JZ1276

I'm not familiar with laserdiscs (never even watched one). I was curious as to the differences such as A/V quality and the amount of data a Laserdisc can hold compared to a DVD.

matome

You can find almost anything you need to know on laserdiscs here (including an LD vs. DVD section).

I'd just like to add that LD audio tracks, most notably the non-digital ones (e.g Pro-Logic) sound a lot better than most of their DVD counterparts.

fuzzbox

Primary difference; You can pop the LD in the LD player, press "Play", and actually WATCH the damn movie, instead of having to sit through animated menus, forced trailers, and FBI warnings.

...Those were the days...


-jason

matome

True, that was a big plus.

Also, no Macrovision. That always confused me, since back in the pre-DVD days you could virtually make a VHS copy from an LD which would look as good/better than the official VHS (plus have the widescreen version to boot).

CAV discs also have the best freeze frame capabilities.

speedyray

That is a very good entry. I knew about LaserDisc in generally and own about 60 titles and a very good player, but i still learned stuff from that entry. Somehow I had missed the HD LD completely. I looked and my budget can not afford them anyways, but it is still nice to know about them. At $250+ a movie and the player upwards of $2000 I doubt I will run out and buy any.

The Bus

Hd-ld?

SINGLE104

Interesting! I've never invested into the laserdisc technology, due to my finances at that time, and I always have been curious as to the audio, and video quality of the format. Sad to say is that I do not know anyone personally who own a laserdisc player, and movies for a comparison to DVD. Currently, I am extremely anxious to experience the overall quality of this format.

DthRdrX

Primary problem with LD is the discs were too big and add more cost.

Giles

I thought I had read somewhere, that the Japanese released some sort of prototype HiDef laserdisc in the past.

As for sound quality. matome pretty much nails in it on the head and states that laserdisc sound far surpasses DVD sound. The DTS laserdiscs in my collection sound utterly amazing - the DTS soundmix of Jurassic Park is intense and scary. Even the Dolby Digital soundmix of Saving Private Ryan is a juggernaut of soundmix that even blows the DTS DVD soundmix out of the water (no pun intended).

Class316

Unlike CDs and DVDs, LDs were relatively very piracy proof. Of course, this had other side effects which in turn led it its death.

matome

Well I still have all my laserdiscs (600+) and have replaced most of them with their DVD counterparts. To be honest I might use the LD player only 2-3 times a year now for that title that isn't out on DVD. Having a widescreen TV pretty much gets you hooked on anamorphic transfers which are usually much better than all but the best LD transfers. I do have to say that on the 4:3 TV sets, LD's still look damn good. As I mentioned before you can't beat the audio tracks of an LD, but I put picture quality over sound, so I again lean toward the DVD.

I also have to mention that the quality of the laserdisc player has much more affect on playback quality than do DVD players. My main players have always been the more expensive Pioneer 7-series models, but I do also have other lower models (Pioneer 5 series and the one that played Sega Genesis games ) and the difference in picture quality was VERY pronounced. So if you plan on getting into lasers on Ebay, you might want to spend a few extra bucks to get a good player.

matome

I always wanted to get a DTS laserdisc, but I never did since my last laser-only player was the CLD703 which didnt have the RF3 output. When I did get around to buying the LD/DVD combi-player with the RF3, I discovered my receiver couldn't do DTS. Now that I have a DTS receiver, the good DTS laserdiscs themselves are too expensive . I would kill to get a reasonably priced Blade or Mimic DTS LD!

dvd_luver

I have a Pioneer Elite Laserdisc/DVD combo player that still works fairly well. I use it to watch Laserdiscs only, though I haven't spinned a Laserdisc in a while. I prefer DVD over Laserdisc but there is an advantage that Laserdisc still haves over the DVD format. There is tons of Laserdisc catalogue titles that are not available on DVD yet, and if you love a movie that is not on DVD and on LD only, it makes it worth it to have a combo player so you can watch your favorite movie. So one of the differences between the 2 formats is DVD is all digital and Laserdisc is mostly all analog/digital. I'd find a player at a cheap price and get a Laserdisc title that is not on DVD, it's fun.

Alan Smithee

Ah-ha, I see someone else has that "DVD Infomercial" laserdisc- quite an interesting collector's item as it's a laserdisc that has segments from the early DVD demo discs on it! I saw one playing in a Good Guys store on several screens, making people think they were watching DVD when it was really laserdisc!

Jackskeleton

I love LD's and have a pretty big collection of them. but I love dvds more. I mainly use LD for those titles that I can't get on DVD because they will never be on DVD. Because of distribution rights or just lack of interest, there's plenty of titles like that.

In the end, enjoy them both. They both have something unique to bring to the table.

fitprod

Um... You could always buy DTS laserdiscs. The DTS track replaced the PCM tracks and would work with a digital output, as long as your receiver processed DTS.

Dolby Digital (AC-3) was placed in the Right Analog channel of the laserdisc, the RF output carried the AC-3 signal. You also needed an RF demodulator to decode the AC-3 signal for you receiver, and not many current receivers contain that input. You'll have to pay a premium for the RF decoder.

fitprod

Josh Z

It wasn't just a prototype. Players and discs were sold at retail. MUSE/Hi-Vision was an analog HDTV format available in Japan for almost a decade before HDTV made its debut in the US. Discs and players were extraordinarily expensive, unfortunately ($250 a disc is about right), and many of the titles were not mastered very well.

compulsive dvd

I have a dvd/laserdisc combo player, but I think my old CLD-D503 Pioneer had a better picture. I even upgraded it myself to accomodate AC3. However, when I had more interest in DTS, I got the newer player on ebay with the digital out and since i didn't have a set top dvd player at the time, it was the perfect thing to buy. The DTS surround is full bitrate and is amazing on a lot of the titles. I don't have a widescreen tv so the anamorphic transfers don't matter to me at the moment other than being good for future use. Many laserdiscs were too noisy. My dvds look better picturewise for the most part. Later laserdiscs that weren't noisy look great, though. The only thing is, laserdiscs are analogue and are composite. DVDs can be mastered component which will give them better color. But then again, lasers are not compressed at all, so you're not going to get pixelization. The audio is also better because it's not compressed either. I still have many laserdiscs, from dts to music discs that i cannot get on dvd and a few movies that are widescreen on laserdisc and full screen only on dvd. Also, several titles have extras that didn't make the dvd. The criterion laser of boogie nights has a john holmes documentary on it that didn't make the dvd.

But once you get used to DVDs, the laserdisc sidebreaks are annoying. Especially with CAV discs, as fun as they are, the fact that a movie is separated between six sides is a little silly. Even with auto reverse, as my players have (why they never made this possible for flipper dvds is beyond me) you have to keep changing discs.

When you look at places that have used lasers, many of them have the same titles. It seems they made too many of some of them.

chente

I picked up a LD player about a year ago now since there were a couple of titles that I wanted that I couldn't find on DVD. I now pretty much play one almost every day. If you have decent equipment and do a little research you can get a surprisenly good picture in addition to the excellent sound.

I started out just trying to chase down movies that weren't on DVD but now I actually buy quite a few movies that ARE on DVD since you can get them for so cheap. I took a trip to Ameoba's in Hollywood and picked up a lot of pretty good stuff for $1 each! Sealed copies of good movies like Lolita and Chinatown were $4. I've also picked up a few concert LD's for cheap and the audio quality is very good on them.

matome

Shit, I never knew that. I always assumed that it required the same delivery port from the LD as the AC3 which was the RF3 jack. Well, it wouldn't have mattered since at the time (mid-90's) my Yamaha 3090 couldn't do DTS (only AC3). I upgraded to the DTS-capable RX-V1 in 2001, but by then I was full into DVD's for years already.

zyzzle

Yup, loved the old 12" laserdiscs. As fuzzbox mentions, those were the days when I could pop the movie in and get what I wanted, not tons of "bells & whistles, and fluff" that we see toted as "features" on today's DVD releases. Yes, to get rid of the garbage, there is a magical program called "DVDShrink" that lets you get rid of the PUOPS, menus, and annoying trailers, etc so that we can get down to the business of ACTUALLY WATCHING the movie!

Only downside to LDs was the 60 min / side running time limitation, which was circumvented by the purchase of a dual-sided player such as the Pioneer LD-704. And some analog NTSC artifacts, but often the digital artifacts in a badly authored / compressed DVD are far worse and more annoying.

And, of course we have many titles released on LD that will never see the light of day on DVD...

SINGLE104

Thank you Matome for your informative reply. It will be taken into consideration.

Romerojpg

Sinc the DVD player for the better anamorhpic picture and the LD player for the better sound and that way everyones happy on both fronts, acctually getting them running exact same speed and in unison is a different matter, but hey if you want perfection itst he only way

chente

I did that with my Aliens and it was pretty cool! The sound on the THX Aliens LD is much richer than the DVD from the Quadrilogy. The problem came at the side flip when I had to spend time synching them again. It was a pretty fun experiment, though and I have used it to demo the differences between DVD's and LD's to some friends.

Romerojpg

Ahh I thought someone would have tried it nice to know its possible.