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

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by AxC., Feb 15, 2014.

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  1. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    I don't consider BluRay the "only" format. Yes, laserdisc and VHS and Beta are all (fortunately) dead. But DVD, while assuredly not providing as high res a picture, is still quite adequate and acceptable for most people (including myself). If someone offered to magically convert all my (reasonably large number of) DVDs to BluRay, of course I'd say yes. But the difference isn't substantial enough (unlike the step up to DVD) to be worth my money or worry otherwise.
     
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  2. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    I'd add old Academy Ratio films to that. There's many of these old films that are not on newer formats or look dreadful on horribly, compressed DVD's. Academy Ratio is simply optimal for LD's capabilities.
     
  3. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Yes, you are correct. I do tend to buy academy LDs, especially if it is a later pressing. The transfers on earlier LDs can be pretty bad. Fortunately, the prices on these tend to be rock bottom.
     
  4. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    Although this thread has probably tried plenty to do the exact opposite, it's inspired me to actually go seek out a player. So I'm gonna try to find a decent one without going broke. Last thing I need is another money pit, but there are a ton of things in this format which haven't been released elsewhere, and possibly even more that have been released in an altered format. I've been pretty disappointed with many of the Disney diamond series Blu-rays and eventually stopped buying them upon release. I'm gonna seek out LDs of the Disney titles and also any animation that hadn't made it to BD - which is a ton. Wish me luck.
     
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  5. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    Good luck! I just watched The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! on LD tonight. I love the movie, I missed the DVD release, and there's no BD yet. You don't say what size TV you have, but I have a 60" Plasma and my LDs are disappointing on a screen that size. Remember how VHS tape looked compared to broadcast television on the old CRT sets? It's that kind of difference when you play a LD on a HDTV. If you have an old CRT television you should hook up the LD player to it, IMO, you'll enjoy it the way it was intended.
     
  6. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    Thanks for the luck, I'll need it!
    I have a 52" Samsung LCD, it is about 5 years old now so I'm sure there are better things on the market however it was definitely high end at the time of purchase... TOTL model in that size and there was a $3000+ difference in price between it and the model below which was identical on the outside but this had some seriously good electronics and upgraded specs on the inside... It actually looks watchable with VHS and I use it for vintage gaming all the time, which is usually composite (or worse yet, RF once you get back into the 70's consoles)
    The only CRT we have left is a small commodore monitor which stopped powering on completely over the past couple of years... I think LD should look more than acceptable on my LCD though, even VHS looked decent given a good TBC.



    *So many damn acronyms*
     
  7. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    Sounds like you have it covered. VHS is unwatchable on my 60" plasma and it was equally bad on the 60" Sony SXRD set I had. LD is barely acceptable on either set, but was fine on my 32" HD CRT Panasonic set, with VHS being only fair. In all honesty, I always found VHS and Beta to be barely acceptable back in the day, but it was all we had. The biggest reason I went to LD for movies was because it was a video format for watching movies that gave near broadcast quality images. Super VHS was just too little, too late, IMO.
     
  8. BradOlson

    BradOlson Country/Christian Music Maven

    I have seen excellent LD playback on a Panasonic Plasma TV and any of those 720p LCD TVs from budget consumer electronic companies.
     
  9. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    There are many music Laserdiscs unavailable in any other format and many/some music Laserdiscs sound better than their DVD/Blu Ray counterparts (it’s the mastering not the specs as any member of this forum should know). Picture quality is very much inferior on Laserdisc, however, this picture quality is better than no picture at all if there is no other release or to see Hans shoot first.

    So I’ve listed two real (as of March 2014) advantages that Laserdiscs have over more modern formats other than being an antique.

    Why are people so dismissive of older technology?
     
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  10. davidshirt

    davidshirt =^,,^=

    Location:
    Grand Terrace, CA
    Stumbled across 3 crates of laserdiscs at a goodwill a few months ago... Because I thought they were records. I flipped through them, there were a lot of criterion and classic movies. They must have belonged to a cinephile who either died or upgraded his/her collection. I am pretty sure a lot of the criterion ld's I seen havent been released on DVD or blue ray though. Made me wonder.
     
  11. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    My plasma set is a properly calibrated Panasonic, and the picture is just so-so with LDs. Everything else looks great. I will admit it could be my LD player, but at this juncture in time, I'm not feeling the need to take the risk of buying another in to off chance it might work better.
     
  12. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    I'm not dismissive, but my experience has been that if you can get a DVD or Blu-ray, you're going to get a better picture. Soundwise, the PCM soundtracks on LD are just fine. The analog soundtracks are pretty noisy, even if they are analog.
     
  13. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I picked up a pile of Criterion's last week; Fellini's Satyricon, Taxi Driver, Some Like it Hot, Last Tango in Paris, and The Producers. I'll agree, they would look vastly better on Blu-ray or even DVD. There are some worthwhile supplements or commentaries, but I'm mostly spinning them up for nostalgia reasons. Back in the '90s this stuff would have been unaffordable, yet I got them all for under $20.
     
  14. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    For plasmas the best players are the one's with really good composite video if you're going straight in and not through some outboard processor. The best ones would be the HLD-X0, HLD-X9, CLD-97, Mac MLD-7020 (97 clone), LD-S2, and CLD-95. Using composite video only, those would be the winners. Players like the LD-S9 and CLD-99 have composite video that's no better than the CLD-D704/D703/79. When you go below these players I've mentioned, PQ falls off fast. I need to try my Denon LA-3500 on a plasma sometime. It's a clone of the Panasonic LX-900, the best player they made. The picture is a wee bit sharp looking compared to Pioneer's softer PQ. It's composite is about on par with the CLD-D704. It has a 3-level Paint function that's fun to fool with on music videos or whatever...

    When you drop below the 51 db, and up, players, those mentioned, the PQ falls off briskly. You get way more video noise. My first player, LD-838D did 47 db and that looked good back in the 80's! ....CRT's.... My brother still has it, I think. Last time I was at his house I turned it on. It didn't look so good on his Pioneer 58" C RT RP, a set that's very forgiving to LD players. Most of the best Pioneer player are the ones made from 1995 and later for the lesser players because by then even the budget players did 49 or 50 db. A player like the Elite CLD-59 has great audio but it's literally a budget player for video. Inside, only it's audio sets it apart from a CLD-D504. Both players deliver 50 db video.

    With LD, the player makes so much difference compared to most formats.
     
  15. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    The Criterion to look for is Dr. Strangelove deee-luxe box. The supplements are great and the 1.66-1 aspect looks about as good as LD gets.
     
  16. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    I'm sure you're correct. My LD player is a Proscan mode PSLD43, that plays both sides of the disc. It's connected to the TV via my Denon HT receiver as follows: the LD player is connected to the S-Video input of the receiver and the analog audio connections. The receiver is connected to the TV via an HDMI cable. I don't use any video processing, though I could, but I don't think it would help.
     
  17. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    All the Proscans are Pie-auh-near clones. The nicest one is somethin' close to a CLD-D502.
     
  18. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    I figured as much. My first LD player was a Yamaha that had a really nice picture on our old CRT televisions, but sadly, it died before we got a 60" screen. I would have liked to see what that would have looked like.
     
  19. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    I think that all the Yamahas are Pie-auh-nears. All the Denons except the LA-3500 are Pie-auh-nears. Name a brand and most of their decks were Pie-auh-nears.
     
  20. Uncle Meat

    Uncle Meat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, Tx, US
    I don't have a laser player, but I wish I did, and the set of Looney Tunes that came out, and maybe some of the Walt Disney shorts.
    I haven't done a side by side comparison, but I am under the impression there are some cartoons that haven't been released on DVD/Bluray yet.
     
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  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Let me know how well that LD player is working ten years from now... :sigh:
     
  22. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    Well, I hardly ever use it, but it seems to work fine when I do. Don't think it will wear out just sitting there. If we are still here in ten years,
    I will revive this post and let you know. Meanwhile I will enjoy it. :winkgrin:
     
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  23. I bought my LD player in 2003. Works beautifully and I've never had any issues with it.

    I wish I could say the same about the various DVD and Blu Ray players that have crapped out on me in the last 10 years.
     
  24. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    I don't know if the Yamaha was a Pioneer, and here's why: It also played CDs, and one of my friends had a Pioneer player and he was always having trouble playing CDs in it. He gave me a Warren Zevon CD to try in my Yamaha that would stop in the middle of the disc on his Pioneer. The Yamaha had no problems, and there is actually a pinhole (visible!) in the aluminum coating. Also, when it failed (the disc tray wouldn't open, the mechanism wore out) there were no replacement parts anywhere and my tech told me that he even looked for compatible Pioneer parts but they weren't the same design. So if Pioneer made it, they did so to Yamaha's specifications. (Very possible, IMO.)
     
  25. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    My player is from the Mid-80's!
     
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