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. weaselriot

    weaselriot Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL

    (Takes the 37 pound LD player and whacks it on the counter several times, then screams at it...)
     
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  2. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I think the LD-S1 weight more than that!
     
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  3. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    The CLD's 95 and 97's weighed about 37 pounds and so does the HLD-X9. I've never seen an LD-S1 but the original LD-2 weighed 67 pounds and the updated model with an improved comb filter weighed 69 pounds. The heaviest player Pioneer ever made was the HLD-X0. It weighed 79 pounds.
     
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  4. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    I just looked up the LD-S1 and it weighed 16.8 Kg which is just over 37 pounds.
     
  5. weaselriot

    weaselriot Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL

    I should think that a good, solid stand for a 32" CRT shouldn't be that hard to find. Sales of such large CRTs may have ceased by 2005, but such beasts only die off one by one, usually serving secondary duty (basement, garage, rec room, etc.) after replacement by a newer flat panel display. Each time one of those old beasts finally expires, the cart/stand/cabinet usually goes out the door with it. I would try places such as Goodwill, rummage sales, garage sales and the like. Even though the CRTs that once sat on them go straight to recycling, the stands still have some resale value. Check want ads, Craigslist, or even just try googling for them. Some people may even be grateful if you just haul it away.

    I still have a very nice 1981 solid wood Sears cart on casters, currently in the basement housing my 1994 27" Sony KV-27TS32, which shows no signs of expiring. That may take a while, as it served only three years of front line duty before I benched that to upgrade to an 32XBR100 in 1997, which sadly blew a red gun only 5 years later. I also have a lovely Baker Road Shaker style home entertainment center still housing the nice 1080i Sony KV-32HV600 which replaced the 32XBR100 and is still going strong. Once those CRTs bite the dust, there will be no reason to keep the cart/stand/cabinet, and straight to Goodwill they will go.
     
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  6. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    Assuming you meant LD-S2, yeah, it's a real boatanchor at 60+ pounds. :) I used to think my CLD-97 was a hefty player until I got a LD-S2 several years ago and it superseded my 97 as my main player. It's a tight fit in my equipment rack as well, but fortunately I haven't had to pull it out of the rack since I first hooked it up to the AV receiver.
     
  7. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    There's a good chance your sticky drawer is the result of a worn-out belt. That's a fairly simple and inexpensive fix, and belts tend to be some of the few parts that are still available from Pioneer for many players.
     
  8. mdm08033

    mdm08033 Senior Member

    That's what I did when my DVL-90 LD/DVD player died. Sniff.
     
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  9. Rachael Bee

    Rachael Bee Miembra muy loca

    I had a friend back in the 90's that had an LD-S2 and a Sony XBR100 set to play it into. Oh how I wanted one of each! It just wasn't in my budget at the time. In the early 2000's I wanted an LD-S2 for my stereo system. I can't count how many times I lost on e-Bay. I finally gave up....
     
  10. NightGoatToCairo

    NightGoatToCairo Forum Resident

    Location:
    .
    Has anyone with Tin Machine's 'Oy Vey, Baby' converted to DVD? :love:
     
  11. I'm a big L.D. fan, but the image provided by an L.D. can't be as better as a D.V.D. However, sometimes can get close. I have the P.A.L. letterboxed edition of "Toy Story" and the qualty of the image gets close to the one provided by a D.V.D.
    There can be differences betwen L.D. qualty. Some where mastered properly, some not. Some ar as good as a V.H.S. tape in terms of image, some are better. By the mid '90's the techonlogy of L.D. was improving, but the D.V.D camed out. And it wasn't all about image, it was also about price and size and practibility (for video material longer then 59 minutes you didn't had to flip the disc - o.k., very long video takes more then one D.V.D.).
    P.A.L. L.D.'s tend to have better image then N.T.S.C. ones, if proprely mastered.
     
  12. I own L.D.'s manufactured from around 1983 to around 1996. Throu all that the Europeanen P.A.L. ones where generally roters, I don't have problems with them. But the image isn't better then V.H.S. "Indiana Jones and the raiders of the lost ark" is a verry big piece of crap in terms of image... don't know why it's having a lot of green stripes moving on the image. The Elkie Brooks one (ha, a P.A.L. only title) haves better image, but some blue strips and the beging of both sides. No, it ins't the laser rot, because the sound isnt' afected.
    The 1983 version of "Saturday night fever" (my oldest N.T.S.C. disc) for it's time is better then a V.H.S. cassette. But for the '90's...
    It's intresting that my problematic disc are from the '90's.
    One of them is "Tiny Toon: How I spent my vacation" (if I knew how horrible is this cartoon - didn't had big memories from the '90' when I watched it on tv, I woudn't have had bought the disc) which haves a problem around chapter 3, side B and "All dogs to heaven" (C.A.V. edition) - the discs stops around the middle of the end song (maybe it's dirty or scratched).

    Well, with old discs if you where lucky enought not to get rot you could play them as many times as you wished, without damaging them. And in countries like Romania you could make a lot of V.H.S. copies.
    Talking about my country, I wonder if any L.D. title was officialy sold here. A guy from wich I bought 3 disc (he had more, but sold them; the 3 reamined among vinyl records and he found out about them later) told me that he sold in Craiova ("capital" of Dolj County) about 5 new players, one of them which might have been a "Pioneer" D.V.L. 909 or 919.
    There wheren't so many players in Romania. I guess no more then 1000-2000. Both of my players where bought second-hand from outside Romania (the N.T.S.C. one I got from a guy who's father recived it with a lot of disc from U.S.A., my P.A.L. one from a second-hand market that bring second-hand stuff from Germany).
    I think I'm the 1st person from my family to own such machines and discs. I won't pay many for a disc - excepting the music ones, which you play more times then the one of movies.
    After 10 yearsof dreaming of L.D.'s, in 2015, I got me two players and disc (in January the P.A.L. and in July the N.T.S.C. one).
    Sheesh, in the '90's my mother (parents divorced) couldn't aford expensive electronics (I dind't had not even a better radiocassette recorder), but now I got my vengence. And I can dream that I'm the past.

    And yeah, L.D.'s don't have image as good as a D.V.D., but since they where rare you can surprise people with them. I got my P.A.L. player at a expo with old electronics made or asambled in Romania in order to be hooked up to a color tv assambled in Romania and when I opened the drawer to put the disc on the other side a guy was really shocked when he found out there where LaserDiscs. A lot of people think they are vinyl records.

    Oh, and players usually don't get extremly bad mechanical problems. Chances are that the laser diode may run out of power. In Romania I don't know if I can find an working ahelium-neon tube generated laser player. The He-Ne laser "Philips" players where crap - belts and mirros falling.

    Talking about thing that you can only find on Laser Disc: some one digitized that 1981 "Sears" interactive catalogue (unique stuff on L.D.). There is a beatiful song called I think "Reflection of the summer" that I couldn't find on internet (I admit, I browsed only the lyrics).
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2016
  13. Clark V Kauffman

    Clark V Kauffman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Des Moines, Iowa
    There have definitely been some laserdiscs that easily surpass their DVD counterparts in terms of picture quality -- not because laserdisc offers superior technology in reproducing an image (it most definitely does not), but because more care was taken in the mastering and/or authoring, or better source materials were used.

    For example, the 30th Anniversary Edition of "My Fair Lady" released in 1994 was sourced from a gorgeous new print that was fully restored by Robert Harris, and it looked far superior to the initial single-disc BluRay of the movie. In that case, it was because by the time the BluRay came out, the restored film had been allowed to disintegrate, causing some very obvious color shifting, pulsing and fading. (Fortunately, Harris was commissioned to do yet another restoration of the film just a few years ago, and the newest BluRay release that resulted from his work looks far superior to all previous home-video versions.)

    Also, the initial Apple-restored laserdisc of "Magical Mystery Tour" looked and sounded great, but the subsequent DVD, using the exact same source material, looked like hell. In that case, it was due to both poor mastering/authoring, as there were digital artifacts all over the place. (The film was restored again, and released again, on both DVD and BluRay, and that particular version is sharper and more detailed than the old laserdisc, and there are no artifacts. But unfortunately the color palette is off, with everyone's face having that faded-red-rust hue that afflicts a lot of 16mm films as they age.)
     
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  14. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I actually have a copy of that Sears Tele-Shop LD. I think it was one of the last LDs I ever bought - never saw one before despite hearing about it for a long time, then one turned up on eBay and I managed to pick it up for next to nothing.

    [​IMG]

     
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  15. I own that disc! You're a very lucky person. I'm dreaming of one, but didn't see ever one on ebay and to get one from U.S.A. to Romania... well, the transport will cost and there are chances that the disc will be damaged and that will be first degree murder!
    Do I ask you too much if I ask you to make a .flac audio with that song?
     
  16. And me curios: did you pay more than 20 U.S. Dollars for the disc?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 1, 2016
  17. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I had a saved search set up on eBay for it for several years. It's a fairly uncommon disc; upon further reflection I seem to remember seeing at least a couple of other copies before I got one, but the prices were much higher than I was willing to pay. I looked back at my email archives, and it wasn't as cheap as I'd remembered - I got it for just over $30.

    There's one currently for sale on LDDB from an Austrian seller, but he's asking $150 and he doesn't even have the jacket, only the disc itself. It's probably worth registering as a user there if you haven't already done so, then you can set up a wishlist and add this disc to it.

    LaserDisc Database - Sears 1981 Summer Tele-Shop Catalog [07-498] »

    Unfortunately I'm not set up to extract audio from LDs. You could easily do so from that YouTube video with any one of various readily-available tools, but of course the YouTube audio is already compressed as opposed to lossless.
     
  18. Found it on a U.S.A. site for 30 dollars. But the problem is that the transportation to Romania is about 24 dollars and 54 dollars isn't cheap for a Romanian. But if I will get money I will mad enough to buy it.
     
  19. bamaaudio

    bamaaudio Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    This is pretty sound advice. I stocked up on three players since the early 2000s and of those, only one is still operating smoothly. Repair work on these machines is just not something most local technicians are used to handling. My old CLD-97, for example, developed a jammed disc tray and I wasted at least a hundred bucks around town with no resolution to the problem. And as mentioned, discs can and may go bad over time... I've noticed a number of movies that played flawlessly in the past exhibit major problems more recently.
     
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  20. Clark V Kauffman

    Clark V Kauffman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Des Moines, Iowa
    My one and only LD player is 26 years old and was getting very finicky as to the discs it would play. I was just about to toss to it into the trash when I figured I might as well open it up and clean the lens with a Q-tip and alcohol. That did the trick. It has worked flawlessly since then and now plays the discs it couldn't previously read.

    But yeah, it's only a matter of time before the tray mechanism stops working or there's some other problem I can't fix. So I've transferred all my LD exclusives to DVD-R now.
     
  21. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    I had a Yamaha LD player that would play any optical disc (of that era) that I put in it. Even some CDs, which were unplayable on a friends TOTL Sony player would play on my Yamaha LD. However, one day, the disc tray refused to open. I took it to the repair shop and the tech told me that the gears for the mechanism had worn out. Electronic issues he would have been able to address, but the mechanical ones where parts were needed...well, I was out of luck. I now have a ProScan player (made by Pioneer, as was the Yamaha, IIRC) which is now developing a sticky drawer. I'm probably going to open it up and give it a good cleaning and lube parts that should be lubed (if any), perhaps I can get a few more years out of it.
     
  22. Well, that He-Ne tube that generates laser, if is not broken (the Helium atoms are very thin) will last longer, much longer then a laser diode. So a player will need mechanical mentinance.
    Unfortenley only "Pioneer" made good players of this kind - and I want to get me a L.D.-660 P.A.L. one ... (a guy in Australia own one and had seen one for sale, but I didn't seen one for sale in Europe) + V.P.-1100 (very good looking machine) and why not an P.R.-7820. But this will cost a lot of money!
    "Philips/Magnavox" made some really bad players. Belts, mirrors that felt from theyr places due to poor qualty glue... I wonder how much will cost to adjust such a machine.
    If it wans't for "Pioneer" LaserDisc could be D.V.D. (Dead, Very Dead). "Magnavox" players and M.C.A. discs where bad!
    Oh, and the old He-Ne player played "G.M." discs. And I heared that is more easy for 'em to play some damaged discs (or something like that).
     
  23. Oh, sometimes is cheaper to buy titles on L.D. then on D.V.D.
     
  24. MikeJedi

    MikeJedi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Las Vegas
    LD sound quality way better than DVD IMO;)
     
  25. The Hud

    The Hud Breath of the Kingdom, Tears of the Wild

    Any specific titles?
     
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