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Bye Bye LaserDisc

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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Nov 27, 2006
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Pioneer has announced that they will cease production of LaserDisc players. I had no idea that they were still making these big, honkin’ things. My parents had one back in 1984 or so and I have “We Are the World” seared into my psyche as a result.

Pioneer had continued to build players long after the format had been declared dead, largely because of the large LD collections that many Japanese customers had built during the years that the format's popularity soared (comparitively) in that country.
Click to expand...
 
Some local schools here are still using them since they had purchased a ton of media for them back in the day. My parents had one for awhile...only about 5 disks though. CD's/DVD's are just slightly lighter. :p
 
Wow, interesting bit of info. I have a few laserdiscs laying around myself, particularly my mint copies of the original original remastered Star Wars trilogy released just before the "SE" came out in the late 90's. Transfers on them are really quite good.
 
LD was BIG in Japan up to the late 90's
most anime be for DVD was on LD
 
Huh. I didn't know they were still making them.

I remember using them back in high school to watch shows in Chemistry class. Never owned any though.
 
I can remember renting them for a sort stay. I can see why they would still need them though, a lot of people have collections. hope they moved it to dvd
 
Valset said:
I can remember renting them for a sort stay. I can see why they would still need them though, a lot of people have collections. hope they moved it to dvd
Click to expand...

damn no edit button.
should be short not sort
 
Really strange... I was just trying to explain the merits of LaserDisc to my g/f last night (she fell asleep, not surprisingly :) )

I still have my second-hand Panasonic (I bought in '98 with a lot of discs), but haven't played it in years. Have a pretty nice collection... still have my Army of Darkness LD tacked up on my entertainment room's wall. In my view, LD was superior to DVDs of the time and blew away VHS since:

- uncompressed video and better picture (and sound?)
- in the late 90's you could find players and lots of discs for next to nothing
- two words: Criterion Collection

I remember thinking for a month or two I wasted $80, but then realized some genius had order my entire university's international film collection on LD. I was the only student who was actually able to watch "le Corbeil", a film we studied at legnth in my French WWII course. Come to think of it, my LD actually got me a couple dates for this reason :)
 
I love my laserdisc player, especially since I have the original Star Wars movies on them. Take that George Lucas and your edited DVD versions!!
 
I have a kenwood 2 sided player sitting in my closet. lost the remote tho. also have around 30 discs, including the original remaster trilogy, as well as the 2nd version. The Abyss (long version, where you get up 2 times to use the bathroom), as well as several other special editions.
 
Terry Olaes said:
Pioneer has announced that they will cease production of LaserDisc players. I had no idea that they were still making these big, honkin’ things. My parents had one back in 1984 or so and I have “We Are the World” seared into my psyche as a result.
Click to expand...

I've still got a Pioneer Laserdisc player. I didn't know new ones were being made though. I've got a few things on laserdisc because Movie Trading company was selling laserdisc movies for $3 each there for awhile. So when I was working at Best buy in the late 90's I got a laserdisc player on the cheap, and as such I've been able to buy laserdisc movies for a fraction of the cost of what the it would have cost to buy DVDs at the time.
 
I had one that came out of the arcade shooter Mad Dog McGee w/ the disc when I was work at an acade room. Threw it away some time last year thou.
 
Wow didn't know they still made those.

I was gonna get one back in the day but bought dvd instead.
 
Sayonara old buddy. Laserdiscs were my first "film school" back when I was in high school. They were the first format to have directors commentary tracks, extensive material on the making of the film, etc etc. The Criterion Collection and James Cameron Laserdiscs were incredible.

That sort of thing is very common (and actually much worse in general) now, but LD is where it all started. Good stuff.
 
Terry Olaes said:
Pioneer has announced that they will cease production of LaserDisc players. I had no idea that they were still making these big, honkin’ things.
Click to expand...

I was in a Pioneer retail store back in September checking out the high end Kuro plasmas (one of which I eventually bought), and I was really surprised to see that they still had the Laserdisc/DVD combo player on the floor. It was almost exactly like the one I bought in 1997 to replace the model I got in 1990 that crapped out. I think the price was pretty high too, around $800. I don't expect they sell too many of those anymore. :)
 
I fired up Starwars on LD a couple of months back and the quality is way off base compared to todays tech that it was a bit painful to watch.
So I put it away again.
 
Both of my Pioneer Players are broken. :(
I sold off a lot of my collection many years ago, but kept a few good ones.
Camelot Music was where we bought a lot of our movies since they were really cheap, $5-20.
 
Nenu said:
I fired up Starwars on LD a couple of months back and the quality is way off base compared to todays tech that it was a bit painful to watch.
So I put it away again.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, its ancient technology. That said, it was miles better than VHS, and it was actually better than DVD for roughly its first two years out because the MPEG2 encodings were so bad (especially on Warner titles, ugh). It also established the whole notion of filmmaker commentary audio and in-depth "making of" material.

But yeah, you can't really compare technology that died ten years ago with what we have now in Blu Ray, stuff is (thankfully) way better now.
 
Zepher said:
Both of my Pioneer Players are broken. :(
I sold off a lot of my collection many years ago, but kept a few good ones.
Camelot Music was where we bought a lot of our movies since they were really cheap, $5-20.
Click to expand...

I still have a few of them just for the boxes. Some of them look so cool, especially the uber-T2 box set with the big silver stamp on it.
 
Nenu said:
I fired up Starwars on LD a couple of months back and the quality is way off base compared to todays tech that it was a bit painful to watch.
So I put it away again.
Click to expand...

The remastered versions looked much better as I recall. But yes, some of the early laserdiscs do look like shit.
 
I still have an old laserdisc player hooked up to my stereo. Remember using it like crazy back in the day. I also have an unopened copy of the rock horror picture show sitting on the wall for it. Had an opened copy somewhere but I think I sold it a while ago.
 
Dan_D said:
The remastered versions looked much better as I recall. But yes, some of the early laserdiscs do look like shit.
Click to expand...

It is part of the Trilogy Special Edition, released later.
Maybe they still used the same processes to make these discs too?
 
It's kind of funny how we think of many things as dead, but they are actually still manufactured years later after its replacement is mainstream. In fact just this last week I sold my old Sony Betamax VCR on ebay for twice what a new DVD player would cost :cool:
 
I still have two working players and a whole bunch of discs. I got into LD in the late 80's. Sure rocked compared to VHS. VHS sucks :D I still have the original Star Wars trilogy box set (leather bound and with a book) :D Cost me big bucks in the day. Also some of the Dolby Digital LD(s) smoke compared to DVD.
 
I bought a goddamn laserdisc on accident off of Ebay of Johnny Depp's "Private Resort", (one of his first roles). I didn't know what to do with it so I just tried to stuff it in the microwave.
 
I have a dual side Denon player I scored back when I was pawn shop manager. I have many movies I picked up here and there, mostly at "Ray's video station" here in Spokane. That guy is still there and I get discs off him every couple years for a good deal. I haven't watched one in ahwile, but occasionally the wife and I watch "In The Mouth of Madness" on LD. I need a real LD player with component and some kind of digital audio output someday, the one I have just outputs composite. Doh!
 
I hear D-Theater D-VHS players are going to stop being manufactured later this year.
 
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