lglenny99

oka few things i have read many topics on here about LD players and people getting them for 30-75 dollars...i was wondering if anyone could help me find on around this price and a good quality one. i have a 55" widescreen TV and i want of course star wars and indiana jones and such but i want to take advantage of the tv (non vhs crap) so if anyone can help out an ignorant member please and thanks.......email me if want to talk privately..

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thanks everyone love this forum

Xytraguptorh

I don't have a high end LD player (mine is the Pioneer CLD-D504), but laserdiscs really don't look much better on my widescreen TV than VHS tapes do. The TV is a 65" Toshiba. I really wouldn't expect anything even close to DVD quality on the TV you have. That all might change if you bought an expensive, high-end player, but I'm no authority on that issue. For players that cost less than $100 used, which is even a lot cheaper than my player, I doubt you're going to get a great quality picture, but I could be wrong.

For the LD experts: is the picture on more expensive LD players a whole lot better than on the cheap ones?

By the way, the picture quality with my LD player looks better using composite video than S-Video.

For an LD/DVD comparison on my HDTV, I put in the Aliens DVD and the Aliens LD(from the box set). The DVD looked far better, but not only because it's anamorphic. I think the line doubler in the TV has a bad effect on my laserdiscs. They're not unwatchable, just not much better than VHS. Non-anamorphic DVDs, on the other hand, look really good on my TV. I would guess that LDs would still look fine on a direct-view HDTV or smaller HD projection TV, though.

Rand

It is strange that ld's wouldn't look much better than VHS on your set since thier resolution is twice that of VHS, just slightly less than DVD. A composite cable would look better if the comb filter on your tv is better than on the ld player. I don't know what your line doubler would have to do with it, the one on my Mits hdtv works fine with ld's.

JimRochester

I thought LD was only a 50% jump in resolution with DVD being double? Like 300+ lines compared to 240 or so. Not sure it's been awhile since I've read anything about one. I have a decent player I picked up used and certainly don't regret it. Compared to DVD you will be disappointed, I think you will notice an improvement over VHS though. I picked one up about a year ago and picked up the SW trilogy, Disney, BTTF and some others I can't yet get on DVD. Just remember, alot of the LD's you want are OOP so you'll pay for them. If you can find a player with a decent collection for a package price I'd go for it. It looks like another year for Raiders and several more for SW so you have nothing to lose but more cash.

jhiter24

I am also looking at getting a laser disc player. I have been looking around ebay for stuff but this is all greek to me. Could someone point me in the way to which player has the best price while being worth the money in quality. Also, Are there only one LD of star wars, Indiana Jones, BTTF, or are there several to go after........like SE. Thanks for any help.

RandyC

The cool thing is you can get many movies for under $5. For a long time, the Star Wars trilogy THX versions were selling new for $7.90 each at certain outlets.

One big difference with laserdisc vs DVD is that a higher end LD player does make a lot more difference, as compared to a lower-to-higher end DVD player (not counting progressive scan).

I highly recommend the Pioneer ELite or the CLD-D703 or D-704 as players. The 703/704 has one of the best pictures. Typically you can't find it under $100 though.

The other issue is that laserdiscs kept improving as a technology, and like DVDs, not all LDs are pressed the same. Some had better transfers than others. What I noticed *generally* is that later LDs were quite good, some in fact were stunning. Laserdiscs also tend to have great sound, even in PCM (Dolby Prologic) only.

Laserdiscs could do 425 lines of resolution compared to DVD's 480-540. However, part of what you see is resolution. There are other differences like color separation. And if your TV is tweaked for optimum DVD playback, it may lose a little more on LDs.

Shay

Shouldn't RandyC disclose how many copies of Under Siege 2 he has when talking about ld's?

RandyC

Hey... I don't have a problem.. I can quit at any time!

Er.. I am down to about 40 copies now.

Xytraguptorh

As for resolution differences comparing anamorphic DVDs to laserdiscs, the anamorphic DVDs already have a 33% resolution advantage to start with and then when you add in the resolution differences between the two formats that are there to start with, you're probably looking at around 50% better resolution for DVDs(on widescreen films).

I realize that on non-anamorphic DVDs and laserdiscs, the differences are smaller, but they don't look that close on my TV. The reason that I think the culprit is the line doubler on my TV is that it seems to amplify any noise in the video signal. LDs have quite a bit of noise in the picture(just like VHS), whereas DVDs and satellite TV look really "clean" in comparison. When I used to watch LDs on a 4:3 RPTV(non-HD), they looked a little better, but still much worse than DVDs. The Star Wars movies don't look too great, but some newer titles like Breakdown have much better transfers.

I've always read about how LD is capable of resolution just short of DVD, but I'm assuming that you need a really expensive player to take advantage of it, because I absolutely do not see it with my setup. I use a progressive scan DVD player, which adds to the DVD advantage, but even when I switch to interlaced, there is no comparison. Not that LDs aren't worth owning, though. I think it's cool to own the original Star Wars trilogy, Quest for Fire, Trainspotting Criterion, and other stuff not out on DVD yet.