Laserdisk anyone?

[AARST]

I was considering starting a LaserDisc collection, but it was difficult to find a player. The discs are uncommon but not hard to find, but the players always seem to be either broken or extremely expensive.
I found one guy who sold a working LD player for 20 Euros and I really wanted to but it, but not owning a car, I had absolutely no way of transporting the monstrosity.

[gravitone]

Here in Europe the laserdisc format never really caught on. I have never seen a laserdisc player out in the wild. Only a highly specialized A/V store about 10 years ago that had a stack of imports lying around. I would have loved owning one back in the early 90's. Crappy VHS always makes my eye's hurt.

I'm pretty sure that laserdiscs do degrade although slightly over time since its a pure analog format. Any small imperfections, even dust can influence the video signal. But keeping discs clean and scratchfree, they should last for quite a while. What I see happening over the next 10-15 years or so is all the laserdisc players dying due to laser diode failure and worn out drive assemblies.

[Jimmy Yakapucci]

I got a nice collection of 73 LDs back home. Mostly special editions. Hellraiser with screenplay and Barker's autograph. Also lots of Japanese movies since there is a shop which sold them very cheap (Special Edition of Swallowtail Butterfly for $8).
The problem is that no more laser disk players are made. I think Pioneer was the last maker and they stopped 3 years or so ago.

I thought I read/heard something in the news not long ago about Pioneer finally halting production of Laser Disc players. I believe the last model they made was for commercial use. Guess I should be glad that I have my LaserActive.

JY

Found it: It was back in January that they made the announcement.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/01/14 ... rmination/

[Luke]

Truth be told, my favorite format of the STAR WARS trilogy is on LaserDisc. So much in fact I burned it onto DVDs in case the discs won't play one day.

[Hatta]

Yeah, laserdisc is cool if just for the fact that it's analog data on optical media. That's crazy.

And yeah, there are some movies for which the laserdisc version is still the best. Star Wars of course. Don't think they'll ever make a non-special edition of that. Yellow Submarine too. The DVD release was cropped to all hell.

[Luke]

And yeah, there are some movies for which the laserdisc version is still the best. Star Wars of course. Don't think they'll ever make a non-special edition of that.

Exactly!

[Snickerd00dle]

Once my boss gives me his old player I plan on collecting the Criterion releases because there are some for that format that aren't released on DVD

[TheyCallMeTheSwede]

My dad used to own a LaserDisk player, we had a decent collection, but since we moved on to DVDs we got rid of everything. I was kinda bummed about it. I am thinking of starting my own LaserDisk collection in the future. Since having a LaserDisk version of a movie just feels like YOU OWNED THE MOVIE. They be like "hey you got Aliens?" and you whipped out Aliens on LaserDisk. Also, one good reason why I want a LaserDisk player is because of "Tiny Toons' How I Spent My Vacation" since that movie did not come out of DVD (as of December 23rd 2009).

[Octopod]

There are already people who collect VHS, they just tend to collect genre films since there are a lot of them that have still never received a DVD release and will never see a BR release. I think a lot of people just "collect" digital versions though. I have about ten VHS, not much of a collection. I used to have more but got rid of most of them when I move last time. I have never owned any laser-disc stuff but I used to have a RCA CED player when I was a kid. I am always tempted to collect for that.

[Snickerd00dle]

There are already people who collect VHS, they just tend to collect genre films since there are a lot of them that have still never received a DVD release and will never see a BR release. I think a lot of people just "collect" digital versions though. I have about ten VHS, not much of a collection. I used to have more but got rid of most of them when I move last time. I have never owned any laser-disc stuff but I used to have a RCA CED player when I was a kid. I am always tempted to collect for that.

Also owning the vhs or laserdisc copy can be cheaper, for example my copy of the movie shivers on vhs is worth like 5-8 bucks, the dvd however is like 65-70