. But this format war may prevent the further increase in price.

LD was great in it's day, and it's day was not all that short. It's biggest thrill for me was getting to see all my favorite Horror and other oddball stuff from the 50's, 60's and 70's in it's proper aspect ratio for the first time, rather than the bleary pan-and-scan VHS tape versions. You would'nt see widescreen DVD had laser not pushed that envelope.

The cover-art was a real treat, and i suppose it felt more "special" to get something on LD.

The biggest drawback to me was "laser-rot" which was presumed to be the bulky sandwiched platters developing flaws due to breakdown in the adhesives. I think I had about a 17% rot-rate before I sold my collection. Sadly it was some of the $70 - $100 Criterion titles that had the most trouble. HALLOWEEN rotted for most of us.

It lasted almost 20 years. It had digital sound before the CD. It is still being used by Kodak in a mainframe computer image storage systems (CAV) as you could get 54,000 images per side with each their own frame #.

Seinfield was recorded onto LD in the last few years of the shows main run.

LS was available as HD-LD in Japan and was called Hi-Vision.

The first "enhanced for 16x9 TV's" was not DVD . . .it was LD (THE FUGITIVE)

If we had stuck with it instead of the "sexy" DVD we could have Super HDTV (2500x2000) instead of our normal 1920x1080 HDTV.

It brought attention to the P & S versus OAR issue (and with it brought the lovely black bars)

I have one LD left - Criterion CAV of BLADE RUNNER (out of about 800) and when BR comes to HiDef DVD, I am throwing the LD and the Sony POS 10000 LD player in the garbage.

SIDENOTE: LD was heralded as the highest consumer format available (425 lines) but that was not a truth. It was the highest playback format. Sony had introduced ED-BETA which was 500 lines.

I also believe that LD ushered in the birth of the big screen RPTV and started the actual trend of building HT's as a seperate room.

It served us VERY well both as a format and more important as a foundation to those formats that have followed like DVD and HiDef DVD.

I have one LD left - Criterion CAV of BLADE RUNNER (out of about 800) and when BR comes to HiDef DVD, I am throwing the LD and the Sony POS 10000 LD player in the garbage.

You should put the disc on eBay and let someone who might actually appreciate it have it.

Probably a lot of LD aficionados were Beta refugees who refused to submit to the VHS mediocrity.

I definitely was one of those folks.

It was for me and I enjoyed my discs. It was a sad day when my player broke (for the third time) and I decided it was time to move on.

LD was a successful niche product. It never reached any sort of penetration into mainstream. Only a few stores rented them. Forget about Blockbuster. Generally just mom and pop video rental stores and I think because the owner had a LD player. Not even close to all titles came out on it.

It makes you wonder of the "war" will infact ever end. Does HD DVD need to be the sole source of HD movies for it to survive?

mmm...Remember the smell of a freshly opened LD? And that beautiful cover art. I bought my first LD player in 84. Still have one for those few must have titles that aren't out on DVD or HD. LD really had a special feel that I haven't gotten since. I don't miss having to play the six sides of the 2001 CAV edition even though we didn't complain at the time.

Laserdisc was the Only way to watch Star Wars in DD for many years before it was available on DVD. For some reason I treasure my Star Wars SE LD collection and perfere it to the DVD box set. However DVD is more convienant. :cool:

I sold half my LD collection and have about 80 left . Bought African Queen off e-bay a few weeks ago . My Ld player switches sides automatically ...Still have it ..Plays dvd also ..

We had a very good LD store in the area . I bought the first player , a used rental for $100.00 . Bought a newer player and sold the old one for $100.00 ...
Could buy the rental discs for a good deal too ...

Ld lasted a very long time ...It beat RCA's CED disc . It was a record inside a sleeve .
It skipped , well , like a record too unfortunatly ...

Bob

Laserdisc was the Only way to watch Star Wars in DD for many years before it was available on DVD. For some reason I treasure my Star Wars SE LD collection and perfere it to the DVD box set. However DVD is more convienant. :cool:

I also prefer the LDs over DVDs. This is probably due to the great packaging of the SW SE, having a box looking like the death-star :-) , nice LD jackets, poster, and the great George Lucas book. A must have for the SW fan.

Regarding LD: there were probably more than 40.000 titles released on LD over the 25! years the format existed. Almost non-existent in Europe (except for a few thousand titles released in France and GB) it was widespread in the US and Japan. The last LD was pressed in 2001 I think, and many enthusiasts feel sorrow that not at least one single production line was kept to produce small runs of very rare and fast deteriorating discs.

I started collecting LDs probably 3 years ago which some of you could consider "crazy" given that the format was already dead at that time, but I enjoy the analog look of the uncompressed picture, and the great sound, if present in DD or DTS. I've collected 250 titles of all genres and I'm still buying titles.

Interestingly there existed a small number of Highdefinition-LDs (MUSE HiVision) --- around 100 titles. Picture format was 1920x1035i/60Hz. I own 39 of them and they look really nice on my HD-TV.

Here is a source for further reading: www.lddb.com

Laserdisc was the Only way to watch Star Wars in DD for many years before it was available on DVD. For some reason I treasure my Star Wars SE LD collection and perfere it to the DVD box set. However DVD is more convienant. :cool:

The Special addition may have provided AC-3 (DD), but it also included a bunch of Lucas re-visualizations that didn't go down that well with me.

My favorites are the original Fox LBX Dolby Prologic LD's -- I transferred them to DVD last summer. I feel them to be the most close to my original theater experience of all the Star Wars releases to date -- and I own several :). Those are the only ones I actually watch.

I never plan to replace many of the movies I own on LD. Too many memories there.

I just watched my Spartacus Criterion LD a few weeks ago. Holds up pretty well technically, the film itself is a masterpiece. I gather that the new HD DVD of the title is a disaster.

LD was a successful niche product. It never reached any sort of penetration into mainstream. Only a few stores rented them. Forget about Blockbuster. Generally just mom and pop video rental stores and I think because the owner had a LD player. Not even close to all titles came out on it. .

But many, many did. Russ Meyer films, Criterion releasing the Janus collection at a quality previously unknown. When you only press 800-1200 titles of something, and they all are going to sell, there is a great freedom in what you can release, so a lot of oddball stuff made it to laser (see if Disney ever puts Song of the South out again).

It was also such a small market, that studio's seemed much more willing to sub-let their vault materials to companies like Image.

LD was the format for videophiles and film buffs. Expensive as hell, limited, and classy. DVD never really achieved that special feeling.

I still own a Panny dual side LD player and a handful of LD movies.

I also believe that LD ushered in the birth of the big screen RPTV

It did for me. My first big screen 60" Mitsi", 3:4 screen, around 1990. I had a Pioneer (still do) LD player that automatically switiched sides, a bid deal. Titles were in CLV or CAV formats. The difference (at the time) between VHS and LD was considerable, actually breath-taking on some titles.

My LD player is still connected to my rack. I don't think I've played a single LD in like 5 or 6 years. Maybe I should auction off my small collection of SW, JP, ET, etc. Would the price be worth the effort?

Edit: Nevermind. I just checked the auction site and it's not worth it. I'll just keep it and when I need the room, I'll donate it to some collector.

I too still have my laser player hooked up.
I haven't turned it on in over 6 years.
(the sound of JP is much better on laser- but I always play the DVD....go figure)

I keep the player for the off chance I want to play SE extras that never made it to DVD.
For instance I think the Big SE box of E.T. has audition material that is not on the DVD.

I've had a little problem with laser rot on some older titles. I must go through my movies some day and see whats left.

Gatefold jackets...YUM!! :D

I still have my LD player in my rack, hooked up (Pioneer CLD-D703). Looks horrible on the big screen (no outboard scaler), but for some odd reason, I won't get rid of it.

A) The thing still works. That says a lot when my first LD player died in 1994...a whole 3 years of owning it.

B) There are movies that will never see the light of day on DVD/HD formats. Yes, Star Wars (I have three versions of the original trilogy on LD...Fox LBX, THX remaster, and SE, but my favorite in the bunch is the Criterion Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The DVD has some missing scenes (Neary at the power plant before he heads out in his truck, etc) and I just can't let it go. Also Monty Python and the Holy Grail criterion with Japanese dubbing...a classic.

Also, how many of you got some of your discs through Columbia House? That's how I got the original SW Trilogy (when they were $80 a pop). Got them for a penny. :)

You still can't get "The Compleat Tex Avery" box set on DVD, and if you can in the future, it'll no doubt end up censored or with obnoxious
DVNR (http://www.lyris-lite.net/dnr.html), like the incompetently made French DVDs.

:cool: The Special addition may have provided AC-3 (DD), but it also included a bunch of Lucas re-visualizations that didn't go down that well with me.

My favorites are the original Fox LBX Dolby Prologic LD's -- I transferred them to DVD last summer. I feel them to be the most close to my original theater experience of all the Star Wars releases to date -- and I own several :). Those are the only ones I actually watch.


I have those as well. I also bought the re-release originals. But I love the remixed DD tracks on the DD. Empire SE was good but I perfere the originals for StarWars and Jedi.

I still own a Panny dual side LD player and a handful of LD movies.

I have the panny LX-H680. How do you get the best picture? S video looks terribal? I heard composit was the way to go but not sure why?

I have the panny LX-H680. How do you get the best picture? S video looks terribal? I heard composit was the way to go but not sure why?

You mean "Component" It blows S vidio away ...

You mean "Component" It blows S vidio away ...

Ummm. No. LD player dont have a fuctioning component video connection. A majority of the time Composite is the better connection as the video is stores in composite and the Y/C in most players are inferior to newer sets.

HB GAMER, It takes a lot of work (and money) to get the best quality possible of LD on a more modern display. After that you may still not perfer the image as compared to 16x9 DVD, but will look much better than what you had before.

I never plan to replace many of the movies I own on LD. Too many memories there.

I just watched my Spartacus Criterion LD a few weeks ago. Holds up pretty well technically, the film itself is a masterpiece. I gather that the new HD DVD of the title is a disaster.

The HD-DVD isn't a disaster, it simply wasn't restored. Consensus is that it's the best presentation currently available on either DVD or LD (and that includes the Criterion versions). The complaint is just that the lack of restoration meant that the HD-DVD falls well short of what it hopefully could have been. (I actually ran a poll on this to try to learn what the consensus actually was :).)

Ummm. No. LD player dont have a fuctioning component video connection. A majority of the time Composite is the better connection as the video is stores in composite and the Y/C in most players are inferior to newer sets.

I have a Pioneer DVL-909 . It does have component ...
Not sure about the other guys player ...

I have a Pioneer DVL-909 . It does have component ...Does it output video from Laserdiscs over it though? I'd have thought it would only be functional for DVD.

That's why I said fuctioning component out. as the Componet out on DVL series players does not work with LD... only DVD... well unless you mostly view monochromatic films.

Since this thread has the laserdisc experts, I'll ask this here. Does anybody know how many the best selling LD title sold (approximately)? And how long it took before any title sold 100k copies?

--Darin

I have no idea, but I seriously doubt that any title had a run of 100k.

My LD player is still connected to my rack. I don't think I've played a single LD in like 5 or 6 years. Maybe I should auction off my small collection of SW, JP, ET, etc. Would the price be worth the effort?

Edit: Nevermind. I just checked the auction site and it's not worth it. I'll just keep it and when I need the room, I'll donate it to some collector.

I have a total of five LD players with two of them unpacked. One is part of my serious theater system, and although it's not used as much as the SD/HD DVD player it get's fairly regular use. I also have two S-VHS decks in that rig. The other LD player is hooked into my PC based DVD authoring station (together with an S-VHS deck) for the obvious purpose :).

I've a second smaller setup that supports only DVD.

I have a modest overlap between LD and DVD due to my not always preferring the DVD version over the LD. I only retire an LD if it loses the contest in both video and sound -- definitely not always the case. Of course, if they are two different versions of the same film, then there is no contest and both stay.

There are plenty of LD titles that I may never replace simply because they are either unique, or replacement isn't worth the expense to me (same for VHS). I'm only inclined to replace the titles I tend to watch more frequently (or if an LD had an especially weak transfer).

That's why I said fuctioning component out. as the Componet out on DVL series players does not work with LD... only DVD... well unless you mostly view monochromatic films.

Oh , its been awhile since I used it ...I hooked it up the other day and watched African Queen . It played black and white , hmmm.Thought it was a bad connection..Whoops .

Bob

I still have my LD player in my rack, hooked up (Pioneer CLD-D703). Looks horrible on the big screen (no outboard scaler), but for some odd reason, I won't get rid of it.

A) The thing still works. That says a lot when my first LD player died in 1994...a whole 3 years of owning it.

B) There are movies that will never see the light of day on DVD/HD formats. Yes, Star Wars (I have three versions of the original trilogy on LD...Fox LBX, THX remaster, and SE, but my favorite in the bunch is the Criterion Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The DVD has some missing scenes (Neary at the power plant before he heads out in his truck, etc) and I just can't let it go. Also Monty Python and the Holy Grail criterion with Japanese dubbing...a classic.

Also, how many of you got some of your discs through Columbia House? That's how I got the original SW Trilogy (when they were $80 a pop). Got them for a penny. :)

I have an outboard scaler and the LD scales pretty well (I use an outboard comb filter to S-Video then the scaler to RGBHV to LCD projector). Naturally, DVD strongly wins when you blow it up like that (component to the scaler), but without scaling, projected LD is hopeless. (Looks really GREAT on my paralleled XBR DirectViewCRT though :).) Those were the days when Faroudja got their start -- super expensive doublers and later quadruplers.

Sounds like you and I have the identical StarWars LD library :). My absolute favorite LD is the Criterion CAV "Dr No" -- the one James Bond flick that keeps drawing me back. I also have all the rest on LD through DTS "Golden Eye" except for "Octopussy" -- just never really cared that much for that one film out of the bunch. (I also have the DTS LD "Tomorrow Never Dies", but I prefer the DVD.)

I've both the CAV box and DTS LD versions of "Jurassic Park" -- both are special to me. Guess I'm up to three versions of "Close Encounters" now spread across LD and DVD, though I only ever watch the original. Two of what I feel to be my prize LD possessions are the "Blade Runner" CAV's of both versions. There are just so VERY many titles that could be mentioned :).

I didn't get into LD purchasing until the rental outlets started selling off their stock. I rented a Phillips DVD player (then borrowed a friend's Sony S7000), compared the sound & video against LD on my Mitsubishi 45"RPTV, and realized it was time to get serious about LD (the DVD video was a little better, but the sound didn't even come close). Never looked back!

I still remember the day my criterion SE version of "Brazil" showed up on my doorstep.
(Cost me $199!)
I spent a good 30 minutes admiring the packaging. wow.

Does anyone have or remember the Criterion version of "Seven"?
The transfer was a special silver retention process. I never got around to buying it- but it was on my want list for a long time.

I have the panny LX-H680. How do you get the best picture? S video looks terribal? I heard composit was the way to go but not sure why?

The signal on the LD is natively composite, and so it was always a question of where the better comb filter lay, in the player or the TV. For the very inexpensive players, the TV may have had the edge and so composite would have been preferred. For the higher level players, it was more of a toss up. My solution was to connect the composite output to an outboard comb filter, then I could be sure of what I was getting.

PS. A comb filter is used to convert composite to S-Video.

I've had a small press run of LD's at super small scale of 25disc!:D I actually only needed 5 disc for one display machine, but cost was about the same. I also remember MTV making LD's of their music videos for broadcst. This was at Imation/3M I think. If I had to guess from memory about 250 disc is normally the min, I remember a price list range went up to about 10k disc for small runs.

I know the import Phantom Menace was a huge seller outside Japan, I remember reading it sold many times more copies exported than domestically in Japan. That's my guess for highest selling as for the actal number I have no idea. Other guess for top title is Forest Gump, Mission Impossible and Braveheart. As just about every person I know with LD own these disc, all Paramount oddly enough.

I know the import Phantom Menace was a huge seller outside Japan, I remember reading it sold many times more copies exported than domestically in Japan. That's my guess for highest selling as for the actal number I have no idea. Other guess for top title is Forest Gump, Mission Impossible and Braveheart. As just about every person I know with LD own these disc, all Paramount oddly enough.

I have the second two of those three (MI and BH) -- I prefer them both over the DVD releases. Another big seller could have been "The Matrix", except it was really hard to find in the US (I understand that was the last title formally released here). I placed an order with a major nationwide distributor and weeks went by before a few copies came in -- I was one of the lucky ones (though I actually prefer the DVD version :)).

I still remember the day my criterion SE version of "Brazil" showed up on my doorstep.
(Cost me $199!)
I spent a good 30 minutes admiring the packaging. wow.

Does anyone have or remember the Criterion version of "Seven"?
The transfer was a special silver retention process. I never got around to buying it- but it was on my want list for a long time.

I have the DTS CLV of "Seven". I also have the DVD version, but I don't like the green tint they introduced with it. I believe the LD version is true to the theatrical release, I imagine the same is true for the Criterion versions.

For $199, I can easily see spending time admiring the packaging, and that's before even removing the shrink wrap. :)

back to the original question. was Laserdisc a sucess? That depends on how you define sucess. The original goal of DiscoVision was not a sucess, because of the lowering of price to own video cassettes, with new higher speed tape duplication technics. The disc were more costly to produce than video tape, but discovision was about people buying cheap disc instead of expensive tape. That's one of the reasons why the format failed along with people wanted recording capability. There was the home video format war with RCA's CED Selectavision which was much better at releasing more titles at $20 and player prices almost half the price compared to Beta, VHS and DiscoVision. So it was DiscoVision vs CED, VHS, Beta. The war in Japan was with JVC Victor and their VHD format but the format never launch in the US dying off mostly in the late 80's only lasted that long mainly because of Karaoke and a bit of Japanese animation, from their own label. Their main competitor Pioneer who took over the failing MCA DiscoVision and Magnavox/Philips and numerous QC plant and player problems had a hard time fighting Victor with VHD but in the end just produced way more disc for the format and having more features on their players.

The "sucess" of the format in limited ways has to do with the once unknown small manufacture of loudspeakers Pioneer who too steps to rescue the format from the dead when every big company has given up and no one wanted anything to do with the money loosing operation. Reassuring existing studios on having better players/disc compared to the past and having a good exchange program for bad disc for the consumer as well as the studios themselves. Created minor home video distribution for smaller studios, companies, education to publish on the format. Making a higher quality audio format by adding CX noise reduction, adding PCM to satisfy the old DAD and CD groups, record companies for publishing the growing music video genre.

Other companys like Image Entertainment was mostly B grade movie, softcore flicks and public domain fare also licenced content from other big and small studios worldwide who didn't want the expense and burden of distributing content to such a small niche market which would create very little profit. Janus Group creating the Criterion Collection for experimenting on the limits of a random access disc format. All this lead to a very eclectic library of titles to satisfy just about anyone. So i'd say it was a sucess as the format was supposed to die 5 years in, but lasted over 20 years in a coma while still giving birth to advances in video mastering, multi ch audio, and interactivity.

You mean "Component" It blows S vidio away ...


Yes thanks. Wow. The picture use to be incredible. I am watching Goldeneye and remember the side by side compares to the new DVD format. The generally consensus was a even with a slight edge to LD for the lack of compression artifacts. I just got the player out of storage and the picture on my 50' panny plasma via "Component" is really terrible. It almost looks like vhs on a crt. :(
Oh well. Cant live in the past. The sound does sound far better than DVD though. :eek:

Jeez . . .got to blow the cob webs away from my memory .. .

As far as the Composite - S-Video - Component output issue:

LD is/was an analog video system. It was pure NTSC all the way. The spec's were 425 Hort. Line Res and 240 line Color Res. At the time of it's heyday VHS had 240 H. line res. and 80 line Color Res. S-VHS upped the HR to 400 but left the Color Res at 80 line

According to then guru Joe Kane, the trick as mentioned was to seperate the Color signal from the B & W signal properly. S-Video was a small improvement over Composite (I had a 144" 16x9 screen) . . so every little bit helped. Component was for Digital Media which at the time was the DVD which is/was recorded in Component Format so it would take advantage of the proper output connection.

I remember Pioneer made a reference player at the time I think it was called the LD-1 that was about $2000 and was considered the very best player (single side only) ever built as far as PQ.

I remember someone who made a player (started with a "W") that you would load 2 discs at once (had two drawers, one above the other) so you could play 4 sides without getting up to change the disc over.

LD was 12" but they made a few demo's and test disc in 8". They even had a 5" CD that had like 10 minutes of video I think it was called a CD-V.

At the zenith of LD's glory there were around 1 million players installed and I don't ever remember a title selling 100K Most were in the 20K to 30K range. Some as low as 5K to 10K. I beleieve but will not swear to Star Wars selling about 75K.

I also had multiple players bought and sold . . . seems like a few. Boy did I piss away money in those days!

Does anyone have or remember the Criterion version of "Seven"?
The transfer was a special silver retention process. I never got around to buying it- but it was on my want list for a long time.

Yes, I had that one. Couldn't think of a reason to play the movie more than once so sold it long ago for next to nothing. Back in the pre-ebay days.

I'd consider buying it again on an HD format. Maybe.

Component was for Digital Media which at the time was the DVD which is/was recorded in Component Format so it would take advantage of the proper output connection.


I always thought that component video was made to use first in the 1980's for D1 video tape format instead of RGB and was added by Toshiba to the SuperDensity/DVD format an was then made standard. I kept on thinking D1 too expensive, D2 Digital Composite just right!


I remember someone who made a player (started with a "W") that you would load 2 discs at once (had two drawers, one above the other) so you could play 4 sides without getting up to change the disc over.


Pioneer made that who else! It's was the LD-W1. The mechnism was very complex, fragile, expensive and a pain to troubleshoot.

Yes thanks. Wow. The picture use to be incredible. I am watching Goldeneye and remember the side by side compares to the new DVD format. The generally consensus was a even with a slight edge to LD for the lack of compression artifacts. I just got the player out of storage and the picture on my 50' panny plasma via "Component" is really terrible. It almost looks like vhs on a crt. :(
Oh well. Cant live in the past. The sound does sound far better than DVD though. :eek:

You really shouldn't be using either component or S-Video from an LD player with a modern TV. (The component would really only be for DVD anyway, which was only the very last generation or at most two of Pioneer Elite LD players.) I would strongly suggest using the composite output and let your TV do the conversions (at worst try both composite and S-Video, but definitely skip component -- if it has component).

I never considered the laser disc format a failure. It was juts...too large.

I have a Pioneer DVL-909 . It does have component ...
Not sure about the other guys player ...

The DVL-909s component outputs are ONLY for the DVD video part. The picture on Laserdiscs is stored analog (not digital like on DVD). It's in fact a Composite signal, so the best way to connect a Laserdisc player is the Composite connection. The player has to split the composite into luma and chroma in order to output a proper S-Video (Y/C) signal, and most of the players have inferior comb filters built in. Higher quality TVs are equipped with better comb filters so they will do the job much better.

Well, so far for the theory. Actually a lot of consumer players which incorporate some sort of picture enhancements split the composite signal into Y/C anyway, the apply their "image enhancements" and finally recombine the Y/C to output it as composite signal. This is a lot of unnecessary processing for things which can todays display devices really better. You have to try out both connection types (composite and s-video) and it depends on the type of player and your TV which one looks better.

Laserdisc picture is all-analog and uncompressed. I have seen many players and currently own the LD-V4300, DVL-909, CLD-D925, LD-X1, HLD-X9, HLD-X0 (in order of preference) ;) If you choose the right player, then picture from laserdisc will look the same as DVD, and often better.

You really shouldn't be using either component or S-VHS from an LD player with a modern TV. (The component would really only be for DVD anyway, which was only the very last generation or at most two of Pioneer Elite LD players.) I would strongly suggest using the composite output and let your TV do the conversions (at worst try both composite and S-Video, but definitely skip component -- if it has component).

Second time now that I have mis-spoke. I have it hooked up via composite. Thanks to all for the memories :)

tteich:

"If you choose the right player, then picture from laserdisc will look the same as DVD, and often better. "

This statement I will have to question as DVD added something that LD did not have: increased Vertical Resolution.

The biggest boon IMO of DVD over LD as far as PQ was the "enhanced for 16x9 TV's" feature. It gave us more scanning lines to create the image.

If you compare LD to a non-enhanced DVD, then I believe they will come close to being equal depending on your equipment. But compare the same movie on both with the exception being the enhancement feature and DVD will win every time.

I do miss the cover art.

Second time now that I have mis-spoke. I have it hooked up via composite. Thanks to all for the memories :)

I'll play dvd with the component and use composite for the ld .On the 909
Thanks for the tech history guys ...

For awhile I was buying brand new discs for about $6.00 . Was that pioneer ?
It was a website about 8 or 10 years ago ...

Yup , cobwebs to clear from memory , LOL . Matches the cobwebs on the player when I dug it out !!

I have Terminator 1 and 2 plus jarassic parks still . Plus a bunch others
I found stuff stephany in the incinerator , Wonder if that will get on hd-dvd soon ? LOL
Later
Bob

I have the panny LX-H680. How do you get the best picture? S video looks terribal? I heard composit was the way to go but not sure why?

http://www.mindspring.com/~laserguru/digitalage.html

It was a very fun format for its time. I used to get all giddy when new releases came out and shopping in a store for them was a charm. These days? I don't get nearly as excited as DVDs over the XA1 look much better to my eyes than the CLD-97. These discs lose a bit of their magic on digital tvs unfortunately.

Back to the original topic:

I think it was a success in catering to its limited audience, at least until towards the end. Discs from the 70s until the early 90s were pretty horrid (usually) in quality and look like slightly better VHS in most cases. Around 92-93 my discs were mostly widescreen and stack up a bit better to dvd. I think I read it was about $6-8 to complete and manufacture each LD, and with titles priced about $39 on average they surely made their money back. Around 98-00 titles were pressed in way too small quantities and often hard to find in even the dedicated shops that sold them. I have and have sold a few of my discs that were only printed with 400-500 copies, but I don't necessarily miss them just because they are a "collectible". A lot of the late releases didn't even have an AC-3 track or extras.

Great format. I offten wonder what improvments may have come if DVD came later.

MUSE in the states. Built in RF demods multidisc players for those CAV discs.

If some of the advancments had come earlyer prehapps it would be a lot more popular.

But I think it was worth it. They made discs for a long time so someone was buying them.

I just started 4 years ago now have over 200. I first saw a player at school. Looked it up and saw all the discs. Star wars in its real format amazing... at first it was those WS LD that were FS on DVD or not yet DVD. (Many stallone films just came to DVD not to long ago. R1 anyway)


its funny how some of the movies were redone several times on LD cliffhanger and starwars had to be the top ones.

Cliffhanger had Standared WS or FS. 3 disc SE version "Squeeze" version and HD Muse version.

BTW does anybody know if a squezze LD works in a standard player. Do you just need a WS set or is a specail player needed. I fugure its just like a 16:9 DVD without the ability to change for a TV. Basicly locked to 16:9 resulting in a squezzed picture on a 4:3 TV..

If it does work I may have to import a few discs...

16x9 ld works on any player. The squeeze function on the display have to be utilized on a 4x3 monitor and it just works on a 16x9 set set to full. It does not work like DVD. Where the DVD player has the ability to squeeze the image add the letterboxed bars for the proper aspect on 4x3 monitors.

No it was not a success, if you can't buy it at every major retailer than that format is not a successful mainstream product.

No it was not a success, if you can't buy it at every major retailer than that format is not a successful mainstream product.

Major retailers who sold either LD players or LD software:

Wal-Mart (players)
Best Buy (players and discs)
Tower Records (discs)
Camelot Music (discs)
Video Concepts (players and discs)
Service Merchandise (players)
Montgomery Ward (players and discs)
Good Guys (players for sure, can't remember if they had discs or not)
Virgin Megastore (discs)
The Wiz (players and discs)
Sears (players)
Highland Appliance (players and discs)
Media Play (discs)
Incredible Universe (players and discs)

Major retailers who rented LDs:
Blockbuster
Kroger Grocery
West Coast Video

I'm sure there are more but those are just a few who come to mind. I don't think I was ever in a Circuit City back in the LD days, but I would assume they at least carried the players.

I look at it this way...since Columbia House had a LaserDisc club, it had to have some degree of success. :)

No it was not a success, if you can't buy it at every major retailer than that format is not a successful mainstream product.

I imagine it being a success for the movie lovers and cinema enthusiasts. It's a high quality product if you compare it to VHS. And I can imagine it was a delight to buy them in special shops. Buying them was surely comparable to buying LPs. I missed the time unfortunately.

Whether it was a financial success for the main supporter (Pioneer): I doubt it. At least they sold millions of players and supported and constantly improved the technology at the time all other companies had abandoned the format. Pioneer deserves the right to be honoured for their enthusiasm and technical brilliancy. They gave us a technology that will last for a long time. In contrary, VHS cassettes are rotted already.

LD was like the NHL, availability varies in certain regions. In the North America I can think of LA, San Francisco Bay area, Boston, NY, Chicago initially comes to mind for better penetration of LD. Pretty much the top markets with multiple stores with LD. Other areas are hit and miss. and for those a lot of people mailorder from Sight and Sound, Ken Cranes, Pioneer LasserDisc Fan Club, Laser Craze, Evergreen, Laser Edge, Videodisc International, Cinema Laser, LaserExchange, Big Emma, Columba House, The Laser Alliance, etc.

I also remember HMV in Toronto having LD's.

No it was not a success, if you can't buy it at every major retailer than that format is not a successful mainstream product.

The world of video does not begin and end at the borders of Estados Unidos. LD may have been a minority format here but it was much bigger in Asia. Stille, LD had a 2-4% marketshare in the U.S. at it's zenith, depending on who's quesstimates you believe.

It was a successful product even in the U.S. because it met the needs and desires of a willing market segment. Warner Brudders hoped to make LD into what DVD became, mainstream, in the early 90's. After LD's edge seal problem was solved in the mid-80's, the format was cheaper to distribute than VHS. Warner kept their LD prices low in hope the format would break out. However, other studios did not, most notably Fox.

If DVD had been delayed a few more years, LD might have pushed towards a more sizable marketshare in this hemisphere....? Dependin' on a slew of factors, of course. Studios wanted kopy-poofing and thought they had it with DVD....a mirage, indeed, as it's turned out.

LD continues to be a success at my house. I have about 1000 LD's, and proably about half of 'em are ones I'd stille watch. I have plenty of TV shows and Academy Ratio films that don't beg to be replaced. Many of 'em cannot replaced yet, if ever?

....my last LD watched, First Family. It's so politically incorrect that I love it but it may never garner another release? ...ever...?

Pioneer made LD into a minor success on a global basis.

Rachael:

I wonder when y0u were going to show up on this thread. Gentleman, let me introduce LD's GREATEST supporter: Rachael Bellomy!

Rachael:

I wonder when y0u were going to show up on this thread. Gentleman, let me introduce LD's GREATEST supporter: Rachael Bellomy!

I doubt I was LD's greatest suppourter. I did get LD a long time before about 95% of the folks that ever had it though. I brought home a Pioneer LD-838D in 1986 and put VHS on my ignore list.

BTW does anybody know if a squezze LD works in a standard player. Do you just need a WS set or is a specail player needed. I fugure its just like a 16:9 DVD without the ability to change for a TV. Basicly locked to 16:9 resulting in a squezzed picture on a 4:3 TV..

http://www.mindspring.com/~laserguru/squeeze.html

I doubt I was LD's greatest suppourter. I did get LD a long time before about 95% of the folks that ever had it though. I brought home a Pioneer LD-838D in 1986 and put VHS on my ignore list.

Rachael:

I was with AVS back in 2000 just like you were. (I started with AVS in 1996 and left at the end of 2000). My screen name probably doesn't ring a bell with you as I used a different screen name back then.

I was the one with the 144" 16x9 Silver 400 Perforated, Fixed Stewart Screen and the Zenith PRO900X system. We used to converse all the time along with someone who was from Florida. (I was living in Long island, New York at the time.)

Everyone admired your then large collection of LD's (I see it has grown considerably.)

So a quick hello from an old "forum friend"

Lee

Everyone admired your then large collection of LD's (I see it has grown considerably.)

So a quick hello from an old "forum friend"

Lee

Lee, I'm having no luck trying to figur who you used to be. :)

One reason my collection has hit 1000, despite me giving many, many LD's to family and friends, is I've had several folks give me, collectively, about 300 discs. In turn, I've distributed many of those to others. I also continued to buy LD's of Academy Ratio films and music concerts for several years into this century. My last LD purchasd was Wild Wild Planet about 2 + years ago.

Recurdos mi amigo, la, la, la Gata grande....stille! :)

I'll play dvd with the component and use composite for the ld .On the 909
Thanks for the tech history guys ...

For awhile I was buying brand new discs for about $6.00 . Was that pioneer ?
It was a website about 8 or 10 years ago ...

Yup , cobwebs to clear from memory , LOL . Matches the cobwebs on the player when I dug it out !!

I have Terminator 1 and 2 plus jarassic parks still . Plus a bunch others
I found stuff stephany in the incinerator , Wonder if that will get on hd-dvd soon ? LOL
Later
Bob

I love the Terminator LD PCM rendition of "Bad To The Bone" when Schwarzenegger steps out of the bar after "picking up some threads" :). It sounds so perfect and so all encompassing (ProLogic). A really great sound track.

EDIT: Come to think of it -- Terminator I was mono, still, it obviously worked for me :)

It was a very fun format for its time. I used to get all giddy when new releases came out and shopping in a store for them was a charm. These days? I don't get nearly as excited as DVDs over the XA1 look much better to my eyes than the CLD-97. These discs lose a bit of their magic on digital tvs unfortunately.
The CLD-97 is a pretty awesome player, no other player could produce solid reds like it could, and the picture was super film smooth. However, I prefer the CLD-D704, 79, and 99 picture from the standpoint of sharpness (all three are basically the same player) and still an excellent picture overall. I think they may have been the overall pinnacle for a US player, but the CLD-97 and LD-S2 are both absolute classics.

The reall ultimates of course were those two "extreme" players sold in Japan at the very very end. I wasn't dedicated (or well heeled) enough to go there, but I read lots about them.

Rachael:

No matter . . . I remember you very well. Not only with your knowledge of LD at the time many of us barely knew how to hook them up.

The forum has changed and with it some of the people who reside here. In the 4 years I was with AVS, I can count on one hand the number of times I was "insulted" out of almost 2500 posts, and i have a three fingered hand (only kidding).

I now have about 750 between this forum and another I go to www.HighDefForum.com which is a much smaller forum but has a lot of knowledge . . .and are wiilling to share their knowledge with anyone who asks nicely and will keep everything to either a debate or a discussion. Like it was back in 2000

So in the 750 odd posts i have been insulted about 200 times so one out of 4. Even when all I am offering is help.

Oh well . . glad to see you are alive and well and still typing in Spanish . . . which I STILL can't read!

The packaging certainly was fantastic

Pioneer deserves the right to be honoured for their enthusiasm and technical brilliancy. They gave us a technology that will last for a long time. In contrary, VHS cassettes are rotted already.

My VHS cassettes are still good! :)

Wow. Thanks. It looks a hell of a lot better. Just watched JP. Sounds great. Now if we could just get this on HD.

I love the Terminator LD PCM rendition of "Bad To The Bone" when Schwarzenegger steps out of the bar after "picking up some threads" :). It sounds so perfect and so all encompassing (ProLogic). A really great sound track.

EDIT: Come to think of it -- Terminator I was mono, still, it obviously worked for me :)

Arnold picked up a nice bike along with the duds !!
Bad a$$ !
Will have to spin that disc again !! I liked the whirr when its spins up even ...
Coolell .........

Bob

Laserdisc was a success as much as the VW Phaeton was. Many of the technologies in the current Bentley are derived from the VW in the same way that the laserdisc set future trends.

I think the store we had in essex junction , vermont lost money .
They were in business for the duration though ..was called Laserland ...

was in there every week renting or buying the extra rental discs ...
It should of done better because the quality , but it did not record cheap like vhs or beta...
When dvd was announced I was not happy of another format change !!!

The forum has changed and with it some of the people who reside here. In the 4 years I was with AVS, I can count on one hand the number of times I was "insulted" out of almost 2500 posts, and i have a three fingered hand (only kidding).

It wasn't always so idylic back then for me. I had a couple of harassers. One was rather minor but the other one nearly drove me away. He, I presume, was atleast a mild psychopath. I was actually worried he'd show up at my house. He got banned several tmes but kept sneaking back in.

I concur that, generally, the decorum was better back then though. I, too, tire from this combative excrement too. I wish folks would smart-up and unleash their wrath against the deserving parties, the various studios, instead of each other! I actually think that the fur-mat war is absolutely necessary and benefical. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning". ;) However, we have way too many members that view themselves, apparently, as format ninjas.... :rolleyes:

Another thang, the forum got way, way bigger. So, there's more good and more bad. Thanks for the kind words! :)

Wow. Thanks. It looks a hell of a lot better. Just watched JP. Sounds great. Now if we could just get this on HD.

Yes, indeed, if you tweak the picture settings specifically for LD (not trying to optimize for other sources with the same set of settings), you can get a gorgeous picture from a decently mastered LD -- and the colors can be absolutely magnificent.

Arnold picked up a nice bike along with the duds !!
Bad a$$ !
Will have to spin that disc again !! I liked the whirr when its spins up even ...
Coolell .........

Bob

Yep! I still enjoy LD and it's definitely worth a little effort to optimize the picture. I have many cases of keeping both the LD and DVD versions of the same material, simply because both have merit. I also have cases were, the LD wins in both audio AND video (IMO). DVD may be more convenient, but to some people, convenience is a limited advantage :).

So in the 750 odd posts i have been insulted about 200 times so one out of 4. Even when all I am offering is help.

After the completely fallacious crap with which you hounded me starting here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9894617&&#post9894617
In this thread here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=811641&page=1&pp=30
Your gall factor in what you are now saying is absolutely extraordinary -- no doubt that was in the name of "helping" people too! You wouldn't even accept it when the other AVS members told you you were wrong (here): http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9895270&&#post9895270
You just continued to smear me anyway! All completely unsubstantiated nonsense!

My response to your "proof": http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9902901&&#post9902901

You winded up with taking one last shot:http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9895432&&#post9895432

To which I directly responded this: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9903473&&#post9903473

Any of you folks remember the old "CE" Forum on Compuserve ???

I've had a little problem with laser rot on some older titles. I must go through my movies some day and see whats left.

Go thru the Sony DADC USA manufactured disc first. My bet is that a majority of your rotters are from Sony. The mint marks at the hub start with LDVS, LDAC, LDTX, LDTA.

It depends on how you define success. Laserdisc did not hit the mass market and was never a household name (many people I talk to still do not realize that there were optical disc movies before DVD). VHS blew it away in terms of price and title selection. In those terms, no it was not a success. However, I find that definition of success to be very limited and not all that useful.

I view laserdisc as a success because it was a format that lasted for over 20 years, had a loyal niche consumer base, and (above all) was profitable for the CE manufacturers and studios. You don't have to be #1 to be a success, you just have to make money and keep the customers happy-- ask Nintendo or Apple.

Trevor:

Nice to see you carry a grudge.

Lee

Does anyone know of any optimisation source that one can rip to a cd for LD

Does anyone know of any optimisation source that one can rip to a cd for LD

Are you sure you mean CD and not DVD?
Don't understand your question. What exactly are you looking for?

In this town, so dead to laserdiscs I recall hardly anyone selling the players and only one outfit renting the discs, I still have managed to come up with close to 300 LDs in about 2 years of looking for them. I'll go into thrift stores from time to time and find an LD mixed between records, when I show the people what it is they look at me with a blank stare. When I tell them I've got about 300 more at home they wonder how I found that many. Second hand I've seen all of 5 LD players locally, 3 of these I bought, one I'm trying to get my hands on this week.

I didn't really intend to ever have this many, and the number I keep finding seems to be increasing pretty rapidly. Of course I'll watch them, most of the stuff I don't have on DVD, and never would have considered buying in the first place if I had not gotten the LD, I found a few movies I liked along the way as well as some stuff that has yet to surface on other formats.

I have three players of my own, one here in the bedroom, one in the livingroom, and one hooked up to a projector. I gave a player to my girlfriend as well so we could take advantage of all my movies at her house.

Depending on the comb filter of the TV involved you'd be surprised at what you'll get. The 27 inch Samsung HDTV of a few years ago looks striking with LDs. Almost any well mastered LD looks better on this set than the DVD version, the picture on some is breathtaking (I'm not even using a "good" model of LD player, just a cheap RCA with that TV) On some other sets they'll look terrible (they don't look particularly good on my girlfriend's cheap 27 inch SDTV of a few years ago, that TV only really does its best with DVDs).

How big can it still look decent at? My projector, due to room constrictions leaves me with something of a 62 inch screen but it can go much bigger. Most of the time they don't look bad at that size, even the DVDs will show flaws if you blow them up big. If you're doing the really big screen thats when things start to fall apart but from my experiences thats when you need the extra information of the HD feeds.

I still will buy movies on LD as long as they're available for me to buy, of course I still buy other formats as well. As I mentioned earlier in this post I am going to buy another player (to hook up in a different room), and that player comes with 75 LDs, ruling out the 6 or 7 titles I already have from that bunch I'll be quickly approaching 400 and have a lot of interesting movies to boot.

I was a Very early adopter of LD. I bought a CLD-900 combi unit in 1985, which served as my LD and CD player. I remember buying my first LD- Aint That America by J C Mellencamp and Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits on CD along with it. I'll never forget the experience of hearing digital sound for the first time. Over the years, I mostly collected music videodiscs and widescreen films. To me the best feature of LDs was the uncompressed PCM soundtracks. The artwork and liner notes were an important part of the experience of owning LDs, which the movie Free Enterprise captured nicely. I saw the writing on the wall with DVDs, and by the year 2000 sold my collection on ebay just before their resale value tanked. I remember my LDs with much fondness and consider the format a success, if only for exposing me to such a wide variety of great films.

I remember being in Ken Cranes in So Cal and seeing a set up of "Mars Attacks" in 1997. They were playing a LD and DVD next to each other to show you the difference. The DVD was a couple of clicks up in clearity, but that was about it. I remember thinking that it would never catch on and probably all the people in the store with LDs in their arms did too!

Now, 400+ later and a DVL-700 to play them on, I'm still happy I have them. I'm luckly to have gotten a Panny RP-82 and a Toshiba HD A1.

I still play my LDs because there are so many that are not on DVD yet, let alone HD.

...
The DVD was a couple of clicks up in clearity, but that was about it. I remember thinking that it would never catch on and probably all the people in the store with LDs in their arms did too!
...

There are a lot of DVDs out which look terrible and by no way reach the quality of their LD counterparts. Prominent example is Tina Turner Live in Amsterdam (DTS LD). The DVDs shows block artefacts all over the place whereas the LD is 100% clean. Same for the sound.

Does anyone know of any optimisation source that one can rip to a cd for LD

There are set-up LD's, like Video Essentials, but they're all geared to NTSC TV's everybody had back then.

After the completely fallacious crap with which you hounded me starting here.....

Your very post rather suppourts his statement about the forum's changes.... :rolleyes: You're keeping a scorecard! You need to take a look at your objectives here. Is it to "win" arguments or learn stuff? The latter is the high road and best route.

Trevor:

Nice to see you carry a grudge.

Lee

Given you did your absolute best to smear me, was completely in the wrong from the get go and never admitted it -- just smeared me further -- you can darned well believe it! I've never personally run into anything as outrageous and ridiculous as that in any bulletin board or forum I've ever frequented.

Your very post rather suppourts his statement about the forum's changes.... :rolleyes: You're keeping a scorecard! You need to take a look at your objectives here. Is it to "win" arguments or learn stuff? The latter is the high road and best route.

Except this guy who's bringing up the subject, and portraying himself as though an innocent, is actually a perpetrator. I merely point out the discrepancy.

PS. It was never an argument, it was an unflagging nonsensical attack! Did absolutely no-one any good.

I got into LD late in it's life-cycle and luckily didn't acquire a large collection and spend a lot. At least, not like I did with DVDs. I still have a player and a couple of dozen titles. Most have been replaced on DVD, but a few were never released like the original Star Wars THX versions and probably never will be. I have one that never made it, not even as an import from what I can tell. It's Michael Man's "The Keep" and while many would say that's a good thing (http://www.ghosts.org/rj/keep.html), I'm glad to have a copy of it on LD.

I got into LD late in it's life-cycle and luckily didn't acquire a large collection and spend a lot. At least, not like I did with DVDs. I still have a player and a couple of dozen titles. Most have been replaced on DVD, but a few were never released like the original Star Wars THX versions and probably never will be. I have one that never made it, not even as an import from what I can tell. It's Michael Man's "The Keep" and while many would say that's a good thing (http://www.ghosts.org/rj/keep.html), I'm glad to have a copy of it on LD.

Many have yet to make it to DVD, and I agree, "The Keep" is a great film (didn't realize that was Michael Man). A sizable portion of my LD purchases were based on films I had earlier taped from cable TV. "The Keep" was one of those and I was very happy to snag a used copy (less than 10 of my LDs were bought new, only "The Matrix" at full price. :)).

One film I've wanted to find for years I just broke down and ordered used on VHS. I've the suspicion it never even made it to LD (there were two films of the same name -- every time I tracked it down, it turned out to be the wrong one). Two other films I've been wanting for years are "The Naked Prey" and one dealing with backpackers in a back country forest who run into a killer. It's a darned well done film and I've been trying to rediscover the name just so I can search again for it. At times, being a film fan can be tough going. :)

Someone else made a great analogy - LD was successful the way the NHL is successful. Both have (well, had for LD) very loyal fans who kept the format going even if it never reached complete mass-market appeal. I imagine the joy of meeting a fellow enthusiast is also the same.

Except this guy who's bringing up the subject, and portraying himself as though an innocent, is actually a perpetrator. I merely point out the discrepancy.

PS. It was never an argument, it was an unflagging nonsensical attack! Did absolutely no-one any good.

You did revive the argument and brng it to this thread. That speaks volmes about your tostesterone level. I could care less 'bout ya'all's conflict. Look at yourself and ask yourself why?

Someone else made a great analogy - LD was successful the way the NHL is successful. Both have (well, had for LD) very loyal fans who kept the format going even if it never reached complete mass-market appeal. I imagine the joy of meeting a fellow enthusiast is also the same.

The NHL thang is a good analogy in a way. The NHL is ultra sucessful in certain places. Well, LD was ultra sucessful in Asia. If it hadn't been, well, it would of died in the 80's in Estados Unidos. The Asian market pulled the small U.S. market along. I didn't know this back in the 80's. Back then I kept thinking, when are they gonna stop selling these wonderful video discs.....

Many have yet to make it to DVD, and I agree, "The Keep" is a great film (didn't realize that was Michael Man). A sizable portion of my LD purchases were based on films I had earlier taped from cable TV. "The Keep" was one of those and I was very happy to snag a used copy (less than 10 of my LDs were bought new, only "The Matrix" at full price. :)).

One film I've wanted to find for years I just broke down and ordered used on VHS. I've the suspicion it never even made it to LD (there were two films of the same name -- every time I tracked it down, it turned out to be the wrong one). Two other films I've been wanting for years are "The Naked Prey" and one dealing with backpackers in a back country forest who run into a killer. It's a darned well done film and I've been trying to rediscover the name just so I can search again for it. At times, being a film fan can be tough going. :)

That's not the one with the Doctor's dropped off by an airplane for a camping/hunting trip and they start getting picked of in gruesome ways, is it?

A few years ago, I wanted to transfer my anime LDs onto DVD, the macrovision was a big bother to work around (hey! I own these LDs, I paid for them, and they're dead, I have the moral right to transfer them to DVD/R).

Eventually, after a few disks that turned out ok, I basically gave up since it was too much work. Believe it or not, it was the chapter insertions that got to me - I wanted to have the chapter points match the LD and it just became ridiculously painful.

LD was great in terms of anime and a few really good disks, and they were better than initial DVDs that came out. The later DVDs were clearly much better though.

A few years ago, I wanted to transfer my anime LDs onto DVD, the macrovision was a big bother to work around (hey! I own these LDs, I paid for them, and they're dead, I have the moral right to transfer them to DVD/R).

Eventually, after a few disks that turned out ok, I basically gave up since it was too much work. Believe it or not, it was the chapter insertions that got to me - I wanted to have the chapter points match the LD and it just became ridiculously painful.

LD was great in terms of anime and a few really good disks, and they were better than initial DVDs that came out. The later DVDs were clearly much better though.

Still have LIGHT YEARS on LD a scifi anime movie involving Issac Asimov. It has never come out on DVD to date.

With anime. once DVD goes "enhanced for 16x9 TV's" transfer . . it will beat LD hands down. But without that. . . then you decide.

You did revive the argument and brng it to this thread. That speaks volmes about your tostesterone level. I could care less 'bout ya'all's conflict. Look at yourself and ask yourself why?

I haven't revived the argument, there is no argument, the links tell the entire story. If you object to learning a person is misrepresenting himself to you, that's your business. Adieu.

That's not the one with the Doctor's dropped off by an airplane for a camping/hunting trip and they start getting picked of in gruesome ways, is it?

Darn, I can't remember the details well enough, but it wasn't a gore/horror type film, it was more an adventure/thriller. I remember there being a chasm/river with a foot bridge across it -- the backpackers had crossed en-route to the woods. The killer became involved in the wood. I also remember a law officer who I believe was hunting for the killer. I think it may have been primarily a manhunt, but in a backcountry setting.

I really should remember the name, but it's totally escaping me -- haven't seen it in years, but it was pretty positively reviewed. If I could just remember an actor's name, but I don't think I ever knew -- just saw it on cable, don't think I ever had a copy. (If I did, it's hard to believe I would have been such a nincompoop as to erase it.)

A few years ago, I wanted to transfer my anime LDs onto DVD, the macrovision was a big bother to work around (hey! I own these LDs, I paid for them, and they're dead, I have the moral right to transfer them to DVD/R).

Eventually, after a few disks that turned out ok, I basically gave up since it was too much work. Believe it or not, it was the chapter insertions that got to me - I wanted to have the chapter points match the LD and it just became ridiculously painful.

LD was great in terms of anime and a few really good disks, and they were better than initial DVDs that came out. The later DVDs were clearly much better though.

I've been transferring a number of favorite LDs to DVD (also some VHS) and I agree it's definitely a lot of work to author a nice transfer. One of the problems is that the optimal display settings tend to vary a lot with older LDs. The only way to get a really good picture is to make sure each transfer is optimized (brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, sharpness) before final authoring to DVD -- that takes a lot of time for me.

I usually find the LD has fewer search points than I would like (in cases of VHS, of course, there aren't any at all :)). So I just set my own chapters. The end result is very worthwhile, but no question it takes some effort.

Many have yet to make it to DVD, and I agree, "The Keep" is a great film (didn't realize that was Michael Man). A sizable portion of my LD purchases were based on films I had earlier taped from cable TV. "The Keep" was one of those and I was very happy to snag a used copy (less than 10 of my LDs were bought new, only "The Matrix" at full price. :)).

One film I've wanted to find for years I just broke down and ordered used on VHS. I've the suspicion it never even made it to LD (there were two films of the same name -- every time I tracked it down, it turned out to be the wrong one). Two other films I've been wanting for years are "The Naked Prey" and one dealing with backpackers in a back country forest who run into a killer. It's a darned well done film and I've been trying to rediscover the name just so I can search again for it. At times, being a film fan can be tough going. :)

I saw that too , with the backpackers getting hunted . A girl was in the troup??
Very fuzzy on a title , but seems like it was a good one ..
We'll get it after some thought !!

I saw that too , with the backpackers getting hunted . A girl was in the troup??
Very fuzzy on a title , but seems like it was a good one ..
We'll get it after some thought !!

Very possibly a girl being one of the group -- don't remember how many people but it wasn't large -- four maybe? I used to go to Reel.com for film reviews (found them far more reliable than IMDB.com). Also, their listings of similar and related films can be very helpful in identifying possibilities -- at least, it was for me. Reel.com was a major tool for me while hunting used LD's.

Still one of my favorite formats. When ever I show my friends a LD they are just shocked by the size. Then I tell them each side only holds 1 hour in CLV and 1/2 hour in CAV. Starwars CAV has 5 side changes. Or a minnimum of 3 times you must get up to switch the disc out. For me its worth it as I'm getting the orginal versions...
May tranzfer them to DVD some time.
But I tryed with my DVD recorder. Got to much into the movie and forgot ended up with the A-B blue screen on the first couple side changes...

May use the PC at some point and try to clean it all up. The chapters don't bother me at all..

Thinking about getting a better player. My current one does alright but the first 10 minnites of a side seem a little off. Once beyond that they look great...

I think my judge dredd LD looks a lot nicer then the R1 DVDs...

Still have LIGHT YEARS on LD a scifi anime movie involving Issac Asimov. It has never come out on DVD to date.

With anime. once DVD goes "enhanced for 16x9 TV's" transfer . . it will beat LD hands down. But without that. . . then you decide.
I think it is the anamorphic transfers on DVD that made things better, but the early DVDs were terrible. I remember looking at titles like Total Recall on DVD and choking at how ugly the pictures looked.

Strangely, I never considered not buying DVDs back then, I just thought of it like a tiny more convenient LD that didn't require me to switch the player to to side B. But some animes are one side only.

I've been transferring a number of favorite LDs to DVD (also some VHS) and I agree it's definitely a lot of work to author a nice transfer. One of the problems is that the optimal display settings tend to vary a lot with older LDs. The only way to get a really good picture is to make sure each transfer is optimized (brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, sharpness) before final authoring to DVD -- that takes a lot of time for me.

I usually find the LD has fewer search points than I would like (in cases of VHS, of course, there aren't any at all :)). So I just set my own chapters. The end result is very worthwhile, but no question it takes some effort.

I first tried it with video capture cards when I was a lowly engineer. Nowadays, I have much better industrial grade toys that I can deploy ;)

Yet, there's not much point. It's much easier to just buy the DVD (hopefully the BD soon), you also get all the extras. Time is money too.

That's not the one with the Doctor's dropped off by an airplane for a camping/hunting trip and they start getting picked of in gruesome ways, is it?

I think that's "Rituals". Only on DVD in a very bad German version.

Darn, I can't remember the details well enough, but it wasn't a gore/horror type film, it was more an adventure/thriller. I remember there being a chasm/river with a foot bridge across it -- the backpackers had crossed en-route to the woods. The killer became involved in the wood. I also remember a law officer who I believe was hunting for the killer. I think it may have been primarily a manhunt, but in a backcountry setting.

I really should remember the name, but it's totally escaping me -- haven't seen it in years, but it was pretty positively reviewed. If I could just remember an actor's name, but I don't think I ever knew -- just saw it on cable, don't think I ever had a copy. (If I did, it's hard to believe I would have been such a nincompoop as to erase it.)

Just Before Dawn???

Just Before Dawn???

Thanks for the try, but not judging from what the IMDB says : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082592/

It wasn't a slasher flick, had much more subtlety than that, much more story. I tried looking up some Reel.com "related" titles thinking of "Manhunter", but that didn't fly. If anything else occurs to you, I'll be happy to check it out. It's there somewhere :) !

I first tried it with video capture cards when I was a lowly engineer. Nowadays, I have much better industrial grade toys that I can deploy ;)

Yet, there's not much point. It's much easier to just buy the DVD (hopefully the BD soon), you also get all the extras. Time is money too.

Sounds nice, I'm using a Plextor ConvertX capture box that isn't perfect, but does very well.

The thing I like about transferring LD and VHS is that there are plenty of titles I feel either don't look as good on DVD or don't sound as good. The sound as good is a biggie since I find LD LPCM a tough act to follow. I prefer a high quality prologic surround to many a discrete surround DD5.1 I've heard :). Course, that's entirely individual preference.

Two example titles (of a bunch) where I prefer my homebrew DVD are "Eddie & The Cruisers" and 'The Wall: Live In Berlin" -- the second of the two transferred from my pre-recorded ex-rental VHS copy (totally killer :)). Another preferred LD transfer is "The Andromeda Strain", the DVD lost for me in both catagories (as it did also with "The Wall" -- yep, I think the VHS tape looks better than the DVD :)).

I think that's "Rituals". Only on DVD in a very bad German version.

I believe you are right.

Saw that the night before a camp trip when i ws a teen ager. Bad timing. Good flick. :)

The NHL thang is a good analogy in a way. The NHL is ultra sucessful in certain places.

I've seen many NHL games. During a visit, I went to a preseason game in San Jose, CA and I was extreamly surprised! Who would have figured, such a "newer" team to have such a insanely loud energetic vocal group. It felt like watching a rival playoff game with more established teams up in Canada or the East coast. :eek:

yep, I think the VHS tape looks better than the DVD :)).
I still sometimes prefer watching VHS of older B-grade horror movies and low-brow comedies for the rough drive-in feel. The dated, softer colors are how I remember them on video, poor cinema setups, and tv. The audio tracks are usually overly loud and unnecessarily bloated in the midrange but it serves to the camp value of the movie. Those analog hi-fi stereo tracks on video can have the unnatural warm sound of old valve amps that are fun for what they do. Watching older movies on DVD and HD/BD can be like watching a movie again for the first time with both good and bad perception based on how I remember seeing it and whatever attachment I have to the memory of the time or the tone of the era.

I still sometimes prefer watching VHS of older B-grade horror movies and low-brow comedies for the rough drive-in feel. The dated, softer colors are how I remember them on video, poor cinema setups, and tv. The audio tracks are usually overly loud and unnecessarily bloated in the midrange but it serves to the camp value of the movie. Those analog hi-fi stereo tracks on video can have the unnatural warm sound of old valve amps that are fun for what they do. Watching older movies on DVD and HD/BD can be like watching a movie again for the first time with both good and bad perception based on how I remember seeing it and whatever attachment I have to the memory of the time or the tone of the era.

The thing about the VHS HiFi tracks is they obey the same rules for recording as 1/4 or 1/2 track reel to reel. If attention is paid to the tape saturation levels on the high volume end, and the tape noise at the low volume end, the sound can be exceedingly linear and very high quality. Tapes that were pre HiFi were very much midrangy because of their limited frequency response (the audio track is moving the same slow speed as the tape), it's a very different situation for the HiFi tracks.

It's very easy for a HiFi track to beat the pants off of Dolby Digital -- just takes a little care during the mastering.

More of a problem these days is getting a good picture from a VHS tape. Most of the VHS decks are ultra cheap in not only price, but also in performance. There can be a huge amount of recoverable analog video information on a well recorded tape that most decks today can't even begin to retrieve. I used a friends old Sony to transfer "The Wall:Live..." and it totally destroyed the picture delivered by a brand new mass market JVC HiFi deck with myriad "nifty" features. The sound quality was also better. (The Sony was also mass market, but from a time when people cared about tape.)

I've seen many NHL games. During a visit, I went to a preseason game in San Jose, CA and I was extreamly surprised! Who would have figured, such a "newer" team to have such a insanely loud energetic vocal group. It felt like watching a rival playoff game with more established teams up in Canada or the East coast. :eek:

Hockey sure is popular in Dallas. When I visit there, my brother usually takes me to a game. Back in the md-90's when I visited, I was amazed at how many stores were renting LD's in north Dallas, the affluent part. Dallas was an LD hot spot as was Knoxville. Knoxville was an LD hot spot because Philips-Magnavox seeded the market. They used to be a huge employer around here. During the 80's they gave LD players as Christmas bonuses to their many employees. I always had places to rent and the University of Tennessee Library bought two copies of every FILM, Laserdisc that came out. They had players for folks to checkout to boot.

Philips' employees in this area also solved the LD edge glue problem. :)

I used to do a lot of damage on the Ken Cranes website back in the LD day, that's for sure.

I used to do a lot of damage on the Ken Cranes website back in the LD day, that's for sure.

Every Xmas . . . the owner of the Laserland stores (2) in Long Island would ask me into the store the night before Xmas, after he locked up and said,

"Lee . . .pick 3 LD's of your choice . . . on me . . my gift to you for your business."

Never rented . . . only bought.

I used to do a lot of damage on the Ken Cranes website back in the LD day, that's for sure.

I got their paper catalogs before they had a website....20% off list and no TN tax, si, muy bien! My dollars went alot farther and shipping was like $1.50 per order, say hay! :)

The thing about the VHS HiFi tracks is they obey the same rules for recording as 1/4 or 1/2 track reel to reel. If attention is paid to the tape saturation levels on the high volume end, and the tape noise at the low volume end, the sound can be exceedingly linear and very high quality. Tapes that were pre HiFi were very much midrangy because of their limited frequency response (the audio track is moving the same slow speed as the tape), it's a very different situation for the HiFi tracks.

It's very easy for a HiFi track to beat the pants off of Dolby Digital -- just takes a little care during the mastering.

In some ways, yes. Other ways, no.

VHS hi-fi is unlike linear analogue tape since audio in hi-fi is non-linear and contained within a frequency modulated carrier. In addition, 2:1 compression is used with hi-fi tracks for noise reduction. Same thing with Beta hi-fi, except recording method is different: VHS hi-fi signals are on seperate helical tracks while Beta hi-fi is contained in the space between the luma and chroma-under within the video carrier.

Hi-fi is prone to one nasty: switchpoint noise (a buzz at 60 Hz with NTSC or 50 Hz with PAL). This switchpoint noise can be more pronounced when playing recordings done at a slower speed and/or recordings from a different machine. Depending on interchange compatibility, the hi-fi track can be fine or it can be unlistenable with static even at best possible tracking adjustments short of altering the switchpoint setting and/or the tape guideposts. Dropouts that affect the video signal will also affect the hi-fi, resulting in static-type noise.

I have the second two of those three (MI and BH) -- I prefer them both over the DVD releases. Another big seller could have been "The Matrix", except it was really hard to find in the US (I understand that was the last title formally released here). I placed an order with a major nationwide distributor and weeks went by before a few copies came in -- I was one of the lucky ones (though I actually prefer the DVD version :)).

Actually one of the last titles to be formally released on LaserDisc in the United States was "Sleepy Hollow."

Jeez . . .got to blow the cob webs away from my memory .. .


I remember someone who made a player (started with a "W") that you would load 2 discs at once (had two drawers, one above the other) so you could play 4 sides without getting up to change the disc over.



That would be the Pioneer LD-W1.

In some ways, yes. Other ways, no.

VHS hi-fi is unlike linear analogue tape since audio in hi-fi is non-linear and contained within a frequency modulated carrier. In addition, 2:1 compression is used with hi-fi tracks for noise reduction. Same thing with Beta hi-fi, except recording method is different: VHS hi-fi signals are on seperate helical tracks while Beta hi-fi is contained in the space between the luma and chroma-under within the video carrier.

Hi-fi is prone to one nasty: switchpoint noise (a buzz at 60 Hz with NTSC or 50 Hz with PAL). This switchpoint noise can be more pronounced when playing recordings done at a slower speed and/or recordings from a different machine. Depending on interchange compatibility, the hi-fi track can be fine or it can be unlistenable with static even at best possible tracking adjustments short of altering the switchpoint setting and/or the tape guideposts. Dropouts that affect the video signal will also affect the hi-fi, resulting in static-type noise.

True, it isn't implimented in the same fashion as analog tape, but the rules for the VU level settings are the same and the frequency response easily exceeds 20 KHz.

Actually the audio does not have separate tracks in VHS-HiFi. The audio heads are merely aimed more deeply into the magnetic oxide.

I'm not clear on your differentiation with linearity. The use of a carrier doesn't imply the FM response to an input signal is nonlinear.

Just pulled this off a rec.audio site:

"14.19 How do HiFi VCRs compare to cassette recorders? DAT recorders?
VHS HiFi and Beta HiFi are analog recording formats which use
modulation techniques to record a video signal and a stereo
audio signal on a videocassette. The audio capabilities
typically surpass that of the "linear" audio tracks found on all
video recorders, thus the "HiFi" designation. "HiFi" is
essential for getting good sound quality on your video
recordings and out of pre-recorded videos.

HiFi is also touted as an excellent audio recorder for
audio-only (no picture) applications. Progress in HiFi has
modern VHS HiFi equipment on par with the best analog cassette
recorders and close to that of the digital formats. VHS HiFi
suffers generational loss and noise, but because of the high
quality of the AFM (HiFi) track, these generational losses
are minimal and not as severe as those of audio cassettes.

Many people use VHS HiFi for recording radio broadcasts, since
VCRs often have built-in timers and can record for up to 9
hours. If you use a HiFi video recorder to record from an
audio-only source, beware that some decks will not function
properly without a video signal for synchronization. If you are
interested in very good quality sound, use a deck with manual
level control."

That FAQ agrees with my personal experience of VHS HiFi. A remarkably good and under-rated audio recording/playback medium.

I still have a PCM adapter as well as the super dead format CD-MO. Not many CD-MO users. I've never really used VHS HiFi, for audio recording, but have use VHS, Beta, Hi8, for PCM.

True, it isn't implimented in the same fashion as analog tape, but the rules for the VU level settings are the same and the frequency response easily exceeds 20 KHz.

Actually the audio does not have separate tracks in VHS-HiFi. The audio heads are merely aimed more deeply into the magnetic oxide.

I'm not clear on your differentiation with linearity. The use of a carrier doesn't imply the FM response to an input signal is nonlinear.

Of course levels are adjustable and it has good upper range response.

VHS hi-fi does, indeed, employ seperate tracks. Two additional heads are mounted on the upper drum of the video head drum assembly for layering the left and right helical tracks at lower frequency before the video field tracks are laid on top. Conversely, lower frequency tracks embed themselves deeper in the magnetic binder while higher frequency tracks are closer to the surface, which is a characteristic of magnetic contact printing that depth multiplexing takes advantage of to make VHS hi-fi work and has nothing to do with how the audio heads are "aimed."

As for hi-fi being non-linear, this has to do with the recording method used and not with the signal itself. The regular longitudinal track is also known as the linear track. As the name implies, audio is recorded on one continually flowing track with a tape moving across the stationary A/C headstack. Hi-fi is non-linear because multiple tracks in a helically and rapidly placed pattern across the tape are what's used to record the audio, using the relatively fast writing speed of 1800 RPM of the head drum and half-rotation switching, which occurs 60 times a second with 1800 RPM for NTSC, to ensure a continuous flow to record at higher resolution than the slower linear recording method. In addition, hi-fi behaves differently when playing a hi-fi recording too fast or too slow: while altering speed of linear audio will alter its pitch, the pitch will never change with hi-fi (remember, the relative read-write speed of the head drum stays the same regardless of linear tape speed).

The following also excerpted from the rec.audio FAQ.

The HiFi recording format is subject to two different problems:
Head-switching noise and compression errors.

To get perfect reproduction, the FM subcarrier waveform being
played back by one audio head must perfectly match the waveform
from the other head at the point of head switching if a glitch
is to be avoided. If you record and then play the tape on the
same VCR under exactly the same conditions, you have a
reasonable chance of this working. But if the tape stretches
just a bit, or you play it on another VCR whose heads are not in
exactly the same position, or the tracking is off, the waveforms
will no longer match exactly, and you will get a glitch in the
recovered waveform every time the heads switch. This sounds
like a 60 Hz buzz in the audio, which is often audible through
headphones even if not through speakers.

The same glitch will occur in the video waveform too, but since
head switching always happens during vertical retrace, you won't
see it.

Some VCRs have azimuth correctors or Dynamic Track Following
which minimize these problems (Philips V2000 and some VHS).

The wonderful signal to noise ratio of VHS HiFi is achieved
through the use of compression before recording and expansion
after playback. The actual signal to noise ratio of the tape
itself is about 35 dB and a 2.5:1 compressor is used to
"squeeze" things to fit. Like all companders, this produces
audible errors at certain places on certain signals, such as
noise "tails" immediately after the end of particularly loud
passages.

Worse, compressors often have problems simply getting levels
right. That is, if you record a series of tones, starting at
-90 dB and working up in 1 dB increments to 0 dB, and then play
them back, you will almost invariably have level errors. The
trend from soft to loud will be there but the steps won't be
accurate. Two or three of your tones might come out at
essentially the same level, then the next one takes a big jump
to catch up or even overshoot.

For music, the result will be that the relative levels of some
instruments, passages, etc. will not be accurate.

This doesn't matter as much for movies, which tend to have
steady volume level. Also, movie enjoyment is rarely hurt by
these level errors. VHS and Beta HiFi is fine for reproduction
of movie and tv soundtracks. They are also perfectly fine for
non-critical audio applications. But VHS and Beta HiFi are not
serious competitors to DAT, CD, open-reel analog tape, or even a
high quality cassette deck.

I still have a PCM adapter as well as the super dead format CD-MO. Not many CD-MO users. I've never really used VHS HiFi, for audio recording, but have use VHS, Beta, Hi8, for PCM.

Definitely using a PCM adapter or an external A/D converter is preferrable to AFM hi-fi, although this would occupy the video signal.

And, another format we could mention in this case is ADAT.

Of course levels are adjustable and it has good upper range response.

VHS hi-fi does, indeed, employ separate tracks. Two additional heads are mounted on the upper drum of the video head drum assembly for layering the left and right helical tracks at lower frequency before the video field tracks are laid on top. Conversely, lower frequency tracks embed themselves deeper in the magnetic binder while higher frequency tracks are closer to the surface, which is a characteristic of magnetic contact printing that depth multiplexing takes advantage of to make VHS hi-fi work and has nothing to do with how the audio heads are "aimed."


While "aimed" is an interesting term, the audio heads do indeed have a wider gap in the armature compared to the video heads, which causes the lines of magnetic flux to target the deeper layer of the tape. This is in addition to the use of a different frequency subcarrier you mention.

This is separate from the azimuth of the heads, which is used for cross-talk rejection.

Of course levels are adjustable and it has good upper range response.

VHS hi-fi does, indeed, employ seperate tracks. Two additional heads are mounted on the upper drum of the video head drum assembly for layering the left and right helical tracks at lower frequency before the video field tracks are laid on top. Conversely, lower frequency tracks embed themselves deeper in the magnetic binder while higher frequency tracks are closer to the surface, which is a characteristic of magnetic contact printing that depth multiplexing takes advantage of to make VHS hi-fi work and has nothing to do with how the audio heads are "aimed."

As for hi-fi being non-linear, this has to do with the recording method used and not with the signal itself. The regular longitudinal track is also known as the linear track. As the name implies, audio is recorded on one continually flowing track with a tape moving across the stationary A/C headstack. Hi-fi is non-linear because multiple tracks in a helically and rapidly placed pattern across the tape are what's used to record the audio, using the relatively fast writing speed of 1800 RPM of the head drum and half-rotation switching, which occurs 60 times a second with 1800 RPM for NTSC, to ensure a continuous flow to record at higher resolution than the slower linear recording method. In addition, hi-fi behaves differently when playing a hi-fi recording too fast or too slow: while altering speed of linear audio will alter its pitch, the pitch will never change with hi-fi (remember, the relative read-write speed of the head drum stays the same regardless of linear tape speed).

The following also excerpted from the rec.audio FAQ.

The HiFi recording format is subject to two different problems:
Head-switching noise and compression errors.

To get perfect reproduction, the FM subcarrier waveform being
played back by one audio head must perfectly match the waveform
from the other head at the point of head switching if a glitch
is to be avoided. If you record and then play the tape on the
same VCR under exactly the same conditions, you have a
reasonable chance of this working. But if the tape stretches
just a bit, or you play it on another VCR whose heads are not in
exactly the same position, or the tracking is off, the waveforms
will no longer match exactly, and you will get a glitch in the
recovered waveform every time the heads switch. This sounds
like a 60 Hz buzz in the audio, which is often audible through
headphones even if not through speakers.

The same glitch will occur in the video waveform too, but since
head switching always happens during vertical retrace, you won't
see it.

Some VCRs have azimuth correctors or Dynamic Track Following
which minimize these problems (Philips V2000 and some VHS).

The wonderful signal to noise ratio of VHS HiFi is achieved
through the use of compression before recording and expansion
after playback. The actual signal to noise ratio of the tape
itself is about 35 dB and a 2.5:1 compressor is used to
"squeeze" things to fit. Like all companders, this produces
audible errors at certain places on certain signals, such as
noise "tails" immediately after the end of particularly loud
passages.

Worse, compressors often have problems simply getting levels
right. That is, if you record a series of tones, starting at
-90 dB and working up in 1 dB increments to 0 dB, and then play
them back, you will almost invariably have level errors. The
trend from soft to loud will be there but the steps won't be
accurate. Two or three of your tones might come out at
essentially the same level, then the next one takes a big jump
to catch up or even overshoot.

For music, the result will be that the relative levels of some
instruments, passages, etc. will not be accurate.

This doesn't matter as much for movies, which tend to have
steady volume level. Also, movie enjoyment is rarely hurt by
these level errors. VHS and Beta HiFi is fine for reproduction
of movie and tv soundtracks. They are also perfectly fine for
non-critical audio applications. But VHS and Beta HiFi are not
serious competitors to DAT, CD, open-reel analog tape, or even a
high quality cassette deck.

We're getting involved in semantics here and it's absolutely not worth arguing about. I'm fully aware of the physical location of the heads and what I'm saying is that there are no physically separate tracks and the way interference is avoided between the audio and video is by focusing the audio more deeply into the tape oxide layer (otherwise, there would be a problem).

I'm not saying whether or not there "can" be alignment issues (that is an issue for standard linear recording tape decks as well, only the particular mechanism you mention is unique to VHS-HiFi). My point is that I have been using VHS HiFi sound reproduction for years and have no problems with it's fidelity including in the bass. It can be excellent given an excellent source (obviously, a cheap deck will not contribute towards excellence).

A discussion of theoretical issues neither lends to nor subtracts from my point. As I specifically said, my quote above agrees with my "personal" experience of VHS-HiFi.

You can quote a series of case histories of dealer VHS deck repairs if you like, it won't effect what I'm saying.

PS. My quote wasn't meant to refute your mentioned potential issues, it was meant to illustrate my point. Hence the sentence: "That FAQ agrees with my personal experience of VHS HiFi."

Oh, by the way -- end of subject! (Or at least my involvement in it.)

PPS. Regarding the lack of separate HiFi tracks:
"Knowing that linear stereo placed limits on sound quality, developers came up with the present VHS standard--VHS hi-fi. But if the video, linear audio and control tracks took up all the space on the VHS tape, how did they find room for the hi-fi audio? The answer lies in a process known as depth multiplexing.

Put simply, depth multiplexing records more than one signal along the same area of the tape. To do this, hi-fi VCRs and camcorders use audio heads with a wider gap between the two poles of the head. This records the audio signal deeper into the tape than the video. The hi-fi stereo track goes down a fraction of a second before the video, which is then laid over the top of the hi-fi audio track (see figure 2). On playback, the video and audio heads ignore each other's signals. This advance gave true hi-fi stereo to VHS."

Rachael:

No matter . . . I remember you very well. Not only with your knowledge of LD at the time many of us barely knew how to hook them up.

The forum has changed and with it some of the people who reside here. In the 4 years I was with AVS, I can count on one hand the number of times I was "insulted" out of almost 2500 posts, and i have a three fingered hand (only kidding).

I now have about 750 between this forum and another I go to www.HighDefForum.com which is a much smaller forum but has a lot of knowledge . . .and are wiilling to share their knowledge with anyone who asks nicely and will keep everything to either a debate or a discussion. Like it was back in 2000

So in the 750 odd posts i have been insulted about 200 times so one out of 4. Even when all I am offering is help.

Oh well . . glad to see you are alive and well and still typing in Spanish . . . which I STILL can't read!

I hate to hear that but that is what the forum has become I'm afraid. Unfortunately, it has hardened be a lot such that I dish it out too now.

Art

PPS. Regarding the lack of separate HiFi tracks:
"Knowing that linear stereo placed limits on sound quality, developers came up with the present VHS standard--VHS hi-fi. But if the video, linear audio and control tracks took up all the space on the VHS tape, how did they find room for the hi-fi audio? The answer lies in a process known as depth multiplexing.

Put simply, depth multiplexing records more than one signal along the same area of the tape. To do this, hi-fi VCRs and camcorders use audio heads with a wider gap between the two poles of the head. This records the audio signal deeper into the tape than the video. The hi-fi stereo track goes down a fraction of a second before the video, which is then laid over the top of the hi-fi audio track (see figure 2). On playback, the video and audio heads ignore each other's signals. This advance gave true hi-fi stereo to VHS."

More like JVC copying Sony.

Beta hi-fi for NTSC worked through frequency multiplexing, where the AFM is placed between the luma and chroma carriers in the video signal. Betamax for PAL, however, had the same limitation as VHS did: insufficient bandwidth between the carriers, so Sony used depth multiplexing to layer two separate audio tracks underneath the video tracks to get Beta hi-fi to work for PAL. Of course, what worked for Beta in this regard would also work for VHS. - Reinhart

Hockey sure is popular in Dallas. When I visit there, my brother usually takes me to a game. Back in the md-90's when I visited, I was amazed at how many stores were renting LD's in north Dallas, the affluent part. Dallas was an LD hot spot as was Knoxville.

A local rental place "Premeire Video" (used to have two locations, at Mockingbird east of 75 and at Skillman/Royal Lane - the latter got closed down when the landlord at that location decided to turn it into a laundromat or something) rented LDs for years. We rented alot from the now closed location (it was closest to us) and the staff knew us by name and face. I got my plastic LD sleeves through the owner of the stores, after having rented the Criterion Akira LD and asking him about it, since my LDs that I owned didn't have anything beyond the paperboard sleeves.

They rented LDs for a long time and last I talked to him he has it all still boxed up. They rented video game systems too - they still have some Neo Geo hardware and software in storage, or did. They also rent international DVDs and videos and will rent out DVD players for other regions for those who don't have region free players. If they don't have something you can request it and they'll get it in. Don't know if they're renting either HD optical format yet.. I'm pretty sure they never rented D-VHS / D-Theater though.

Hrm, I really ought to stop by again some time.. but the Mockingbird location is out of my way (wrong side of the highway going to work and I get off at midnight so on the way home they're closed).

How was it not a sucess?

A local rental place "Premeire Video" (used to have two locations, at Mockingbird east of 75 and at Skillman/Royal Lane - the latter got closed down when the landlord at that location decided to turn it into a laundromat or something) rented LDs for years. We rented alot from the now closed location (it was closest to us) and the staff knew us by name.....

I know those streets. You live in the same general area as my brother. He easily could of rented at the same places. He's in business now down on Lovers Lane.....Rex's Fresh Seafood. :)

After all these posts, nobody seems aware or has posted that LD was a very successful industrial product. Back in the 80's & 90's, those TV sets in car dealerships with bright, clear images of cars booming and zooming...open the cabinet 'neath the set, industrial LD player. Those banks of TV's put together to form a big picture....usually a flock of co-ordinated LD players. Medical records, cell images, or info on LD's. Pictures of real estate, stored as CAV frames. That health program on the TV in the doctor's office, on LD.

If you needed an image better than VHS to impress folks, you went with LD. There were so many varied uses.

LD was the format for videophiles and film buffs. Expensive as hell, limited, and classy. DVD never really achieved that special feeling.
EXACTLY. And I have a feeling DVD/ HD will be the same. The mass public is happy with DVD, much as it was with VHS. Us videophiles and film buffs want more and will keep HD DVD/BD alive for the forseeable future until the next, "ready for J6P format" is created. HD DVD/BD is not it.

As for LD, I sold off my Pio 704 to buy the Tosh 5109 years ago. Kept a 604 around for light duty and it's served me well. Still fire it up every once in a while to watch JP or SW, but most of my other LDs have been sold as well. I think I have 10-15 left.

If we had stuck with it instead of the "sexy" DVD we could have Super HDTV (2500x2000) instead of our normal 1920x1080 HDTV.

Elaborate.

After all these posts, nobody seems aware or has posted that LD was a very successful industrial product.

They were also used in flight trainers and tactical simulations. Yes, hooked to Runco projectors. LD's were versatile, and most people who owned them, liked them.

So the companion question to the OP is: Was Laserdisc a Failure? Hell, no. Ipso facto, it was a success, then. That's called spin, boy. Now that we are using the correct mind speak, is/was HD-DVD or BD a failure? No Was Divx a failure? With a capital F. A very sorry fiasco, which even I bought into. Was D-Theater a failure? That is the tricky question. I wonder if JVC ever broke even.

One thing you can be sure of, Pioneer survived and even thrived on LD. I hope Toshiba can carve out a niche for itself. Certainly, this perennial also-ran needs something it can aspire to and be proud of. I wish them well. I have a vested interest, though.

Will anything ever top dvd? Not in the next decade. This is the de facto standard, and will be for a long time. Maybe as long as the CD, eventually.

Elaborate.

"real estate"

the LD is so much bigger than a DVD which means #1 no compression for a movie. 120 minute movie takes 300 GB of storage. With a blue laser, that would easily fit on an LD. #2 we could have gone to a higher format using the compression we have today again due to size. All size issues.

They were also used in flight trainers and tactical simulations. Yes, hooked to Runco projectors. LD's were versatile, and most people who owned them, liked them.

So the companion question to the OP is: Was Laserdisc a Failure? Hell, no. Ipso facto, it was a success, then. That's called spin, boy. Now that we are using the correct mind speak, is/was HD-DVD or BD a failure? No Was Divx a failure? With a capital F. A very sorry fiasco, which even I bought into. Was D-Theater a failure? That is the tricky question. I wonder if JVC ever broke even.

One thing you can be sure of, Pioneer survived and even thrived on LD. I hope Toshiba can carve out a niche for itself. Certainly, this perennial also-ran needs something it can aspire to and be proud of. I wish them well. I have a vested interest, though.

Will anything ever top dvd? Not in the next decade. This is the de facto standard, and will be for a long time. Maybe as long as the CD, eventually.

Was used in the maniframe computer center for "Image Processing" as opposed to Data processing. Kodak built a jukebox that held something like 500 CAV LD's so each frame could be a document. 54,000 frames per side - two sided.

Was ahead of it's time - Data processing had just started to use the word Gigabyte for 10 GB storage drives the size of a 30 cu. ft. refigerator - About 1983.

How was it not a sucess?

People may say that LaserDisc was a failure because it never achieved anything higher than niche status; it ultimately was a format that catered to people who wanted the best possible A/V reproduction at home for their movies when it was originally conceived of as a way for people to watch movies at home on a format that was supposed to cost less than pre-recorded video cassettes and equal to blanks at the time (although MCA got in on it to further profit from their film library that had nothing better to do than air on broadcast television and rot in the vault).

Of course, LaserDisc's growing pains was that replication quality was downright horrible and the first consumer LaserDisc player, the Magnavox VH-8000, was a piece of underdesigned junk. Even though LD was capable of quality superior to Beta and VHS, the discs and players that were produced at the time of introduction simply weren't made well enough to truly show that to the consumer; the average DiscoVision pressing looked terrible compared to the average pre-recorded video cassette mainly because of defects such as excessive dropouts and speckling, all due to the horrid conditions the discs themselves were being made in at the Carson, CA. plant. The only DiscoVision titles that were decent and reliable on average were those produced by Universal Pioneer in Kofu, Japan.

By the time that LaserDisc got its act together under full control by Pioneer, the VCR already became well-established, somewhat thanks to LD's rough start under MCA and Philips, with new venues to obtain movies cheaply (rental outlets) and an inferior videodisc format, the RCA CED, to make it more confusing for others. And, it didn't help that Pioneer didn't really do anything significant to market LaserDisc.

Now, this may help to explain why LaserDisc failed to be a mass market success, but it did succeed as a specialty format for the niche of people who demanded something better than what video cassette could provide. And since no other consumer video format could touch LaserDisc in terms of quality up until the advent of DVD Video, LaserDisc's place was secured for many years until its true successor was made available. If this niche for superior quality didn't exist, LD would've truly fallen to video cassettes long ago.

"real estate"

the LD is so much bigger than a DVD which means #1 no compression for a movie. 120 minute movie takes 300 GB of storage. With a blue laser, that would easily fit on an LD. #2 we could have gone to a higher format using the compression we have today again due to size. All size issues.

Definitely a possibility here since Japan had the Hi-Vision system, which was literally analogue HDTV.

Now we could imagine something that used the same kind of disc for a high resolution MPEG4 stream with Dolby Digital; a red laser would've been more than adequate, much less a blue laser, considering the sheer size of physical surface area available to carry this data on the disc.

With a blue beam, I'd imagine that it would be possible to carry the entire Star Wars saga, including the original Star Wars films along with their special edition remakes and all pertinent extras, within one disc. How's that for convenience, despite the 12 inch diameter?

After all these posts, nobody seems aware or has posted that LD was a very successful industrial product. Back in the 80's & 90's, those TV sets in car dealerships with bright, clear images of cars booming and zooming...open the cabinet 'neath the set, industrial LD player. Those banks of TV's put together to form a big picture....usually a flock of co-ordinated LD players. Medical records, cell images, or info on LD's. Pictures of real estate, stored as CAV frames. That health program on the TV in the doctor's office, on LD.

If you needed an image better than VHS to impress folks, you went with LD. There were so many varied uses.

And, don't forget, the discs were perfect since they inherently couldn't wear out. Repeated play with the wear-n-tear only on the equipment and not the software.

How was it not a sucess?

LD as a consumer format really, with all of its accomplishments (listed in this thread) was a failure for mass appeal do to two issues:

No recording capability


Side breaks and disc changes during a movie

I consider laserdisc a success and stil give the ol disc's a spin now and then.

*Sigh*

After reading this, I think I'll spin something on the 704 tonight.

Doctor Who is not in HD. It is done in widescreen SD. HD DVD has no region coding.

Though Torchwood, the Dr Who spin-off, was shot and edited in HD. It has some strange smearing though.

It was shot 25p (I believe) and posted in 50i (well the credits have 50Hz motion) - so I suspect if it were released on HD-DVD the issue would be more of 50Hz compatibility of player and display, not regional encoding.

(Some HD-DVD players sold in the UK apparently don't cope with 50Hz HD material yet - as people who have been mastering discs of their 50Hz HDV footage have discovered)

Though Torchwood, the Dr Who spin-off, was shot and edited in HD. It has some strange smearing though.

It was shot 25p (I believe) and posted in 50i (well the credits have 50Hz motion) - so I suspect if it were released on HD-DVD the issue would be more of 50Hz compatibility of player and display, not regional encoding.

(Some HD-DVD players sold in the UK apparently don't cope with 50Hz HD material yet - as people who have been mastering discs of their 50Hz HDV footage have discovered)

Here is an article addressing exactly what is being discussed - Dr. Who in HD:

http://www.syfyportal.com/news423426.html

Here is an article addressing exactly what is being discussed - Dr. Who in HD:

http://www.syfyportal.com/news423426.html

Yep - seen similar discussions. The cost of the effects shots, improved prosthetics etc. mean it is still not achievable within the budget - especially given the belt-tightening across the BBC where budgets have been cut, and are likely to be cut significantly more since the low licence-fee settlement.

Torchwood had far fewer "space" scenes, and didn't use as many "wierd prosthetic-based creatures" as Dr Who. There were effects, but they were less "physical" and more ethereal, and thus also probably a bit cheaper!

It would be a possible improvement if the show was shot 25p on HD camcorders rather than 50i on SD camcorders and flickered in post (using an Alchemist PhC standards converter I believe?) during the grade? Even if the show was still edited in SD - it would benefit the picture quality, and mean HD rushes existed, with an EDL?, for future remastering to HD?

Yep - seen similar discussions. The cost of the effects shots, improved prosthetics etc. mean it is still not achievable within the budget - especially given the belt-tightening across the BBC where budgets have been cut, and are likely to be cut significantly more since the low licence-fee settlement.

Torchwood had far fewer "space" scenes, and didn't use as many "wierd prosthetic-based creatures" as Dr Who. There were effects, but they were less "physical" and more ethereal, and thus also probably a bit cheaper!

It would be a possible improvement if the show was shot 25p on HD camcorders rather than 50i on SD camcorders and flickered in post (using an Alchemist PhC standards converter I believe?) during the grade? Even if the show was still edited in SD - it would benefit the picture quality, and mean HD rushes existed, with an EDL?, for future remastering to HD?

I swear they all must be close to blind in Europe. How they ever standardized on the PAL system with its flicker prone 25hz system is beyond me. Then to carry it forward into HDTV as opposed to somehow starting from scratch . .????

LD was the format for videophiles and film buffs. Expensive as hell, limited, and classy. DVD never really achieved that special feeling.

Hello Kram,

I have just joined this site.

I live in the UK and the number of Laserdisc Enthusiasts over here is healthy and still going strong.

I totally agree with your statement about dvd not achieving that special feeling!!

You are bang on the target about this and also the people who collect Laserdisc are also different and you tend to have great conversations also.

It was always a pleasure to drive many miles to purchase titles from a very few shops who sold Laserdisc's.

I now purchase a lot from the USA / Japan and still going strong with all things laserdisc.

From now until January 08 i shall be purchasing a Pioneer ELITE CLD 97 (new) USA and an HLD X9 from a seller in the UK ( this has taken a long time and hard saving for me.)

I am just a regular guy with a regular job that loves the format.

lovely to read about your thoughts also on this format friend.

Kindest regards

:rolleyes: :D :)

Sounds like your as bad as me with your collection of LD players friend.
It's good to see others that are into laserdisc as much as myself.

Have just joined this site and enjoy reading all of the threads.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Kindest regards

Nice thread and very thought provoking.

They may have added Component video imputs for the laserdisc players and that would have been interesting.

Kindest regards

The CLD-97 is a pretty awesome player, no other player could produce solid reds like it could, and the picture was super film smooth. However, I prefer the CLD-D704, 79, and 99 picture from the standpoint of sharpness (all three are basically the same player) and still an excellent picture overall. I think they may have been the overall pinnacle for a US player, but the CLD-97 and LD-S2 are both absolute classics.

The reall ultimates of course were those two "extreme" players sold in Japan at the very very end. I wasn't dedicated (or well heeled) enough to go there, but I read lots about them.


Hello Trevor,

I have just joined this site.

I live in the UK and the number of Laserdisc Enthusiasts over here is healthy and still going strong.

I totally agree with your statement about dvd not achieving that special feeling!!

You are bang on the target about this and also the people who collect Laserdisc are also different and you tend to have grewat conversations also.

It was always a pleasure to drive many miles to purchase titles from a very few shops who sold Laserdisc's.

I now purchase a lot from the USA / Japan and still going strong with all things laserdisc.

From now until January 08 i shall be purchasing a Pioneer ELITE CLD 97 (new) USA and an HLD X9 from a seller in the UK ( this has taken a long time and hard saving for me.)

I am just a regular guy with a regular job that loves the format.

lovely to read yabout your thoughts also on this format friend.

Kindest regards

:rolleyes: :D :)

Christopher, you picked two really nice players. I never owned a 97, I test drove the Macintosh clone once. I did have a CLD-95 for awhile which is pretty much a 97 sans the 2-D comb filter and Legeto Link audio. ...and it has the upside down lookin' remote. When I reached a place in LD collecting that I wanted to tweak my discs for my ever rising hopes and expectations, I got the HLD-X9 and LD-S9. I've never looked back. The X9 and 97, well, that a good combination too.

How are you gonna display LD"s. Do you have a set or projector that'll optimize 'em. I rather like LD's on a really good 32-36" tube. If you use a digital set, I'd consider running your X9 into a video processor and then go to component/RGB....I'm not so hip to U.K. TV's. Scarts are dangerous animals that growls, or did I dream that...?

I love watching stuff from the 30's and 40's on LD. Here it is 2007 and I haven't finished my Gable And Crawford Boxset yet, soon I say. Damn those hi-defined-nition discuses for distracting me lately! I have First Family out for a go. How's that one for you're too rude for DVD conspiracy? Will Gilda ever get laid, tune in next week for the exciting adventures of the First Family. ;)

My bread and butter on LD is stuff like Ruggles Of Red Gap, Sgt. York, Betty Boop, The Great McGinty, stuff like that, Academy Ratio. There's stille so many titles that never made DVD in wee-jun uno and maybe any territory. It's sad and even sadder if you don't have LD and give a blank.

What did that knight say to that dreamboat, yea, "you choose wisely". Hhave fun with your new toys. Oooooo-uh, oooouh, ooouh, you got an X9. Now if you can find a Muse decoder collecting dust somewhere, you can play them too. Way too many of the discs are lame but the good ones are intresting and a fun. My "Fishface", Okinawa Uunderwater disc bests any of the movies. It's stille amazing even against the new HD. Sometimes I play it with alternate audio....if you can pick up some Muse stuff cheap, it's fun to dabble with.

Enjoy! :)

I still go to the local used book store in search of LDs. (Half price books)

Infact I just bought T2 CAV, alien CAV, aliens CAV, raging bull CAV criterion, and texas chainsaw massacure CE (with high defintion superscan transfer, what ever that means).all for 40 bucks..
All were in near mint condtion. As if they were played twice then stored..

So I'd say the format was great..

I got into LD after DVD oddly enough. I'm on my 3rd player so far. Upgrading every few years. I've got the CLD-D504 now. Nice little player for 40 bucks.

I want to get an 97 and a MUSE player at some point.

1985, went with girlfriend to her dad's condo in Vail for a weekend of premarital sex and recreational drug use. Sometime after finding the bar, found the tv cabinet. Massive LD player therein. Watched The Warriors on laserdisc. Very cool.

Christopher, you picked two really nice players. I never owned a 97, I test drove the Macintosh clone once. I did have a CLD-95 for awhile which is pretty much a 97 sans the 2-D comb filter and Legeto Link audio. ...and it has the upside down lookin' remote. When I reached a place in LD collecting that I wanted to tweak my discs for my ever rising hopes and expectations, I got the HLD-X9 and LD-S9. I've never looked back. The X9 and 97, well, that a good combination too.

How are you gonna display LD"s. Do you have a set or projector that'll optimize 'em. I rather like LD's on a really good 32-36" tube. If you use a digital set, I'd consider running your X9 into a video processor and then go to component/RGB....I'm not so hip to U.K. TV's. Scarts are dangerous animals that growls, or did I dream that...?

I love watching stuff from the 30's and 40's on LD. Here it is 2007 and I haven't finished my Gable And Crawford Boxset yet, soon I say. Damn those hi-defined-nition discuses for distracting me lately! I have First Family out for a go. How's that one for you're too rude for DVD conspiracy? Will Gilda ever get laid, tune in next week for the exciting adventures of the First Family. ;)

My bread and butter on LD is stuff like Ruggles Of Red Gap, Sgt. York, Betty Boop, The Great McGinty, stuff like that, Academy Ratio. There's stille so many titles that never made DVD in wee-jun uno and maybe any territory. It's sad and even sadder if you don't have LD and give a blank.

What did that knight say to that dreamboat, yea, "you choose wisely". Hhave fun with your new toys. Oooooo-uh, oooouh, ooouh, you got an X9. Now if you can find a Muse decoder collecting dust somewhere, you can play them too. Way too many of the discs are lame but the good ones are intresting and a fun. My "Fishface", Okinawa Uunderwater disc bests any of the movies. It's stille amazing even against the new HD. Sometimes I play it with alternate audio....if you can pick up some Muse stuff cheap, it's fun to dabble with.

Enjoy! :)

Hello Rachael Bellomy,

Thanks for replying friend,

The seller in Japan has a number of mint Muse Decoders and also quite a few Muse Titles for sale.

I shall be dedicating 2008 to purchasing an HLD X0 from this seller.

He said that if i complete my purchase of approximately 45 titles that i have reserved with him, by the end of 2007 then he will give me a good deal on a fully serviced X0! (so i better get my skates on, but i am going to be hard pushed with the purchase of the other two players aswell.)

Am currently just under half way with my order with him.
It really has been tough for me to achieve all this and so can really empathise with others. ( i do not purchase any items with finance and only pay by carrying out wire transfers to the sellers.)

I will eventually be purchasing a scaler and a projector with a good screen.
It's been hard work and i am sure that i am not the only one.

Thanks for the message

Time here is now GMT 06:03, will be going home shortly.

I shall be working tonight thou and look forward to hearing from you.

Genuine regards

:) :rolleyes: :cool: :D

The NHL thang is a good analogy in a way. The NHL is ultra sucessful in certain places. Well, LD was ultra sucessful in Asia. If it hadn't been, well, it would of died in the 80's in Estados Unidos. The Asian market pulled the small U.S. market along. I didn't know this back in the 80's. Back then I kept thinking, when are they gonna stop selling these wonderful video discs.....

Anybody remember the LD karaoke machines? In my home state of Hawaii, they caught on during the late 80's - early 90's and caused a sizeable surge in the popularity of LD movies around that time as well. I remember being the first person in my family to have an LD player (a second-hand Pioneer top-loader I bought from a friend around 1984). By 1994, half my family had LD karaoke machines and we'd swap movie discs between us. From 1984 to 1998, I went through 3 players until I settled on a Japanese import Pioneer LD-S9 which I'm sure is the last LD player I'll ever own.

I used to work at an LD store in the 90's, I remember those too well. the store rented Karaoke, but were generally bitter about it. The discs and player would only rent during the major holiday in the US... I don't know if we ever broke even on the discs. Our collection was from the Pioneer import discs from the late 80's.

I remeber those top loaders, with the hard wired remote... It was my family's first LD player from around '82, the first three disc picked up were White Music, Tron & Star Trek II.

fitprod

I owned a laserdisc player and bought a lot of discs. I enjoyed my time with the format but don't miss it in the slightest. They were big, clunky things and I think that's what hurt their chances in the mass market most. At a time when you had music on CD-sized discs, laserdiscs looked like old LP's. While they offered the best picture and sound quality you could get at the time, they were still analog-based, and I remember many a dark-scened movie where I could see a lot more video noise than I wished to (which no doubt was minimized in better players).

It was a niche market, but a successful niche market. I see the current high-def DVD formats as being a niche market for the forseeable future (and possibly never breaking free from that). As with laserdiscs (as compared to VHS during their time), the added quality is most noticeable by videophiles with fairly large TV's, availability and selection of titles isn't great, and there's a cost premium. Laserdiscs were further hobbled by the fact that they also had some disadvantages as compared to VHS (e.g., you needed to flip them, or if you had a newer player that played both sides there was still a noticeable delay. The discs, while thinner than VHS were bigger in other dimensions, etc.). OTOH, DVDs provided a *lot* of advantages over VHS (aside from just picture quality) with no real disadvantages (in the early days, there were a few of disadvantages: limited selection of titles, need to buy vs rent titles, and $500+ cost of DVD player - all of these are non-issues now).

I think that the high-def DVD formats (possibly both of them) could co-exist as successful niche products. As player prices come down and more consumers buy HDTV's, their market will increase, and eventually one format will probably win out. But I don't see any sign of them being mass-market hits in the next 12 months, even if one format bows out (and especially if the one that bows out is HD DVD and all the consumer is left with is the choice of buying a $400+ Blu-Ray player or buying nothing at all).

True, the video was analog based, but the audio went digital in the late 80's. I'll have to do some digging to find out what the first disc was that included digital PCM audio.

Also, don't forget that Dolby Digital (AC-3) arrived on LD in the fall of 1994 with Clear and Present Danger, while the receivers finally showed up in June of 1995. A full two years before DVD's even showed up.

fitprod

True, the video was analog based, but the audio went digital in the late 80's. I'll have to do some digging to find out what the first disc was that included digital PCM audio.

Also, don't forget that Dolby Digital (AC-3) arrived on LD in the fall of 1994 with Clear and Present Danger, while the receivers finally showed up in June of 1995. A full two years before DVD's even showed up.

fitprod

LD's audio went digital in the early 80's. As a matter of fact, LD had digital audio first. Then the CD was born from the R & D that went into this.

And LD was the first to get DTS audio.

Still have about a dozen that have never appeared on DVD, let alone shown on TV.

True, the video was analog based, but the audio went digital in the late 80's. I'll have to do some digging to find out what the first disc was that included digital PCM audio.

Also, don't forget that Dolby Digital (AC-3) arrived on LD in the fall of 1994 with Clear and Present Danger, while the receivers finally showed up in June of 1995. A full two years before DVD's even showed up.

fitprod
And worth to mention is that several LDs came with a DTS track. Due to the high bitrate of them the sound is often superior to their DVD counterparts. One of my favourites is by the way Eagles "Hell Freezes Over" (DTS LD).

Lee,

Thanks for the clarification... I've gone through so many incarnations of films on discs it's tough to track all the older changes... Considering it's been 25 years, and that I was 12, it gets tricky trying to remember all the changes with LD.

tteich,

I personally think the Eagles: Hell Freezes Over DTS CD was better, since you didn't have any visual reference to associate with the mix. When I see a piano on a stage in front of me, and the sound comes out of the right rear channel it's really screwy.

fitprod

I still have a LD player hooked up. I got it at the end of 1994 IIRC, so it was a little late in teh game I guess, but man, was the picture quality better than VHS. There was also the special feeling going into the seperate section of our local video store and renting them, plus the ability to buy discs weeks or even months before the silly VHS people ;) due to rental pricing windows on VHS.

Of course, the discs are huge and the prices were high ( I remember being overjoyed finding the Star Wars Definitive Collection on sale for $200 and remember my wife buying the Beauty and the Beast Work in Progress special edition for over $100, plus regular discs were $35 usually), but it was a fun time.

Ah, the good old days... hard to find titles, bulky discs, beautiful cover art, storage issues, flipping sides, switching discs, overpriced discs, etc...

Even with all this I still kind of miss the old format.

DVD did not surpass LD quality wise initially, but as compression encoders improved and DVD9 became the norm LD was just too old and costly to keep around.

Hello Rachael Bellomy,

Thanks for replying friend,

The seller in Japan has a number of mint Muse Decoders and also quite a few Muse Titles for sale.

I shall be dedicating 2008 to purchasing an HLD X0 from this seller.

He said that if i complete my purchase of approximately 45 titles that i have reserved with him, by the end of 2007 then he will give me a good deal on a fully serviced X0! (so i better get my skates on, but i am going to be hard pushed with the purchase of the other two players aswell.)

Am currently just under half way with my order with him.
It really has been tough for me to achieve all this and so can really empathise with others. ( i do not purchase any items with finance and only pay by carrying out wire transfers to the sellers.)

I will eventually be purchasing a scaler and a projector with a good screen.
It's been hard work and i am sure that i am not the only one.

Thanks for the message

Time here is now GMT 06:03, will be going home shortly.

I shall be working tonight thou and look forward to hearing from you.

Genuine regards

:) :rolleyes: :cool: :D

I bet I got my Muse decoder from the same guy with an Italian name...? BTW, I got my players from Daniel at the Chinese Cclub in Hong Kong. I had 15 Muse LD's but I've sold 3. My advice on them is to avoid the movies and get the concerts and shows, like Fishface. I've never seen Muse using the X0. It's supoosed to minimize the annoying video noise on many of the discs. My fav Muse LD's are Stargate, Chaplin, and Jurassic Park. I watched Chaplin last week. Stargate rivals the Blu-ray disc to some extent. Jurassic Park has a few bad scenes on my X9 but overall it looks good. I'd rather watch it than the DVD.

I hope the 45 titles are not all Muse titles. I doubt there are 45 really worthwhile Muse titles. I feel sure there are not! I'd do Muse as a minor sideline, like me. The X0 is the best NTSC unit I'm told. I used to want one but figured D-Theater, HD-DVD, and Blu were more worthwhile in the here and now. I doubt I'll ever buy one now but....never say never!

Best wishes! :)

tteich,

I personally think the Eagles: Hell Freezes Over DTS CD was better, since you didn't have any visual reference to associate with the mix. When I see a piano on a stage in front of me, and the sound comes out of the right rear channel it's really screwy.

fitprod
Yeah, I agree this LD has *some* issues. I don't own the DTS CD, unfortunately. However, I like the way the LD is made, with the background story and all. It delivers a great live atmosphere with almost every title.

Ah, the good old days... hard to find titles, bulky discs, beautiful cover art, storage issues, flipping sides, switching discs, overpriced discs, etc...

Even with all this I still kind of miss the old format.

DVD did not surpass LD quality wise initially, but as compression encoders improved and DVD9 became the norm LD was just too old and costly to keep around.

If it wasn't for the anamorphic transfers DVD started to offer ("enhanced for 16x9 widescreen TV's") I would have never sold off my LD collection (800) and stuck with it.

[...] bulky discs, beautiful cover art,
[...]
Yes, bulky they are, but beautiful. And I have to admit, as bulky as they are, the boxes looks as expensive as the LDs are today. This gives you the imagination you get a lot of bang for the buck.

I consider laserdisc a success and stil give the ol disc's a spin now and then.
I. too, consider laserdisc a great success and still regret selling my LD collection. Alas, it was too heavy to move and took up too much space. And the fun was as much in finding new LDs of old films as in replaying them over and over. There were frustrations with laser rot and poor transfers but all in all they gave us and our friends many pleasnt evenings.

LD was the format for videophiles and film buffs. Expensive as hell, limited, and classy. DVD never really achieved that special feeling.
Sounds a lil like....
;)

I bet I got my Muse decoder from the same guy with an Italian name...? BTW, I got my players from Daniel at the Chinese Cclub in Hong Kong. I had 15 Muse LD's but I've sold 3. My advice on them is to avoid the movies and get the concerts and shows, like Fishface. I've never seen Muse using the X0. It's supoosed to minimize the annoying video noise on many of the discs. My fav Muse LD's are Stargate, Chaplin, and Jurassic Park. I watched Chaplin last week. Stargate rivals the Blu-ray disc to some extent. Jurassic Park has a few bad scenes on my X9 but overall it looks good. I'd rather watch it than the DVD.

I hope the 45 titles are not all Muse titles. I doubt there are 45 really worthwhile Muse titles. I feel sure there are not! I'd do Muse as a minor sideline, like me. The X0 is the best NTSC unit I'm told. I used to want one but figured D-Theater, HD-DVD, and Blu were more worthwhile in the here and now. I doubt I'll ever buy one now but....never say never!

Best wishes! :)

Hello Rachael,

It's good to hear from you and great to here from others that love the Laserdisc format.

As always, stay in touch ''it's always a pleasure with all sincerity friend''.

Muse titles that i am interested in are : Lawrence of Arabia / Close Encounters / A Few Good Men / Chaplin / Stargate / Jurassic Park / A League of their own, and a couple of others (i only aim to purchase about 6 to 8 titles, tops.)

All of the 45 approx titles are regular Laserdisc's a couple of squeezed AC-3 / others are mostly AC-3 and about 10 Japanese DTS titles.

Seller is Mr N. Santini

The other seller in Japan is Julien Wilk Lddb and also have approx 8 titles reserved with himself.

After these Laserdisc titles this should 98% complete my collection.

The other main titles that i am looking for are : DTS US VERSION DARK CITY / JAPANESE ONLY VERSIONS OF : THE SIXTH DAY AC-3 / U-571 AC-3 / TITAN A.E AC-3 and 1 or 2 others.

I really look forward to completing these purchases because this has now taken me the best part of 10 years with the Laserdisc format (love this format, as much now as when i did when i started in April 1998.

Sincere and kindest regards

:) :rolleyes: :cool: ;)

I still go to the local used book store in search of LDs. (Half price books)

Infact I just bought T2 CAV, alien CAV, aliens CAV, raging bull CAV criterion, and texas chainsaw massacure CE (with high defintion superscan transfer, what ever that means).all for 40 bucks..
All were in near mint condtion. As if they were played twice then stored..

So I'd say the format was great..

I got into LD after DVD oddly enough. I'm on my 3rd player so far. Upgrading every few years. I've got the CLD-D504 now. Nice little player for 40 bucks.

I want to get an 97 and a MUSE player at some point.

Hello homerx,

Good reading your thread friend.

I must admit ''when searching ebay i still come across half a douzen or so seller's that have many Laserdisc's that are brand new and unopened.

They all provide a good service ''as i have purchased from them'' the only thing of concern is the time it can take for the goods to arrive, but i am happy overall.

Lddb web site has a list of all the titles that suffered from disc rot, so i check this against those that i am still looking for.

Have just in the last few days received 4 titles from the USA (new, Unopened.) SNEAKERS W/S D SURROUND / RELIC AC-3 W/S / GODZILLA 1998 AC-3 W/S AND FAR AND AWAY W/S D SURROUND.

You got a good deal with your titles friend.

Good to hear from you and look forward to keeping in touch, even thou i am a stranger to you.

P.s Keep your hopes up friend about the Pioneer Elite CLD 97 and the Muse players ''i am sure you will have them at some piont''

The good news is that Pioneer have said that they will provide servicing of the hardware for some years to come.

Also there are a number of people out there that have back up players that have not been used. (these come up for sale on occasion on ebay ''i kid you not''

Take good care and again stay in touch.

:cool: :rolleyes: :D

Genuine regards

:) ;) :D

Christopher, I can help you out with a few Japanese LD's. I have a copy of U-571 that I don't need. I mean, I have it on D-Theater and HD-DVD at this point. If The Sixth Day was a bo-bo, and should'a been The Sixth Sense, I'd part with that one too. PM me if you want. I have about 25 Japanese NTSC LD's. There might be a few more I'd part with....???

I own two of the Squeez LD's, Cliffhanger and T2 THX. Cliffhanger has it's problem scenes with edge "enhancement" in overdrive in some scenes. T2 THX is the purr-fect LD as far as I'm concerned. I've seen several of the others and none of 'em approached T2.

Best wishes! :)

Christopher, I can help you out with a few Japanese LD's. I have a copy of U-571 that I don't need. I mean, I have it on D-Theater and HD-DVD at this point. If The Sixth Day was a bo-bo, and should'a been The Sixth Sense, I'd part with that one too. PM me if you want. I have about 25 Japanese NTSC LD's. There might be a few more I'd part with....???

I own two of the Squeez LD's, Cliffhanger and T2 THX. Cliffhanger has it's problem scenes with edge "enhancement" in overdrive in some scenes. T2 THX is the purr-fect LD as far as I'm concerned. I've seen several of the others and none of 'em approached T2.

Best wishes! :)

Hi Rachael

Do you know off the top of your head the titles that were released in the "Squeezed " format? (anamorphic transfer)

I remember The Fugitive, you have listed 2 more in your post. Any others?

Lee

Christopher, I can help you out with a few Japanese LD's. I have a copy of U-571 that I don't need. I mean, I have it on D-Theater and HD-DVD at this point. If The Sixth Day was a bo-bo, and should'a been The Sixth Sense, I'd part with that one too. PM me if you want. I have about 25 Japanese NTSC LD's. There might be a few more I'd part with....???

I own two of the Squeez LD's, Cliffhanger and T2 THX. Cliffhanger has it's problem scenes with edge "enhancement" in overdrive in some scenes. T2 THX is the purr-fect LD as far as I'm concerned. I've seen several of the others and none of 'em approached T2.

Best wishes! :)

Hello Rachael,

Sorry for the late reply! as i have just returned to my desk.

Time here is now 05:32

The Japanese version of U-571 AC-3 W/S YES PLEASE!!!! how much would you want for this and are you sure you would want to part with this??

I have THE SIXTH SENSE but thankyou.

Look forward to hearing from you.

I shall be going home at 06:20 approx, but shall return tonight at 18:00 approx and shall reply then.

Thanks Rachael kindest regards

:) :rolleyes: :cool:

Christopher, you have mail, well, a PM.... :)

Hi Rachael

Do you know off the top of your head the titles that were released in the "Squeezed " format? (anamorphic transfer)

I remember The Fugitive, you have listed 2 more in your post. Any others?

There's a complete list here:

http://www.mindspring.com/~laserguru/squeeze.html

There's a complete list here:

http://www.mindspring.com/~laserguru/squeeze.html

Thanks for the link!

A handful . . . as I remember. And some were given away if you bought a 16x9 Toshiba (I think it was) CRT TV.

Thanks for the link!

A handful . . . as I remember. And some were given away if you bought a 16x9 Toshiba (I think it was) CRT TV.

All the 16 x 9 sets and Pioneer's 16 x 10 set, well, they were all CRT, rear projection. Toshiba ran ads for their's in Stereo Review.

Christopher, you have mail, well, a PM.... :)

Hello Rachael,

Thank you for your message ''very much appreciated''

Kind regards :D :)

Hi Rachael,

I have sent you a PM also, I would be interested in the SS LD if Christopher is not....

Kindest Regards,

K-E-M

think i got a few LD's also if anyone's interested. some of the titles i remember having include jurassic park, yanni at acropolis, and one of the animal documentaries on predators.

think i got a few LD's also if anyone's interested. some of the titles i remember having include jurassic park, yanni at acropolis, and one of the animal documentaries on predators.

Hello jkcheng,

Sorry for the late reply,

If you could compile a list of the laserdisc's you have for sale, i will have a look and let you know if there are any of your titles i would like to own.

Hope you do not mind me asking?

Look forward to hearing from yourself.

Sincere regards

:rolleyes: :) :D

I still remember my dad's LD player that had an automatic flip to B side button.

LD was definitely cool, but I would argue it's not really a success. I mean I would compare them to ZIP disks. Definitely cool, way better than floppies, but never really reached mass market, and wasn't ubiquitous.

It wasn't always so idylic back then for me. I had a couple of harassers. One was rather minor but the other one nearly drove me away. He, I presume, was atleast a mild psychopath. I was actually worried he'd show up at my house. He got banned several tmes but kept sneaking back in.

I concur that, generally, the decorum was better back then though. I, too, tire from this combative excrement too. I wish folks would smart-up and unleash their wrath against the deserving parties, the various studios, instead of each other! I actually think that the fur-mat war is absolutely necessary and benefical. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning". ;) However, we have way too many members that view themselves, apparently, as format ninjas.... :rolleyes:

Another thang, the forum got way, way bigger. So, there's more good and more bad. Thanks for the kind words! :)

Nice to see that you are still around Rachael!

Well my opinion about what has happened with AVS can be found here (http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=749429) .

The tread got closed rather quick…

Muse titles that i am interested in are : Lawrence of Arabia / Close Encounters / A Few Good Men / Chaplin / Stargate / Jurassic Park / A League of their own, and a couple of others (i only aim to purchase about 6 to 8 titles, tops.)



Are you sure you’re only aiming for 6-8 and not 16? I could consider selling my collection of 16 discs including the ones you mention (except Chaplin). I throw in a HLD-X9 in mint condition and 2 MSC-4000 decoders free of charge!

The fact is that the machine should have less then 100 hours of total usage. I didn’t really plan to sell it, but let’s face it, it’s a pity that such a nice player is just collecting dust and is not used at all! Maybe it's better of with a new enthusiastic owner…

Nice to see that you are still around Rachael!

Well my opinion about what has happened with AVS can be found here (http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=749429) .

The tread got closed rather quick…

It's nice to bump into you bmwrob! :) The tail end of LD and early days of DVD were fairly good, tranquil times for us. You were looking around for a HLD-X0 for me at one point, remember in the corners of your mind...? That must of been about 2002...? I peaked at just 15 Muse LD's and never bought an HLD-X0. I moved on to the new HD formats instead. I got the D-Theater tapes, and stille make my own, before the little wed and blu 5 inch ones that are so bandied about....I looked at your thread and saw the sharks and piranhas, aye.... ;) ....any piece of meat will do! ;) Sorry, I've been there done that at another thread.... :)

This dark age will end when the format king takes his bride or a decent, cheap uni explodes upon the scene....who knows, who cares! .....I know I've quit caring what happens. It's gonna soon be put in joe sexpack's hands to see what, if annything.... ;) .....happens? Advertising has picked up in Estados Unidos....si? :) I've seen Toshiba's ads even on non-all HD channels. Blu has advertised on HD Net more than Toshiba.

Meanwhile, I stille play some LD's on my pair of 9's...S9 & X9. I've played Ruggles Of Red Gap, It Came From Hollywood, First Family, Sixth Sense (Japan), X-Men (Japan).....just lately. Best wishes from Laserland! :)

Anyone remember Pioneer LaserActive?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_LaserActive

Anyone remember Pioneer LaserActive?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_LaserActive

There was a record chain store that I frequented back then that had LD's and even a few LA discs in stock. Funny thing is, whilst there, sometimes I played a golf game on a CD-I display that was in this store for years. I never saw any local retailer stock the LA player or demo it, none of 'em. It seems like it's one brief, brief subformat. I remember seeing the players in J & R Music Wworld catalogs. That's the closest I've ever been to one!

Anyone have screenshots up close and far away of both formats?

It's nice to bump into you bmwrob! :) The tail end of LD and early days of DVD were fairly good, tranquil times for us. You were looking around for a HLD-X0 for me at one point, remember in the corners of your mind...? That must of been about 2002...?

That’s right it must have been around 2002. Back then Hong Kong was “flooded” with X9s. The X0 was rarer. I do remember that I found a few X0, but they were in a condition you wouldn’t have liked. There was another problem with the X0 and that was the weight of the machine itself. The HK post office had a limit of 25kg if I remember right. As a shipped X0 would exceed that, the only option then was to ship it with DHL or FedEx, which would be very costly 

I believe you also remember tkchan from Hong Kong? I never forget when he demoed the MUSE disc “Ordinary Europe” on his X0. Prior to that I had tried to convince myself not to go for MUSE due to the enormous cost of the discs. Well after the demo it was too late, I got addicted to MUSE (and also very poor…). The first disc I bought was “Dances with Wolves”. I believe I paid almost $400 for it. When my wife saw the receipt she thought I was crazy paying so much money for a movie I have already seen. I never dared to tell her that the price was actually in U$ and not in HK$ as she thought...

I found this old picture on my PC. It's taken from my living room in HK in January 2003. It shows back then three of my ‘9s”! Later on one of the X9, went to an AVS member in Sweden and the S9 went to the states.
http://www.rob-tech.com/private/AV/the9s.JPG

I left HK 2004 and moved to Thailand. Thailand is not such an AV nirvana as HK, but it’s actually not too bad. We even already have BluRay discs with Thai subtitles!

I still have three LD players here in Bangkok. One I actually bought in Thailand -96 (DVL-9). Then I have the X9 of course. Maybe the most interesting player is another DVL-9. A colleague of mine won it at a lottery his company had. It was a grey import from Japan and as it was a 100 Volt he couldn’t use it he said. When he left HK he gave it to me for free. It has never been used or even unpacked!

Nice pic's bmwrob! :) I actually have three nines too if you count my CLD-99... ;) Even I don't like to count it as a real 9. ....more like an 8.5 .

LD was the balls, man. It gave us digital audio, commentary tracks, the very idea of a special edition, all sorts of good stuff. At a time when 90% of people didn't even know what the hell widescreen was, people who really cared about movies and were willing to shell out the money for them were catered to extremely well by LD.

And I gotta say, it was before my time (I bought up some LDs and a player after DVD was released) but I kind of romanticize the days when the superior format was a niche thing and not a widespread phenomenon. So only the people who really cared had director's cuts of movies like Aliens and T2 and whatnot. Your average jackass only had the tape and probably had no clue that longer, recut versions of his favorite movies existed. For that reason, the LD releases of special editions were really designed to cater to film buffs, and I think that made them better (case in point: the fairly dramatic difference in relevance of the Criterion Collection on LD and on DVD), because the disc content wasn't basically being produced like it was a commercial designed to appeal to every assclown in America.

It's also an interesting format because there was so much divergence from the standard over time (inclusion of CLV, AC-3, DTS, MUSE, y/c filters in players) ... it was kind of like the wild west of home entertainment, and that definitely made it really hobbyist-friendly.

On the down-side, most of the even remotely affordable hardware was buggy and prone to annoying performance problems (especially if you wanted a self-flipping player...)

And, I mean, honestly: Big disc jackets are the sh*t.

I'm actually kind of hoping that Blu Ray and/or HD-DVD eventually becomes a similar kind of niche. I think that may happen, given how enduringly happy with DVD virtually all consumers currently are, and a widespread lack of understanding about the differences between DVD and the other formats. If most folks don't opt to buy an HD optical format, companies will know that if they want to sell, they have to cater to enthusiasts, and that, I think, would lead to a more tech-savvy, more film-buff-centric format. Sure, it'd be a bit more expensive, but, well, I'd be happy to pay a premium to have a format that caters more to me than to J6P, and you really don't have that with DVD at all.

I also prefer the LDs over DVDs. This is probably due to the great packaging of the SW SE, having a box looking like the death-star :-) , nice LD jackets, poster, and the great George Lucas book. A must have for the SW fan.

Regarding LD: there were probably more than 40.000 titles released on LD over the 25! years the format existed. Almost non-existent in Europe (except for a few thousand titles released in France and GB) it was widespread in the US and Japan. The last LD was pressed in 2001 I think, and many enthusiasts feel sorrow that not at least one single production line was kept to produce small runs of very rare and fast deteriorating discs.

I started collecting LDs probably 3 years ago which some of you could consider "crazy" given that the format was already dead at that time, but I enjoy the analog look of the uncompressed picture, and the great sound, if present in DD or DTS. I've collected 250 titles of all genres and I'm still buying titles.

Interestingly there existed a small number of Highdefinition-LDs (MUSE HiVision) --- around 100 titles. Picture format was 1920x1035i/60Hz. I own 39 of them and they look really nice on my HD-TV.

Here is a source for further reading: www.lddb.com

Hello tteich,

Have just read you thread about your preference with Laserdisc,

Titles produced in the US was about : 17,500. which finished December 1999 to early Jan 2000.

Titles produced in Japan was about : 37.000 which finished end of September 2001.

I have been collecting Laserdisc's since April 1998 and have in the last week recieved 11 titles from Japan. Julien Wilk Lddb

I am currently purchasing another 46 titles from Nicholas Santini, this will take another 5 months or less to complete, as i am also paying for an HLD X9 from a friend in the UK.

I love the laserdisc format for exactly the same reasons as you have described.
There is class about purchasing a laserdisc's that DVD / HD DVD or BLU-Ray just cannot match.

It's the handling of the disc's, the cover art, the exclusivity, the ELITE players and top Japanese Players especially CLD 95 / 97 / 99. LD S9 / DVL H9 / HLD X0 / HLD X9. Pioneer will be servicing these and other players for some years to come so there should not be any shortage of parts for a long time.

I am still looking for some rare Laserdisc titles : Japanese TITAN A.E. AC-3 / THE 6TH DAY AC-3 (have one copy reserved, but would like 1 more.) U-571 AC-3 (have 1 copy coming from the US from someone on this forum.) but would still like 1 more copy, and US version DARK CITY DTS (Looking for 2 copies.)

Keep in touch friend always good to hear from collectors.
I also enjoy the DVD and high def formats, although i am still waiting to purchase a pioneer Elite Blu-ray Player at some stage but what's the rush.

We all work hard for what we want.

Some people can keep striving for the next best thing and that's ok, but to keep selling software along the way is a waste of money and time.

I can understand going from VHS to DVD , as this was a large leap forward in picture and sound quality.

Laserdisc's Dolby Digital, DTS and aprox twice the picture quality (was a lot better than VHS anyway.)

Look forward to hearing from you friend.

Kindest regards

Mark

:) :cool: :D :eek:

I never plan to replace many of the movies I own on LD. Too many memories there.

I just watched my Spartacus Criterion LD a few weeks ago. Holds up pretty well technically, the film itself is a masterpiece. I gather that the new HD DVD of the title is a disaster.

Hello friend,

Just read your thread and totally agree with your views ''and i mean totally''

I started the av hobby back in april 1998 and the laserdisc format was my favourite choice even then, but never thought it would still be my favourite now.

I enjoy DVDs as well, but it's still not the same, I love the LD format the cover art, the handling of the disc's and the players. Pioneer hardware are my favourite.

Your right about the memories aswell !! a lot of good memories for me to.

I have the criterion of spartacus have not watched this as of yet, the reason for this is because a friend sold me about 70 Laserdisc's last july and a CLD 99 as he was moving to Spain.

He looked after his collection and everything is mint condition, shall watch spartacus at some stage though.

Good reading friend Keep in touch

Genuine regards

:D :D :)

It lasted almost 20 years. It had digital sound before the CD. It is still being used by Kodak in a mainframe computer image storage systems (CAV) as you could get 54,000 images per side with each their own frame #.

Seinfield was recorded onto LD in the last few years of the shows main run.

LS was available as HD-LD in Japan and was called Hi-Vision.

The first "enhanced for 16x9 TV's" was not DVD . . .it was LD (THE FUGITIVE)

If we had stuck with it instead of the "sexy" DVD we could have Super HDTV (2500x2000) instead of our normal 1920x1080 HDTV.

It brought attention to the P & S versus OAR issue (and with it brought the lovely black bars)

I have one LD left - Criterion CAV of BLADE RUNNER (out of about 800) and when BR comes to HiDef DVD, I am throwing the LD and the Sony POS 10000 LD player in the garbage.

SIDENOTE: LD was heralded as the highest consumer format available (425 lines) but that was not a truth. It was the highest playback format. Sony had introduced ED-BETA which was 500 lines.

I also believe that LD ushered in the birth of the big screen RPTV and started the actual trend of building HT's as a seperate room.

It served us VERY well both as a format and more important as a foundation to those formats that have followed like DVD and HiDef DVD.


Great post :) I still have all my Laserdisc collection and wish that it had made it instead of DVD's since we would be seeing even greater High Def if the media was still in use and replicating plants were all over the place instead of SD-DVD's..

Great post :) I still have all my Laserdisc collection and wish that it had made it instead of DVD's since we would be seeing even greater High Def if the media was still in use and replicating plants were all over the place instead of SD-DVD's..

They were good days, that is for sure. I loved LD and would have stuck with it except I had gone to 1997 CES and in my travels I met up with Joe Kane (DVE fame) and we started talking about DVD. I explained my HT to him and he told me of the large improvement anamorphic transfers would make on my system.

I got home from Vegas and started selling LD's like crazy before the whole world did. Got $3 to $5 a piece for most in 50 title lots. All told I sold my collection for about $2500 . . . and it cost me about $15,000.00.

I really have two LD's left. BLADE RUNNER CAV Criterion Collection and an Image title never on DVD or even TV - a french imported animation movie called LIGHTYEARS - made in France but an all English soundtrack - no subtitles.

And I probably won't throw BR out because the artwork is so beautiful on the jacket - Syd Mead stuff.

Long Live Videoscope!

Rachael:

No matter . . . I remember you very well. Not only with your knowledge of LD at the time many of us barely knew how to hook them up.

The forum has changed and with it some of the people who reside here. In the 4 years I was with AVS, I can count on one hand the number of times I was "insulted" out of almost 2500 posts, and i have a three fingered hand (only kidding).

I now have about 750 between this forum and another I go to www.HighDefForum.com which is a much smaller forum but has a lot of knowledge . . .and are wiilling to share their knowledge with anyone who asks nicely and will keep everything to either a debate or a discussion. Like it was back in 2000

So in the 750 odd posts i have been insulted about 200 times so one out of 4. Even when all I am offering is help.

Oh well . . glad to see you are alive and well and still typing in Spanish . . . which I STILL can't read!

Hello Lee,

I am a stranger, but have just read your thread and thought i would say hello.

Send me a message if you like, as it would good to hear from you.

I have been collecting Laserdisc's since April 1998 and am still collecting them,
Within the last 2 weeks i had a shipment from Japan of 11 titles.

I still have 46 titles reserved with Nicholas Santini in Japan, these should be paid for by January 2008.

Some of these titles are very rare.

Look forward to hearing from you

Genuine regards

P.S. I know what you mean about people being really nasty, i was a member of a site and the replies i had were very distastful.

:D :D :)

Lee, you should of saved a few LD's with purr-dy covers to frame as album art.

Hello Lee,

I am a stranger, but have just read your thread and thought i would say hello.

Send me a message if you like, as it would good to hear from you.

I have been collecting Laserdisc's since April 1998 and am still collecting them,
Within the last 2 weeks i had a shipment from Japan of 11 titles.

I still have 46 titles reserved with Nicholas Santini in Japan, these should be paid for by January 2008.

Some of these titles are very rare.

Look forward to hearing from you

Genuine regards

P.S. I know what you mean about people being really nasty, i was a member of a site and the replies i had were very distastful.

:D :D :)

Hi Chris:

I have seen you post sporadic posts on this thread. Always looking for people selling LD's and specific titles. Weren't you the one who also has a Hi-Vision system? If so I would love to know if you can compare the PQ to either an HD DVD, a BD or HD on Sky TV. Very curious how analog HD holds up to digital HD.

Just don't tell me you have Lawrence of Arabia on HD-LD . . please. It would break my heart to know someone (NOT ME!) is watching LOA in HD. IMO the finest movie ever made.

Would be nice to take a break from the format wars and post more on this thread. Re-live the "good old days"

NOTE: Thank you Supermans for reopening this thread. An oasis in the middle of the heat and dryness of the format war. What a great idea.

I hate to hear that but that is what the forum has become I'm afraid. Unfortunately, it has hardened be a lot such that I dish it out too now.

Art

Hello Art,

Just a frendly hello from a friend accross the very large pond!!

I know what you mean about people who can be very unfriendly on the forums, but never become like them as you are better than this.

Otherwise we only become part of the problem and only then have ourselves to blame.

There are plenty of other good people on this forum and others.

Get in touch as it would be good to hear from you.

I am working nights in the UK the time now is 02:11

Genuine regards

:D :cool: :)

They were good days, that is for sure. I loved LD and would have stuck with it except I had gone to 1997 CES and in my travels I met up with Joe Kane (DVE fame) and we started talking about DVD. I explained my HT to him and he told me of the large improvement anamorphic transfers would make on my system.

I got home from Vegas and started selling LD's like crazy before the whole world did. Got $3 to $5 a piece for most in 50 title lots. All told I sold my collection for about $2500 . . . and it cost me about $15,000.00.

I really have two LD's left. BLADE RUNNER CAV Criterion Collection and an Image title never on DVD or even TV - a french imported animation movie called LIGHTYEARS - made in France but an all English soundtrack - no subtitles.

And I probably won't throw BR out because the artwork is so beautiful on the jacket - Syd Mead stuff.

Long Live Videoscope!


Well at least you kept your favorites. I am most proud of the Star Wars trilogy on Laserdisc and Princess Bride along with Ghostbusters, Laurence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Robe. I watch all of those every now and then.. The Artwork on the jackets is always great to look at and it'll be something to show my kids down the road. It would be hard for me to sell $15,000 worth of LD's for almost nothing in return considering they don't take up much space. Well, in your case they probably did ;).. I would love to see a Pinoneer Laserdisc player with HDMI created just for enthusiasts. But I'm afraid that will never happen.

I guess I'll be hanging on to my Star Wars laserdiscs and Hearts of Darkness documentary for a while.

Is there ANY place that will buy laserdiscs these days? I still have a few I need to part with.

Well at least you kept your favorites. I am most proud of the Star Wars trilogy on Laserdisc and Princess Bride along with Ghostbusters, Laurence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Robe. I watch all of those every now and then.. The Artwork on the jackets is always great to look at and it'll be something to show my kids down the road. It would be hard for me to sell $15,000 worth of LD's for almost nothing in return considering they don't take up much space. Well, in your case they probably did ;).. I would love to see a Pinoneer Laserdisc player with HDMI created just for enthusiasts. But I'm afraid that will never happen.

Really? Sitting next to me is the latest issue of Sound & Vision - all about LP players!

Never say Never!

Really? Sitting next to me is the latest issue of Sound & Vision - all about LP players!

Never say Never!

The difference is they still make LPs. Although not many. But a few artists still put albums out. I see amy winehouse has all her stuff on LP as well.


But if any thing could come back id like to see the MUSE LD format. It could be an alternate to BD or HD-DVD..
1080p muse that'd be somthing. Although id guess it be awhole new player..

....But if any thing could come back id like to see the MUSE LD format. It could be an alternate to BD or HD-DVD.. 1080p muse that'd be somthing. Although id guess it be awhole new player..

Maybe Sony can do BD-MLD+ to assure quality for the disc's comeback? :D

Maybe Sony can do BD-MLD+ to assure quality for the disc's comeback? :D

As I recall their was a james bond movie with a LD based PC drive. If I recall james was copying somthing from it. So you never know. LD drives 3x the size of the PC.

I imagine if some one had enough money and time they could stream all the MUSE discs to PC then convert to BD or HD-DVD.
BD/HD exclusives way before their debate. I've always wanted to see the HD muse version of cliffhanger.

I've always wanted to see the HD muse version of cliffhanger.

Why? It's been awhile since I viewed it but as best I can recall, it wasn't close to stellar. I do remember that the Squeez LD looked almost as good.

Do you have an HLD and a decoder?

No HLD player or decoder. Id like to get one. But the prices for all the EQ needed is crazy.

But if the HD version look no better then the squeezze version. I may just get that as it would work on a normal LD player and WS set.


Hopfully their will be a BD version of the film then. One of my favorite movies. Its been all a few formats. as far as stallone movies I think first blood wins as being on just about everything..

IMO, one of the problems with the Muse LD format is that most of the transfers offered up were beneath the format. Hhey, it was the early 90's and even ordinary LD had the same problem.

The Squeez of Cliffhanger looks generally good but has some weak scenes where it's obvious they're trying to enhance the scene. You shouldn't see edge enhancement on LD but you do sometimes on Cliffhanger. I do recall that the enhancement attempst were in the same scenes for the Muse LD too.

I've seen or own several of the Squeez LD's and T2 THX stands above the others. Grab it if you want a good Squeez LD. IMO, it's the purr-fect LD. Cliffhanger is a few notches back. I own both.

Hello you two,

I shall be going home shortly time here is now 05:47.

Just been reading your threads and enjoyed them.

Genuine regards

:) :D

Hello you two,

I shall be going home shortly time here is now 05:47.

Just been reading your threads and enjoyed them.

Genuine regards

:) :D

Be sure and send me that 4200 pence and have a good nap..... :)

Hi Chris:

I have seen you post sporadic posts on this thread. Always looking for people selling LD's and specific titles. Weren't you the one who also has a Hi-Vision system? If so I would love to know if you can compare the PQ to either an HD DVD, a BD or HD on Sky TV. Very curious how analog HD holds up to digital HD.

Just don't tell me you have Lawrence of Arabia on HD-LD . . please. It would break my heart to know someone (NOT ME!) is watching LOA in HD. IMO the finest movie ever made.

Would be nice to take a break from the format wars and post more on this thread. Re-live the "good old days"

NOTE: Thank you Supermans for reopening this thread. An oasis in the middle of the heat and dryness of the format war. What a great idea.
Lee, sorry for you, but I have Lawrence Of Arabia on HV-LD :D

What shall I say, it looks great on 1920x1035i. Picture is a bit greenish in the beginning, and in case you own a HLD-X9 this adds up with the greenish output of that player, and you have to correct it on the display/projector. With the HLD-X0 it looks amazing!

Unfortunately, I cannot tell how the picture quality of LOA/HV is compared to OTA transmission. I'd guess in today MUSE HiVision movie transfers look a bit grainy and aged compared with the new digital media. That's because MUSE has some issues with analog sources (bad SNR for darker parts of the image, and the like). The "sceneries" and demo material available on MUSE LD look great. However, I'm the movie fan and have only a few sceneries, and no MUSE demo LD. I discovered MUSE HiVision a few years ago (long after the format was buried), and Lawrence Of Arabia became my very first MUSE LD. In fact, LOA/MUSE attracted my attention in HiVision. The movie is one of my all-time-favourites, and I'm happy to have it in HD.

In terms of picture quality, I would rate the different media as follows (from least to best):

DVD < NTSC-LD < Squeeze-LD < W-VHS < HiVision LD < D-VHS < HD-DVD

Okay, that's my personal taste, taking into account my preference for analog media. I prefer the picture of NTSC/PAL-LD over DVD due to the terrible block artifact effects on DVD. Nevertheless, D-VHS and HD-DVD knock out HiVisionLD easily without question.

Cheers, Torsten

p.s. here are some pictures for you friends:

http://www.h-plus-t.com/misc/loa-hivision.jpg
http://www.h-plus-t.com/misc/et-hivision.jpg
http://www.h-plus-t.com/misc/bttf-trilogy-hivision.jpg
http://www.h-plus-t.com/misc/hivision1.jpg
http://www.h-plus-t.com/misc/hivision2.jpg
http://www.h-plus-t.com/misc/hivision3.jpg
http://www.h-plus-t.com/misc/hivision4.jpg
http://www.h-plus-t.com/misc/hivision5.jpg

one of my favorite parts of HD-DVD is no artifacting. That was my number1 issue with DVD as well. it same cases it really takes you out of the movie. It almast like they crank up the compressing in some scences but not others. But prehapps its just the poor mpeg encoding used.

Be sure and send me that 4200 pence and have a good nap..... :)

Hello Rachael,

I am back at work and feeling very tired, have sent you a message!

Please let me know when you have received.

Hope you are having a good day?

Look forward to hearing from you.

Mark

:D :)

Seeing all those disc sleeves tteich posted started me thinking...

One of the problems with Blu-Ray/HD DVD is the cover artwork and cases aren't nice enough to display. Laserdisc sleeves just looked impressive, like vinyl records. I know people who have bought vinyl records, even though they don't have a turntable, just to frame and display the sleeve!

Another problem with Blu-Ray/HD DVD is, they are probably going to be too mass-market to be collectable. People who collected Laserdiscs had a certain pride in their collections, because the disks where often rare and expensive.

I used to be VERY sentimental with the majority of my LD collection. I wasn't quick to fully adopt to dvd and still bought laserdiscs over dvds (about 75% of the time) until around 2000. I must say, though, dvd has come a LONG way since the beginning -- my first player produced a picture that looked nearly vhs at times. In fact, the RCA deck I bought as an 'early adopter' to test the waters only came with s-video and composite outputs as a $399 player (one of the cheapest at the time that I recall). Players today like the Oppo's and the Toshiba HD-A1/A2 really push the dvds I have to looking incredible for what they are. Granted, LD can nearly match an anamorphic dvd in PQ but it takes a player on par with a $2500 (or more) X9/X0 machine to get those results and even with over 500 LDs, I don't care to spend that kind of money for one. Even a few of my really rare LDs, like End of Days and Sleepy Hollow, I've parted with in favor of the HD disc as I know I'll never watch the LD again.

Hello to you all,

I was advised to contact the following Pioneer location in order to purchase the following.

I have been sending a number of emails to Pioneer in Belgium, but these have not been returned and no reply.

There must be someone on this forum who can get hold of these for me, or may work for Pioneer. I would of course pay for these if someone can help.

I am looking for Service Manuals for the following Laserdisc Players i.e....
PIONEER JAPANESE ONLY PLAYERS HLD X0 / X9 / DVL H9 / LD S9.
PIONEER USA ONLY PLAYERS ELITE CLD 97 / 99 / DVL 91.

Please can somebody help myself as i want to take care of my investment.

I look forward to hearing from yourselves

Genuine and sincere regards

Mark :eek::eek::eek::eek::)

Christopher, I have copies of the LD-S9 service manual that I made for folks years ago and then they backed out leaving me holding the bag. I may have an extra copy of the X9's but I have not found one yet.

Weren't you the one who also has a Hi-Vision system? If so I would love to know if you can compare the PQ to either an HD DVD, a BD or HD on Sky TV. Very curious how analog HD holds up to digital HD.

Just don't tell me you have Lawrence of Arabia on HD-LD . . please. It would break my heart to know someone (NOT ME!) is watching LOA in HD. IMO the finest movie ever made.


There are a few of us (Rachael) that have/had MUSE set ups.

LOA was average at best in terms of PQ on the MUSE system, the newer version that was broadcast on BS in Japan had significantly better color and detail.

In fact, other than the scenery discs, many MUSE movies looked terrible and in some cases, not better than their DVD counter parts. I say most, and while some movies have really good scenes, MUSE movies fell apart either at the transfer level (first time HD transfers were done), or in the compression.

Dark scenes tended to be devoid of detail, and often ridden with MUSE artifacts (a very grainy look). Some of the worst transfers were the early ones: Top Gun (so dark it's unwatchable), Bugsy, League of their own...very dark, very grainy, very soft pictures.

Later transfers were a bit better - Cliffhangar, Jumanji, E.T. In fact, I did a comparison with the 720p OTA broadcast, the MUSE version, and the DVD - all three looked incredibly close, with the MUSE version being a tad noisier. I can't find my screen grabs, but I did one comparing MUSE/DVD/BS broadcast of Close Encounters, and the MUSE disc had more detail than the DVD (but not as detailed as the broadcast), but looked muddy in comparison.

Most of the movies had a green-ish tinge to them, mainly on flesh tones and dark scenes. I tried most of the decoders (Panasonic, Sony, JVC) and the only time I saw the green-ish tinge minimized (or gone in some cases) is only when played back with the Pioneer X0 player.


Just as DVD was coming on-line, MUSE died - bummer as it had so much potential. MUSE had one of the first multi-channel systems: 3-2 A-Channel which featured left, center, right, and mono-surround channels (all at 32Khz); Every disc but one that had this A-Channel system (movies except Tahiti scenery disc I believe) also had a 2 channel dolby encoded PCM track. B-Channel discs had a compressed on disc 2-channel dolby encoded 48KHz PCM track (once decoded on the MUSE decoder, could be fed into any receiver). The bummer with the A-Channel system is you needed to feed it analog into a multi-channel analog input receiver ->or<- to have TWO receivers, each would decode a channel from A-Channel track (Channel 1 had left/right; Channel 2 had Center/Surround). No receiver was ever released in Japan that accomodated two simultaneous digital inputs.

Anyway, with mastering techniques, the B-Channel track, and possibly putting a DTS track on the PCM side, drop the prices, and MUSE could have been a nice niche format.

I think my favorite movie picture wise was Dances with Wolves (although the outdoor scenes in River Runs Through It were amazing in detail). Cliffhanger also had some great looking outdoor shots. Just as the format (mainly the transfers and mastering) were starting to shine, the plug was pulled.

Christopher, I have copies of the LD-S9 service manual that I made for folks years ago and then they backed out leaving me holding the bag. I may have an extra copy of the X9's but I have not found one yet.

Hello Rachael,

You are a diamond friend! I will have these off you and will discuss prices.

Thank you for replying to my request and look forward to your reply.

A genuine pleasure to hear from yourself as usual.

kindest regards

Mark B-E :D:D

How does laserdisc penetration compare at it's peak to HDM now? I'm looking for a percentage of the market.

Thanks

How does laserdisc penetration compare at it's peak to HDM now? I'm looking for a percentage of the market.

Thanks

I suspect LD was a bit more. LD's high-point was between 2 - 4% , depending on who's reseach you looked at. The thing about LD was that it's supourt was so uneven. LD had a big home base going in Kalafornie. The big cities were mostly hotspots and most rurual areas cold spots. Dallas was a hotspot. I remember drivin' with my brother around north Dallas back in the 90's and being suprised how many shops had LD rental lights in their windows. Knoxville was a hotspot because Philips-Maganavox seeded the market with players for their employees. In the 80 's and 90's they employed alot of folks in east Tennessee.

Here's how I scored my first player in '86. A guy who fixed stereos that I went to, ran a little salvage business of odd electronics. He had a deal with a guy that got all of the local Service Merchandise damaged stuff. This guy had two salavages stores in two small rural towns. He couldn't sell this LD player out in the country. So, ended up in my bud's store for $150 without box, remote, and manual. I'd been shopping for LD and this deck, the LD-838D was $450-$500. I found out the remote would cost me $51...! The deck lacked extensive faceplate controls. You need the remote.

They were hard up to sell it and took my $100 offer. On the way home I got Clan Of The Cave Bear and The Rutles as my first LD's. Mainly, I picked those two because they were on sale, well off list. The Clan Of disc went bad but not by regular rot. It developed multiple places with blue horizontal lines and crud in the audio at the bad spots. The Rutles stille plays fine for an 80's LD, no rot.

Soon, I was a desperate LD-a-holic mail-orderin' from Kalifornie! Who is Ken Crane?.... ;)

I'd guess that HD penetration is more evenly distributed, even if it's stille bigger in cities....??? Nutzflix-internutz effect, aye.... I'd say it'll be a big deal and good omen when HD-DVD and Blu combined could hit 3-4% marketshare and beat LD's approximate marketshare por Estados Unidos. That's a stick on the mud. Watchin' the river rise....

LD was a big success for me.

I saw my first LD in 1979 and bought my first player, a Pioneer VP-1000 in October 1981. For the first ten years, most folks who saw my rig hadn't a clue about what laser discs were. I remember showing one girl from the UK my LD collection in the mid 80s and she kept saying, "Oh, I love the music from this movie!" and so on. It at last dawned on me she didn't realize they were the movies themselves. She caught on fast after that though, as I recall.

I went through 2 generations of discs (P&S, then LB) and 3 players, still have the last one along with about 90 discs. I've had about 5% laser rot overall.

Hadn't watched the old Criterion 6 disc CAV of Kubrick's 2001 in years and was sad last weekend to see laser rot had cropped up on disc 3, both sides and visible under a light too.

My copy of La Dolce Vita is unwatchable from rot. 8 1/2 looks like it did new. Most of the discs I have still look stunning.

I think the last LD I bought was the Criterion of Notorious in 2000 and I remember saying to the salesperson, "This is probably the last laserdisc I'll ever buy..."

I have lots of DVDs, I'd say the average quality of DVD is a bit lower (for reasons we all know about), but MPEG encoding techniques have gotten very slick.

I think the last LD I bought was the Criterion of Notorious in 2000 and I remember saying to the salesperson, "This is probably the last laserdisc I'll ever buy..."

Must have been a used one if you bought it in 2000. Criterion quickly dumped LD somewhere around 1997 or so. Maybe earlier.

Not quite sure what their big hurry was.

Hello Rachael,

You are a diamond friend! I will have these off you and will discuss prices.

Thank you for replying to my request and look forward to your reply.

A genuine pleasure to hear from yourself as usual.

kindest regards

Mark B-E :D:D


I've yet to even find my copy of the X9 stuff. I have three copies of the S9. They're leftovers from those who backed out when I printed 'em, oh 5-6 years ago. Ya'all knows who's you's be'es! PM me some time. I'll look around more for the X9 manual. It's hiding.....:)

I just inherited a Laser Disk player (actually a karaoke LD player which can play LD disks - Pioneer CLD-V870) from my in-laws and have been looking at picking up a couple of films just to give them a spin as it were.

Any advice on the best titles as regards AQ & PQ?

I just inherited a Laser Disk player (actually a karaoke LD player which can play LD disks) from my in-laws and have been looking at picking up a couple of films just to give them a spin as it were.

Any advice on the best titles as regards AQ & PQ?

My #1 would be Criterion Close Encounters 3-disk box set but I'll be getting the blu-ray when it comes out in November.

That LD beats the current DVD in picture quality. Just about all LDs have better sound than any DVD, especially for 2 channel sound.

Must have been a used one if you bought it in 2000. Criterion quickly dumped LD somewhere around 1997 or so. Maybe earlier.

Not quite sure what their big hurry was.


It was new, I guess it had been in the store for a few years then. Wonderful transfer. I'd had the Discovision version years before and it was like watching a different movie.

I suspect LD was a bit more. LD's high-point was between 2 - 4% , depending on who's reseach you looked at.

Thank you kindly!

......Hadn't watched the old Criterion 6 disc CAV of Kubrick's 2001 in years and was sad last weekend to see laser rot had cropped up on disc 3, both sides and visible under a light too.......My copy of La Dolce Vita is unwatchable from rot. 8 1/2 looks like it did new. Most of the discs I have still look stunning.

HLD-X9's red laser can read rotted discs fairly well till they get really bad. I have some early 80's LD's that look like silent, blank video tape on ordinary players. The X9 can pull a mostly B & W image out'a the most rotted stuff. IMO, 1981-82 discs seem to rot worse than late 70's DiscoVision LD's. The LD-S2 has some kind of better laser diode, maybe gas diode, that's supposed to see through rot some...? I've never had an S2, yet! ;) I used to want one to play my music LD's on a stereo. Ya never can tell....

Rot is U-G-L-Y on regular players...video snow globes! Yuck-a-tosis!

...IMO, 1981-82 discs seem to rot worse than late 70's DiscoVision LD's.

Come to think of it I think that may be true. Most of the rot I've seen has been with discs made in the early 80s (and I was a bit shocked to see it in the Criterion 2001 from 1988). I have 2 Discovision discs left, the Moon is Blue (or is that one Magnetic Video? same trick though) and Abba and they're both clean. Another one with rot is my Japanese LB of Star Wars, likely pressed in 87.

My #1 would be Criterion Close Encounters 3-disk box set but I'll be getting the blu-ray when it comes out in November.

Somebody gave me a copy of that box last year. Somebody I met on this forum gave me 90 LD's a few years back. Some peoples no want-y their large guage discs no mo'!

It's a cool disc....C-A-V! I'd hoped LD might linger as a CAV format for folks studyin' films for awhile. Didn't happen. I'm gonna get the BD also.

It's a cool disc....C-A-V!

I've got a Paramount LB of Chinatown with side 3 in CAV. Amazing (the CLV sides 1 and 2 don't slouch either). I like those big gauge discs! Hard to believe I've had a few of them for 25 years now.

My #1 would be Criterion Close Encounters 3-disk box set but I'll be getting the blu-ray when it comes out in November.

That LD beats the current DVD in picture quality. Just about all LDs have better sound than any DVD, especially for 2 channel sound.

Excellent.

I just placed a bid on a copy on ebay. Hopefully I'll win it and can see what it is like.

I also put a bid in on a set of the Star Wars Trilogy (the inner geek in me just had to bid on it).

I also looked at LD player prices and was a bit shocked to see that some players still fetch a fair bit of cash.

I guess that there is still a demand out there after all.

Come to think of it I think that may be true. Most of the rot I've seen has been with discs made in the early 80s (and I was a bit shocked to see it in the Criterion 2001 from 1988). I have 2 Discovision discs left, the Moon is Blue (or is that one Magnetic Video? same trick though) and Abba and they're both clean. Another one with rot is my Japanese LB of Star Wars, likely pressed in 87.

All of the DiscoVision discs are by definition rotted, 100%. They must of used a different process for DiscoVision because they don't seem to detiorate as much, ultimately. I have about 50 DiscoVision discs. The ones that won't play through are because of bad scapes, seemingly.

I talked to the folks who solved the glue problem for LD's and CD's in the early 80's. I met a guy who worked at Magnavox at a party, oh, about '84. he filled me in on how the edge-seal glue they used originally was oxidizing and releasing the brethable stuff right into the disc's interiors. I told him I was gonna get a player. He told me '83 titles were split between the good and bad glue. He said the 80-82 discs were generally defective.

What he told me served me well when I was trading in used LD's in the 80's and 90's....check the date!

I guess that there is still a demand out there after all.

Hope so. If my player ever gasps, I may be able to do something about it! Sad nobody presses the discs anymore though. It'd be helpful if there was like, one little jobber factory somewhere in the world.

They must of used a different process for DiscoVision...

I think there have been 2 or 3 separate problems leading to ox slipping between the laminations. Dodgy glue composition I'm sure, but in my thinking, it seems like only either loose seals (misapplication of the glue) or a different composition problem could explain a disc suddenly giving it up to rot after being clean for 20 years.

Hope so. If my player ever gasps, I may be able to do something about it! Sad nobody presses the discs anymore though. It'd be helpful if there was like, one little jobber factory somewhere in the world.

That there would costitute an "annie log ho". ;)


BTW, many LD's have a CAV side. On The Fugitive, it's the trainwreck, side 1. On Star Trek Generations, I think it was side 2 when they crashed the Enterprise in the high sierra. The Criterion CAV's of Blade Runner, Forbidden Pplanet, and Robinson Crusoe On Mars are all winners. Alot of short films have side 2 in CAV. The Journey Into The Mind's Eye with Thomas Dolby for music, to accompany the animation, is all CAV. It came reg-lar and in DTS audio. It's got some amazing stuff to study frame by frame.

I think there have been 2 or 3 separate problems leading to ox slipping between the laminations. Dodgy glue composition I'm sure, but in my thinking, it seems like only either loose seals (misapplication of the glue) or a different composition problem could explain a disc suddenly giving it up to rot after being clean for 20 years.

If a disc warps, it can pull the disc seal apart. Also, hard shots on the edge can break the seal. I know this from dropping one that hit hard enough to do so.