kevkev

ok. in 1999 i got my first dvd player which was a chinese pioneer which was multi region out of the box and displayed pal or ntsc on my old tv. with some dvd players they only showed a pure ntsc signal so you may have got a B/W picture on an old non ntsc compatible tv. my question is, were laserdisc players the same? could you run ntsc discs on old pal tvs? just curious as i'm thinking of getting a cheap player for some older films and criterions mainly for the extras but will be using it on an older tv and not my widescreen one.

patherto

There were a couple of laserdisc players that were dual-format, but these aren't the best LD players you can find. People who have seen PAL laserdiscs tell me that these discs are inferior to average quality NTSC discs. You also have a much narrower range of titles than are available on NTSC. (Japan, where laserdiscs were a big success, is on the NTSC wavelength and still actively sells LDs.) I would suggest you forget about PAL laserdiscs. (Oh, I bought one accidentally and can assure you nothing happens on an NTSC laserdisc player.)

cultshock

Yeah, from what I've heard, PAL LDs were few and far between, and not very good compared to their NTSC counterparts.

Laser discs were very popular in Japan, but I'd have to disagree with them still being sold there. I haven't seen them in stores there for years, except for a few places that sell used video.

patherto

I've never been anywhere near Japan so I can't check it out. But laserdisc sales over the Internet are thriving there.