Laserdisc, the format from 1978, is now at the end of the road. The Philips developed disc format was originally marketed as Discvision but changed its name to Laserdisc in mid-80s when Pioneer bought majority of its shares.

LD was the choice for many home theatre enthusiasts because of its better quality over VHS and Betamax. However, LD didn't get popular amongst the general public and quickly became obsolete when DVD hit the markets.

According to Akihabara News, Pioneer has ended the production of its all three Laserdisc players. It sold over 3,6 million LD players in Japan between 1981 and 2002.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/16681.cfm

haha i thought they were extinct a long time ago !!!!!

thats what I thought
they were more popular in Japan and the US

It's a little sad, really.

For much of the life of LD, I couldn't afford a player or the other hardware required to enjoy it. By the time I was set up and ready to go, DVD was coming around the corner and I waited for that instead (1996?).

I did eventually track down an LD player (for a few dollars at the local second hand place) and occasionally grab a disc off Ebay - they're kinda nifty simply due to the sheer size, the artwork on the packaging etc. Some of the semi-collectible stuff is very affordable and display worthy (box sets for example) if you're a film nerd.

The picture looks like crap on anything other than a CRT, but that's OK too. I quite like firing up an LD once a month or so, especially if I'm just using the telly instead of the PJ as the soundtracks (largely in PCM) are pretty stellar on the later titles. The analog sound on the earlier ones (if they still play due to laser rot) is not good though - like a cassette with less hiss.

There was once a time in the dim, dark past where every nascent home theatre/hi-fi shop had a Pioneer LD player, a big CRT projector and a copy of "Top Gun" to demonstrate to customers. They must have sold a million of those Top Gun LD's to shop owners. Pity that the demo setup was $40,000 (about half the price of a livable unit in those days). You can exceed the performance (including projection) for well under $2000 now.

Hi
I saw a unsubstantiated post about this on AVS(IIRC) a few Years ago,i think most of the internal bits and case were manufactured around 10years(as they play DVD's) ago but were given a 2005,2006 etc build date when they left the wharehouse/storeage facility, much like what was done with audio cassette players.

Extract from Wiki "Laser Disc"
"The last model DVD/LD player was the Japanese only DVL-H9, but the older DVL-919 is still sold in the U.S. and appears on Pioneer's North American website. However, it has not been actively marketed since the late 1990s. The DVL-919 supports DTS output. The DVL-919's DVD section is unremarkable by modern standards, and does not support progressive scan (480p) even though it has component output. As noted above, the LD section, while competent, is inferior to earlier high end LD players. A few Pioneer dealers offer North American specification DVL-919s, and a unit purchased in April 2004 had a manufacture date of December 2003. Manufacturing of the DVL-919 continued until January 1, 2009 when Pioneer announced [10] that production would cease after a final production run of 3000 DVL-919 and other model laser disc players."

Hi
Yes,it brings back memories but they never took off in Oz. despite Pioneer offering massive incentives to dealers, i remember Len Wallis at Lane Cove
and one of the City Hi-Fi Stores(Basement or York St IIRC) pushing it hard.

Edit...Thanks djos,..i was trying to think of the Movie with Schwarzenegger and the Jet,there was also one before it that was used as a demo.
Jurassic Park(first LD with DTS) was also a favourite demo before LD was swamped by DVD,the T. Rex stomping around got the punters(also council rangers due to complaints from nearby shops) in to see what was going on.

I remember "selling" LD Players at Brashes in 1996/7 using a massive 50" rear-pro CRT and using True Lies as demo material into a Prologic surround sound system! It was awesome and helped me sell a lot a prologic systems but never an LD player.

Makes me wonder what we will be talking about in 10 years from now...

Its a shame they didn't use the Basic Instinct LaserDisc cover for the Blu-ray release.
http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/24169/PSE93-...Instinct-(1992)

My brother and I were very much into this format. I used to get them from Laser land and Ken Cranes and really looked forward to receiving a phone call saying there in from the local shop in the city. I remember walking into the place in Melbourne and they had one of the first dvd players and one movie playing in the shop but can't remember the title. I just loved the fold out covers with the LD felt more special and felt like you were getting your moneys worth. Then along came DTS and I got my Pioneer modded to allow DTS to be passed to the receiver and the first disc I bought was Goldeneye and that was a revelation for SQ back then as was Jurrasic Park which was quite difficult to obtain even then due to it being so popular. I've still got Jurrasic Park for memories sake and I still have the player. I had no trouble last year selling all my other DTS LD titles on Ebay I was really surprised what people were willing to pay for them. I had no problem shanding over $120 for a 2 disc LD and sometimes more if there were 2 to pickup. Thoses were the days

Lawnmower Man was the first film I watched on LD..

I'm surprised when people outbid me on Ebay for stuff like that - things you'd think would be worth $10 max given the DVD is usually better.

I will admit to paying over the odds for a couple of things where the DVD release has been either non-existent or clearly inferior, but the list of those is vanishingly small and largely restricted to documentaries (the Patrick Stewart MGM documentary set comes to mind).

I used to love my ld colection and also thought handing over $100 a disc wasn't a problem, paid over $250 for the starwars trilogy if i remember right!

Double post.

I've still got my 100 or so LD's, there's no point selling them for only a couple of bucks.
It's funny reading some of these posts, I remember getting so excited when my discs arrived, they were so big and so artfully done. When DVD took over I never got as exited when my discs arrived.
Some of those limited edition sets were awesome, I always thought the Disney sets were the best.
It was the best format to watch movies at the time, 5.1 audio, THX certified, how awesome was that THX logo at the beginning of a movie.

Yes fond memories, glad I'm not the only one.

Wow, Laserdisc. If I think of the amount of cash I spent on the player ($1900!!!!) and the discs (between $70 and $120 per movie just for the standard editions) I shudder. They're all sitting unloved and unwanted in a cupboard now. I have made several attempts to sell them over the years, but when the best anyone seems to want to pay is $5 a disc it seems criminal - I might as well just give them away.

Nobody's getting my personally autographed Hal Hartley "Trust" Laserdisc though, which he signed under protest because he was disgusted by what they'd done with the cover design

The player sits unwanted too, being one of the last ones released before Dolby Digital support was added (Pioneer CLD-3390).



Oh you got it cheap if that's the uber-box with 9 CAV discs and the hard-cover book! I paid $400 for that. And stupidly lent it to a friend who I've never heard from since

"Nobody's getting my personally autographed Hal Hartley "Trust" Laserdisc though, which he signed under protest because he was disgusted by what they'd done with the cover design"

... my laserdisc player still forms a part of my home theatre. i have a small LD collection now, but remember my first LD purchase, Terminator 2: Special Edition, cost me 100 bucks. I think ill get a little nostalgic tonight and put on Madonna, Blonde Ambition tour ... See if you can get that on DVD. : P Infact there is a LOT of material on laserdisc that never made it to DVD for some reason.

.. and im starting to wonder if some movies are ever going to make it to bluray.

Yep that was the one, it was the first release to have the explosions and numerous other scenes remastered.

I started my LD collection in 91 and have over 300 discs.
Also have 6 LD players inc my Mcintosh which looks good
in my cabinet even though I dont use due to it being so
damn good looking.
I was lucky though I picked most of my discs up for less than $10
but still paid over $100 for a couple.
Think ive only watched 2 in the last year.

Actually this was the first Star Wars box set with the original untainted movies; I never heard anything about remastering being done, and in fact I believe those same (non-anamorphic) transfers were later re-used for the "original versions" DVDs.

There was also a Lucas commentary, if I recall right, that was so dull and sparse they had to provide a guide to what points of the films he actually bothered to commentate on at all

On the signed box set for Pollacks "They shoot horses, don't they", one of the Laserdisc commentary track contributors is a hairdresser. I kid you not.

The set has the last side set up as the original style of laserdisc (individual frames) - including a bunch of stills from the shoot of the movie and all sorts of other interesting stuff. Very DVD like in a way (or at least you can see where a lot of the ideas of DVD special features originated).

Nothing beats grabbing a huge box like that just for kicks - it's big, black and glossy with the directors signature stuck on it. The DVD probably kills the LD for picture and sound, but it's still pretty impressive.

They probably cut all of the bits where he was talking about himself.

wow, loving this discussion, I too used LDs to sell pro logic set ups, I too used to get excited receiving my discs direct from Ken Cranes (paid them a visit in 2000, it was sad, one little bin of LDs tucked away in the corner and wall to wall dvds, infact I had to buy a dvd player when I got back to play my new dvds, Alien, Aliens and Blade, didnt make it to the rest of the alphabet) which were usually here within 10 or so days.
The biggest thrill was the fact that very few people had them, the look on their eyes when the saw the big shiny thing and then the PQ (remember VHS was king). I still have my collection but would love to see them through a better player (componet or even s-video would be good).
Dvd was good, bluray is fantastic, just pricing themselves out of the market, we needed the other format to create competition and I think it could have co existed just like the game consoles do or the pc/mac thing.

cheers,
Peter
Hobart

Hi
Yes,there are still a lot of fans out there but to me it was a more of a curosity than a must have format, something just did not seem right and you could get equivalent surround sound(before DD & DTS) from VCR's(when they went Stereo).
It was a status symbol in many peoples homes in Sydney and Len Wallis at Lane Cove sold them for Years so there must be plenty of Discs and Players in garages still.

What was missing for me was the big screen to go with the very wide picture and the bonus was cd like features, track search, etc. Most of my collection has digital sound tracks and just imagine if they had the ability to have a digital picture, a whole box set on one disc maybe. My collection was just that, discs that I would watch more than once, great cover art. A friend of mine in New York informed me that LDs are the trendy extra thing in reno's around Manhattan.

Peter.

It's a Gen X retro thing. Of all the dead media floating around, Laserdiscs are by far and away the most durable. Vinyl wears out, you're lucky to find a cassette or VHS tape made in the 1980s that's still usable and CD's are still current.

If you want that proper throwback 1980s experience, there's only really Laserdisc to play with now. It can make a "meh" 1980s movie just a little more interesting (Body Heat for example, much better on LD not because the picture is better, but the film itself is so dated you might as well watch it on dated equipment for the full effect). Nobody goes "oh wow" when you drag out a big old vinyl LP, but those big shiny discs still look like the future. I only wish Pioneer still built equipment like those old LD players - so amazingly durable.

I still have my 49 titles and if I get the DVDO edge scaler, I might even re-connect my Denon LD player up and give those massive discs a spin. What I liked about LD was it paved the way for technologies we take for granted today like DD and DTS and even (four titles only) anamorphic enhanced wide screen. Whilst the picture is lacking (lets hope the scaler can work some magic here), the format was certainly better than VHS and I actually recieved a letter from a Video Ezy store in 1996 stating "we miss you" after I switched from VHS to the LD format.

Mark

I'm considering selling my 70 strong laserdisc collection and CLD-2950 (modified for AC3 output) because:

1) I just don't watch them anymore and they are just taking up space.

2) The player needs adjustment as it occasionally locks up on the 2nd side of the 2nd disc played and must be dismantled to get the disc out and I just can't be bothered spending $100's in repair costs.

3) The ravages of time have not been kind to some titles which are showing signs of rot.

However the pittance that is generally being offered for them is discouraging.

I stupidly sold a few laserdiscs when the DVDs came out, thinking that DVD would be better, but was disappointed and it was too late: Poltergeist boxset (with documentary) and Top Gun (with better framing IMO) come to mind.

But, ahhh, the memories of watching movies with better AQ, PQ and features than VHS.

I don't want to consider how much money I ploughed into a doomed format, but history seems to have a habit of repeating itself **cough** HD DVD **cough**.

Actually, I don't think Lucas contributed much to the commentary: it was mainly from the Special Effects and other directors. But yes it was incredibly sparse and each contribution only lasted a couple of minutes: very different from today's commentaries. I still have that $400 box set, but it's something of an anachronism now.

Wow... that's a name I haven't heard for a while, it certainly brings up memories (good & bad). I remember buying 3 sets of the Star Wars Trilogy Box Set from them, costing roughly around $299 per set, I remember when they arrived, I was welled up with joy! Ah, a fool with his toys! I wish I have the Original Trilogy Box Set though, came with a book and everything. Anyone have one of those????

No, but I do have the 1997 SE trilogy box set with that odd round looking Jabba The Hutt...

Mark

See my post above.

Yeah, I have that one, it's a heavy b'strd too

Also on LD I have

Ewok Adventure
Battle For Endor
Star Wars SE US Box Set
Star Wars SE Japan Re-Release Box Set
Star Wars PAL
Star Wars NTSC
ROTJ NTSC
Star Wars Remastered NTSC
ESB Remastered NTSC
ROTJ Remastered NTSC
The Phantom Menace Japanese Release
Tha Making Of Star Wars
SPFX: The Empire Strikes Back
ROTJ Classic Creatures
From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making Of A Saga

Just a little obsessed

Interesting comment on "ROT". Last time I checked, I had one side of a 2nd hand music video disc that had this. All of the rest seem to be OK. Is disc rot air getting between the layers? And why did it kill the PCM audio and leave the analogue audio intact?

Mark

There seems to be a pattern with the discs your've collected,Yes they were all expensive.


LD rot AFAIK is a bacteria eating away at one specific layer of the disc but there is heaps of info on the net. Around 1999/2000 a Uni. Prof. in Sydney advertised in the Herald for affected Discs so he could study them but other than seeing the ad i haven't heard any more.

Bacteria? And I just thought it might be oxidisation due to the metal being exposed to the air...

Mark

Would you ever consider selling it? or any of your collection? As for me, even though I haven't fired up my LD for quite a while, I can't seem to let them go...



Huh? Which one is that?




Here are my favourites from my collection:

Platoon: Pioneer Special Edition (A photo album with images from the Vietnam War with the LD in the back)
Se7en: Criterion Edition
Star Wars Trilogy Box Set
T2 Special Edition (With Blue Foil Logo on the Box Set)
Leon: The Integral Version (Japanese Release); And...
Russ Meyer: The Vixen Collection

The 20th annaversary of the Star Wars Trilogy. There was a Jabba The scene for A New Hope that was filmed in 1976, but due to limitations of the technology at the time, the scene was never finished and cut from the film. GL added it back in for the 1997 release of the film, but Jabba just looked wrong. He appeared round and shorter than he does in Return Of The Jedi (when he was a rubber puppet) and fans around the world complained.

In the 2004 DVD release, Jabba was re-done and looks much closer to the Jabba we know from 1983.

The set has A New Hope on sides 1 to 3 (where 3 is CAV) then side 4 is the first part of Empire Strikes Back (4, 5 and 6 where 6 is CAV) and 7, 8 and 9 are Return Of The Jedi. It is housed in a nice slim box with cover notes.

Originally there was only supposed to be 5000 pressed, but demands for the films saw additonal pressing made. This box set was also the first time we would here 5.1 sound for these films using AC3RF...

Mark

OK... I think I have the same one... That's why I would prefer the Original Box Set. Anyone selling theirs?

If I ever get mine back from the guy I "lent" it to years ago, I'd be happy to

Give me his address and I'll get it back for you...

If I knew where he was I'd have had it back years ago

He has my T2 collectors' edition LD set in the "squishy" box too. Or maybe by this stage an eBay customer does

Ahh T2. I have at least 2 copies of that on LD...Watched the BD last night and was impressed except why is the transfer done at 1080/60P not 1080/24P?

Mark

Yes I have both the Definitive Collection (originals with the book) and the Special Editions that came in 5.1. Picked up the definitive collection off ebay - mint condition as if it had never been opened - all in CAV too so each film is 3 discs.

Something special about LD

Absolutely

When DVD first started appearing in 1997, there was a clever LD wording to the effects of "for 18 years Laser Disc has been the Video Barometer by which all other formats were judged" . DVD certainly moved video in the right direction, but I always felt ripped off with the packing compared to the LD counterpart. The two box sets I have bought on BD are OK, but they still have nothing on the LD box sets IMO.

Mark

How do you guys watch your LDs now (if you do at all)?

What model LD player do you have? Do you use an upscaler? Or just via the old composite straight to the TV?

I have a Denon LA-2300A (which is a rebadged Pioneer CLD-D515) and AC3 out to a Sony MOD-RF1 RF Demodulator (the only good thing Sony did with LD)

Composite straight to the TV at present

I also have a Pioneer LDV-4300D Industrial LD Player connected to my PC, and recently acquired a Pioneer CLD-S315 as a back up

My Pioneer-rebadged-as-a-Yamaha player is packed up unfortunately due to lack of space in my current unit, but otherwise it's always out in the rack if nothing because it's an impressive looking bit of kit! Even now if I ever spot a decently-priced H9 or X9 I'd snap it up in an instant.

I bought 2 copies each of the non-rejigged Star Wars when they were going for a couple of bucks each, just in case

Not used it some time, but would (will) if I get the DVDO Edge Scaler...


Denon LA-2300 modded for LPCM digital out for DTS. I am hoping the scaler will give me a new "EDGE" to these old classics. This is not the only reason to buy a Scaler, but I might as well get the most of it...



I choose this model because it had AC3RF out, but at the time, did not know that I also needed SPDIF out for DTS which I had added later. The 3500 had an optical out as well...



I was using S-Video out, but wouldn't bother with a Y/C if I was to re-connect this into my system - just let the EDGE do its magic.

I want to listen to the DTS tracks again and not sure if it is just me, but I think that the AC3 tracks sound better than their counterparts on DVD. Twister and The Jackel are two that come to mind. I have a Yammaha AC3 RF demodulator (somewhere)...

I am curious to catch up with a guy I know that has one of those RUNCO THX certiifed player. They were considered to be studio transports and at one point, I was told their RRP was over $20K, not sure how accurate that was though...

Mark

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm considering selling my entire 70 LD collection, which includes:

Arrival SE
Abyss SE
Dances With Wolves (Expanded Edition)
Star Wars Trilogy Definitive Collection (with book)
T2 SE (embossed gold foil)
Tron (Signature Collection)

Haven't seriously looked at realistic pricing yet.

Which part of DTV Forum would be appropriate for advertising Laserdisc sales?

Not sure, but there was interest in buying LD players and discs in the HT section last year.

Mark