Laserdisc

[Cobra!]

For those not in the know, Laserdisc was a movie format that competed with VHS throughout the 80s, 90s, and very early 2000s. They were these massive discs the size of vinyl records that played analogue video, and were basically DVD quality.

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I recently got myself a Laserdisc player and a few films on the format, and I love it! With some discs (CAV encoded ones to be exact), you can even play about with play speeds both forward and backwards, and going to specific frames of the disc!

Above all, they're just so cool to look at and handle! Not to mention the awesome art work on the covers!

Has anyone ever had experience with this format?

[Melooon]

Laser discs are hella cool! I have one of the Terminator purely for decoration! They are just like DVDs but HUGE (and old!)

[Cobra!]

Yeah, sometimes I get Laserdiscs just for the art. The film is just a bonus half the time! :p

[Melooon]

Send a picture of your setup/collection, it would be cool to see! Do you have it permanently setup/ready to use?

[Cobra!]

Sure. My player is a Pioneer CLD-950. It's a very low end player, and the only one I could afford in the now-inflated market of players, and I need to manually flip the discs, but it does the job! It plays both PAL and NTSC discs, and CLV/CAV.


I've attached a photo of my collection as of right now. I'm on the lookout for a PAL copy of Die Hard.

[Melooon]

Ooo I like the 5th Element disc! That's one of my all time favourite movies

[Guest]

This is a very interesting peace of history and very revolutionary!

Unfortunately, I never owned a laserdisc player and even then I don't think it would be much use to buy a laserdisc so I can view for myself. However, to add to the conversation I did find a video about HD laserdisc.

Here is the video:

[Cobra!]

Ooo I like the 5th Element disc! That's one of my all time favourite movies

Yeah, I love it! I own it on Widescreen VHS and Laserdisc, and hope to get it on UHD Blu-Ray, too!

Though you have to be careful when getting it on Laserdisc, since it's a known rotter (meaning it's very susceptible to disc-rot), unless you get a Pioneer pressing. (which thankfully I did)

Unfortunately, I never owned a laserdisc player and for a guy that primarily uses steaming to watch movies I don't think it would be much use to buy a laserdisc so I can view for myself.

Yeah, you'd have to be a sucker for old tech and media like me to even be interested, tbh. Especially with the prices players go for now...

However, to add to the conversation I did find a video about HD laserdisc.

Yeah, analogue video was doing HD a full decade and a half before digital got there! Makes me wonder how quickly it would have reached 4K if people didn't ditch it altogether.

[easy_breezy]

I'm too young to have had a lazerdisk in my youth. I always assumed they were basically DVDs but bigger and with less storage.

How do they even work anyway? Are they analog like VHS?

[Cobra!]

You're not too far off with your assumption. Laserdisc was the predecessor to DVD, and many of the technologies behind LD ended up in DVDs.

LDs have an analogue composite signal. It works similar to DVDs, but the pits represent points in a signal rather than bits of data.

The quality I'd say is about the same or even slightly better than DVD in theory, but most films were released in letterboxed format, as opposed to DVD using anamorphic widescreen (where it's only stretched/squeezed horizontally), so most discs won't look as good.

However, a few "squeeze LDs" were released in Japan, and it's said the quality is pretty much exactly the same as a DVD.

There were a few programs released on LD, most notable BBC's Doomsday program. It's said that these LDs stored about 1GB of data per side, so yeah, it was bigger and less space than a DVD.

[easy_breezy]

There were a few programs released on LD, most notable BBC's Doomsday program. It's said that these LDs stored about 1GB of data per side, so yeah, it was bigger and less space than a DVD.

So, in theory, someone could've made a Lazer Disc based video game console? Knowing the wild west approach to tech in the 80s, I wouldn't be surprised if someone considered that

[Cobra!]

So, in theory, someone could've made a Lazer Disc based video game console?

Pioneer did, in the early 90s.

[creaturefeature]

i guess my family was lucky enough to gather a sizable collection... Which we still have by the way.

I had laserdiscs of looney toons, pink panther, and the chuck jones version of tom and jerry.
We also had a tons of music video laserdiscs.

Watching Tears for Fears and Lisa Stansfield videos growing up was huge influence to me.

[yot]

From what I understand laserdiscs were actually popular in Japan, at least to some degree... when it comes to Anime, there were many OVAs which either included an LD release, or even released exclusively to them.

[Melooon]

I was just watching Friends and Ross invited everyone over for a laserdisc binge on his new home cinema