Are laserdiscs worth getting or am I better off with DVDs?

Nope. Though I was surprised to find out they lasted until 2009. Some people at LDDB.com talk about producing new discs, but that's impossible. The lines were scrapped a decade ago.

http://gizmodo.com/5130944/pioneer-stops-making-new-laserdisc-players-finally-concedes-to-vhs

 

Beef Rules!!!!

 

sometimes it's just hard to let go of a favorite format...I cannot imagine getting rid of my collection of DVDs and some BRs...

 

Beef rules!

 

I've got a ton of them, but I only paid retail for a small handful, thank goodness. I feel kind of guilty about having asked my dad to buy me the Beatles Anthology set when it came out as a Christmas present. I've watched it once in all these years.

 

I know ppl who invested thousands of dollars in their LD collection...they are very sad about it. Nice to see you got off easier...at least with DVD most are enjoyable even if BR is of better quality to most.

 

I didn't pay a fortune for mine. I did go nuts in 1998-1999 when the warehouses were dumping stock for cheap. The local laserdisc store would get in dozens of boxes of overstock each week and price everything at $9.98 each. These were mostly recent movies that had just been offered for $39 and up just a few weeks before. It took me several years to watch them all.

 

I never spent a penny on LD, watched some at a friends house many times early into the format, but about the time I was considering it VHS was out. Done deal.

 

LOL! Laserdisc!

 

VHS always sucked in my book...I only used it for time shifting and taping movies off cable...I always wished for a better format and LD wasn't it...DVD was a revelation over VHS!

 

I knew I knew that image from somewhere. That's a good movie.

 

I've got a question for the tech heads here: I have an NTSC player that plays US discs fine. Can I play Japanese NTSC discs?

 

is the player all region? if not all region discs should play fine.

 

I may or may not have also taken full advantage of both distributors and individuals dumping their LD stock in the mid-to-late 90s.

 

Laserdiscs don't have region coding. Any NTSC player will play any NTSC disc.

As a matter of fact, that was a big part of the appeal of DVD to the studios; they could lock a title to a specific region and end importing!

 

Laserdisc never had a region locking system. Because I'm from Australia (a PAL country), I don't know the difference between NTSC and NTSC-J. American NTSC plays fine on my TV as it has NTSC Playback.

 

I'll leave the technical details to Vidiot, but you can play a Japanese disc on a US player. One of the last new titles I purchased was the Japanese disc of The Phantom Menace, which had to be imported from Japan. Terrific image quality.

 

When I work d in a used hifi shop the owner would buy used players but not the discs.

I would buy the used movies for a dollar each, cherry pick what I wanted and sell the leftovers to my circle of LD loving friends for a whopping two dollars a movie.

 

O' OK, I thought you were referring to DVD...my mistake.

 

Ha, good for you!

 

Terrifically good I hope? I've been interested in picking that up, since supposedly it's the only release of the theatrical version available on home video aside from VHS. And given the option between LD and VHS....

Phantom menace was the only Star Wars movie I had ever seen. I saw it in theaters, I was all of 7 years old. I hadn't seen the originals until this past summer when I picked up the "Definitive Collection" set - 18 CAV sides of widescreen goodness - and the player to go with them!

Seeing the theatrical cut would be my preferred way to revisit that film, especially now that I have a better understanding of everything and not just looking at lasers pod races and funny aardvarks.

 

I don't think that you could have bought a player in the U.S. in 2009. IIRC, they stopped selling them here in 2001 or 2002.

 

It's reputed to be one of the best looking lasers ever produced. I also imported the Special Edition Trilogy that came out in Japan at about the same time, which also looks terrific. The Definitive was excellent when it came out and the packaging is great, but I don't think the image quality is that good and there is sooooo much disc changing.

 

Well, according to that article, Amazon was selling them in 2009. Unfortunately, they're sold out.