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Does anyone here own a LaserDisc player?

TaySan

TaySan

SayTan
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Dec 10, 2018
31,397
Tulsa, Oklahoma
In about 5 days(December 11th 1978) is the 41th anniversary of the format that basically started the home theater market. I was a little too young to use one myself and had a VHS player growing up, but man those LaserDisc covers looked awesome.


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And those CD's as large as vinyl records. Amazing how far we have come since then. Do you own and collect LaserDisc content? Any content that is locked to the platform as of today?
 
pikachief

pikachief

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,518
I grew up watching Pinocchio and Terminator 2 on laser disc, but no I don't own one myself.


TaySan said:
Any content that is locked to the platform as of today?
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Its A Mad Mad Mad Mad World on laser disc has scenes that arent on any other version and has a runtime of 188 min. If I owned a laser disc player that would probably be the first movie Id get for it personally.
 
skeptem

skeptem

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Oct 25, 2017
5,745
I actually have 3 players. And about 10 LD films, all criterion collection films I got from a library clearing out their selection.

I've always wanted the Evangelion LD collection: http://www.pustan.com/ld/japan/evabox.html

The only thing I've wanted that didn't leave the VHS/LD era was an anime called Down Load - Namiamidabutsu wa Ai no Uta (OAV). But luckily somone finally ripped the LD onto youtube as of last year.
 
Kthulhu

Kthulhu

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Oct 25, 2017
14,670
I haven't owned one but I think they're neat. Aren't there bonus features that only exist on laserdisc? Hopefully someone is trying to preserve all that footage.
 
DrewFu

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I never owned them, no. The only time I've ever even seen them was at a Blockbuster in the late 90's and they were selling them.
 
Goldenroad

Goldenroad

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My parents had a video store when I was growing up, and after the big Betamax boom, they switched over to LaserDisc, so pretty much everything I watched growing up was either Beta or LaserDisc. I think my dad still has a LaserDisc player and some of the more valuable Laserdiscs (Disney, etc), but it's not hooked up, and I can't be 100% certain he didn't give them to my brother or something.
 
Vark

Vark

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Oct 27, 2017
477
Yep, I've got a Pioneer that's hooked up that i'll watch from time to time. You can pry my LaserDisc Star Wars Trilogy from my cold dead hands.
 
skeptem

skeptem

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Oct 25, 2017
5,745
The latest player to make its way over to me is the Pioneer LD-V4200.

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Not my picture, but this thing has dip switches to access different settings menus which is interesting. Need a remote for it which can be difficult to find.
 
lunarworks

lunarworks

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Oct 25, 2017
22,118
Toronto
My middle school had an LD player, and some discs about natural disasters. I watched the tornado and earthquakes ones a few times.
 
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OP
TaySan

TaySan

SayTan
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Dec 10, 2018
31,397
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Kthulhu said:
I haven't owned one but I think they're neat. Aren't there bonus features that only exist on laserdisc? Hopefully someone is trying to preserve all that footage.
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I've read there's tons of stuff that's still exclusive to Laserdisc like deleted scenes from ET are still exclusive. James Bond films have exclusive commentary tracks on LD ECT.
 
Jebusman

Jebusman

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Oct 27, 2017
4,081
Halifax, NS
I love them solely for the record sized covers. Makes for good display pieces.

Shame the vast majority of them are going to rot away.
 
skeptem

skeptem

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Oct 25, 2017
5,745
Jebusman said:
I love them solely for the record sized covers. Makes for good display pieces.

Shame the vast majority of them are going to rot away.
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Yeah, it's at the point where they are going to suffer disc rot and fade away. A few of mine already have this. The copy of 2001 I have is pretty bad.
 
DrewFu

DrewFu

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Kevers said:
I've never even seen a laserdisc or player in person.
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Laserdisc is one of those tech items from back in the day that I always wondered where the hell they were sold. Same with Atari Jaguar, Turbo Grafx 16, and other less popular tech at the time. I don't remember ever seeing this stuff being sold in stores.
 

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Kthulhu said:
Hopefully someone is trying to preserve all that footage.
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It's definitely being worked on. I think some of the folks preserving the content are also working on the various laserdisc games as well. It's just that since the format of the disc is analogue it takes pretty specific hardware in order to get what is probably archival-worthy footage.
 
thewienke

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Oct 25, 2017
15,930
We had a LaserDisc as a kid I think. Whatever it was, you had to open up the player and flip it over to the second side for most movies.

We ended up having a Curtis Mathis convert all of our Laser Discs into VHS tapes.
 
Kevers

Kevers

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Oct 29, 2017
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Syracuse, NY
thewienke said:
We had a LaserDisc as a kid I think. Whatever it was, you had to open up the player and flip it over to the second side for most movies.

We ended up having a Curtis Mathis convert all of our Laser Discs into VHS tapes.
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Early Kevin Smith movies on DVD had commentary lifted from the laser disc releases and in the middle they'd always announced they were about to switch to side 2 and I couldn't believe people actually did that to watch a movie. How annoying.
 
New002

New002

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Oct 25, 2017
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I considered it until learning that the quality is really quite terrible and the novelty quickly wears off. Plus with the hardware prone to breaking and it getting expensive for a"good player"...yeah I dropped that idea fast.

I have my laserdiscs covers displayed on the wall.
 
mute

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Oct 25, 2017
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At Elementary we had a player on a TV cart that would roll around between classrooms. Just remember random educational stuff for it though.
 

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JuicyPlayer said:
Do laser disk consoles exist? If so how much storage space does a laser disk hold?
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The LaserActive is the most obvious one in addition to a handful of notable arcade machines. This stuff exists pretty much exclusively for the sake of high-quality FMV, as the laserdisc was probably the most reliable means of high-quality media playback at the time, especially for arcade machines, and being much closer to random-access than something like a tape machine.

It's difficult to speak of this in terms of storage space, because the game data and often the sound will be digitally encoded but you can fit maybe an hour of video on a disc, and that's coded usually with a constant angular velocity so every ring around the disc is itself a frame (fun fact: if you look on the back of a laserdisc you can usually see the blanking intervals coded as space on the disc -- look for lines that point out from the center)
 
FirMatt

FirMatt

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Oct 25, 2017
252
Boston MA
I have one of these! Got some Bond movies, the OG Star Wars trilogy pre-edits, a film festival pre-release of a work-in-progress Beauty and the Beast, and then a bunch of EP-sized Japanese karaoke discs that are PEAK bubble era nonsense.
 
Stinkles

Stinkles

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Oct 25, 2017
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Picking up a pioneer player and fifty odd movies at lunchtime for a "bargain "

I realize that buying heavy low fidelity physical media with moving parts is the opposite of a bargain but look at it this way- me investing in laserdisc this late in the game basically guarantees your collection will never be worth a cent because o cursed it.

also I'm only buying it because I want a player to play my Dune laserdisc.
I'll check my haul for any gems but I assume it's all worthless now anyway.
 
Stinkles

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DrewFu said:
Laserdisc is one of those tech items from back in the day that I always wondered where the hell they were sold. Same with Atari Jaguar, Turbo Grafx 16, and other less popular tech at the time. I don't remember ever seeing this stuff being sold in stores.
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high end audio places that had Loewe or B&O when I was a kid and briefly the windows of Comet and Curry's electric.
 
TheRuralJuror

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Oct 25, 2017
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Don't now, but we had one when I was a kid in philly because my old man picked up one overseas and sent it back. Had Shogun Assassin, The Jerk, Woman in Red and Rocky II lol.
 
Syriel

Syriel

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Dec 13, 2017
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DrewFu said:
Laserdisc is one of those tech items from back in the day that I always wondered where the hell they were sold. Same with Atari Jaguar, Turbo Grafx 16, and other less popular tech at the time. I don't remember ever seeing this stuff being sold in stores.
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They were sold at stores like Suncoast and Media Play in the US.

JuicyPlayer said:
Do laser disk consoles exist? If so how much storage space does a laser disk hold?
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The LaserActive is the only real console.

Though because of the modules it has Genesis/Mega Drive and TG-16/PCE laserdisc games.

New002 said:
I considered it until learning that the quality is really quite terrible and the novelty quickly wears off. Plus with the hardware prone to breaking and it getting expensive for a"good player"...yeah I dropped that idea fast.

I have my laserdiscs covers displayed on the wall.
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The quality is about the best you're going to get from analog NTSC video. Is it 1080p? No. But if you were a home theater fan back in the day, LD was the only way to get the best possible audio and video at home.

FirMatt said:
I have one of these! Got some Bond movies, the OG Star Wars trilogy pre-edits, a film festival pre-release of a work-in-progress Beauty and the Beast, and then a bunch of EP-sized Japanese karaoke discs that are PEAK bubble era nonsense.
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I've got a small collection. Star Wars definitive. T2. ET. The highlight is probably the promo only 8 inch T2:SE trailer disc.

TaySan said:
How do the Bond movies look? I heard LaserDisc looks near DVD level.
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Early DVDs were sometimes worse than LD. As an example, the Criterion copy of Se7en blows the OG DVD release out of the water.
 
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