The 26th Century

If you were (or are) a laserdisc fan, (or at lteast knew what the heck they were) sound off!

I still have my old Pioneer LD player, although it doesn't work as smoothly as it used to. I still need it because I have a small collection of LD's that you won't find on DVD yet! (A decent version of the director's cut of Blade Runner, for example)

I collect movies in old format ...mainly CEDs but I do own one LD ( two disk set ). Wish I had a player for it, last time I saw one for sale was at a yard sale. But unwilling to pay 30 dollars to get it . Bummer and a shame I don't know where to find a cheap one for sale off Ebay.





Erin

Up until DVDs, I rather enjoyed LDs- for the time, you couldn't get better picture & sound quality. A few people I knew couldn't get over the fact that you had to flip the disc over every sixty minutes, but my view was that usually, the break in the sides was at a natural stopping point- allowing the viewer to get up and refresh a drink (or whatever).

60 minutes to each side huh? Guess I know now why LD lasted longer than CED. LDs have a better wear about them where as CEDs it takes almost nothing to damage them. Both formats have that 60 minute limit, and for a while I was backing up the CEDs to DVD for the sake of as you pointed out some movies you can't find any more. If any of the movies I have on CED come on TV I can't help but see break points in the film on changing sides.

You know some thing I find very funny about LDs and DVDs is I'm certain some early DVDs got their menu setup from LDs. I have one DVD that I rented as an LD years ago, it looks the same in menu.





Erin

There were two types of LDs, the constant-linear-velocity (CLV), which could hold the aforementioned 60 minutes, and the constant angular velocity (CAV), which were limited to only 30 minutes! The benefit of CAV was that you could play the movies at different speeds, freeze-frame them perfectly and even play them backwards at various speeds. (Even DVD can't do that!) I was also under the impression that CAV discs were slightly better picture quality than standard CLV, although I'm not sure my eyes were trained enough to notice back then.

To the note of LDs I had a bit of luck earlier today with them. Went to a thrift store looking for CEDS and at first one person working in the store came to my aid. Then when he realized he didn't know completely what I was talking about he brought out another employee. She said they didn't have any at the moment but that they did have LDs, and loving old video format the way I do, I bought a few. Now I own an LD that isn't on DVD thanks to Spielberg deciding to reimage it a few years ago, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

Some thing nice she did for me while I was checking out the LDs was look for damage on each disk to make sure I was buying ones in good shape.

For all collectors of LDs this is some thing you should know ....
( I asked her to write this down )


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Laser Vison can have laser rott and that looks like white sparkles.

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Two movies she's noted really have this issue are Porkey's and Ghost Busters.


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Erin

systemcat wrote:Now I own an LD that isn't on DVD thanks to Spielberg deciding to reimage it a few years ago, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

I could have sworn that Spielberg released E.T. with both versions on the disc... can't say for sure- I like the movie, but never owned it on LD or DVD.

systemcat wrote:Two movies she's noted really have this issue are Porkey's and Ghost Busters.

I rented the Ghostbusters LD years ago- that copy seemed fairly pristine, especially the sound! I eventually picked up the Collector's Edition DVD- it was worth the money...

I could have sworn that Spielberg released E.T. with both versions on the disc

I could be wrong about the original not being released to DVD. It's things like the original Star Wars trilogy and Star Trek one original version not being on DVD that lead me to back them up from CED to that format.


Erin

Aha- I found that E.T. has both versions available-

Click Here

- of course, if you consider spending $50 "available". Apparently the only way to get the original is by wasting money on the enhanced version.

I'll pass for now, unless I win the lottery or something...

I also understand Lucas DID release the original trilogy on DVD, but the picture & sound quality were not up to the best possible standards. (Only 2.0 Stereo sound, and the picture was not enhanced anamorphically- I passed on this, too.)