Lazer discs?
Kinetic
3,739 Posts
So... do these have nay value at all to anyone anywhere? I just found a bunch of them in a charity shop and I thought, they LOOK like someone somewhere would want them, but I don't know. The Terminator 1 cover looks 
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C'mon - doesn't someone in Japan want these things? What did you put on them in the shop?
Certain music titles go for money and maybe some select titles that still aren't on dvd but that's pretty much it.
Whats the picture quality on these shits like? DVD quality or better?
Peace,
Dress
Better than VHS, but you've gotta flip 'em over half way... which is obnoxious.
I vaguely remember hearing that laser discs were actually better than dvds, possibly in the audio department. I think dvds have more compression. Not sure though. I've thought about buying a player because I would see some amazing titles on laser disc for cheap. Plus they would fit on my record shelves.
I remember having a drunken conversation and Star Wars came up when someone said, "Well, Ive got the set on Laser Disc"...as if to say that was the bees knees.
From wikipedia:
The differences between LD technology and DVD have led some videophiles to prefer LD. Laserdiscs use only analog video and almost always carry some form of analog audio. As the variable quality of analog media are theoretically capable of higher quality than the fixed quality of digital A/V carriers such as CD and DVD, and early DVD demo discs often had compression or encoding problems, lending additional support to such claims at the time. However, "LD-perfection" is rarely achieved in practice. Only the best LDs in the best playback systems exhibit such superior quality in comparison to the newer DVDs.
before the remastered AND unedited versions (meaning none of that extra digitized nonsense lucas added) of the original trilogy came out on dvd this year, the only way to get a high quality version of the star wars films was on laserdisc. that very fact almost convinced me to pick up an LD player from the thrift store.
i do own a selctavision CED player, though
i got a toshiba model with stereo sound!
i dont know man. really, if you play a VHS and LD back to back i dont think many people could tell the difference...unless like the VHS was completely played to shit or something, the quality is not that different.
i like laserdiscs and all but really they werent much of an improvment.
A number of titles that were released on VHS and LD are generally preferred by collectors on LD, especially if you do a LD > DVD transfer. There are loads of concerts, music films, and television performances released in Japan on LD that weren't released in the US or UK, they were the source of many VHS bootlegs in the late 80's and early 90's. Now, you can find LD transfers on DVD, or look for torrents and find people who are distributing the files as is.
Another thing to consider is that some films may have been edited over time, and it's possible that some versions on LD may be longer than the version that's now on DVD. I would assume that all Criterion pressings of films would eliminated the need to track one down.
The other alternative is official VCD's, and that looks as good/bad as VHS.
If anything, sound quality is better than VHS, and if you find some music video compilation, you can get some nice rips from it, especially video mixes that have not been released on CD. Until Universal makes a Guy DVD, I would have to track down the laser disc equivalent of what came out on VHS.
SHORT VERSION: The market for them is smaller, especially since there are a number of niches for DVD fiends, but it's not unlike people who collect 8-track tapes. It may be a dead format, but it's important to someone. I'm sure there's an LD forum somewhere, and someone is crying about the MegaForce[/b] LD they found at a yard sale.
I will say this: I found Juice[/b] on LD and I'm not parting with it.
Or you can offer it to DJ's who want to do their Mista Lawnge/Mr. Long "The Choice Is Yours" DJ routine.
Remember when they came out, and MTV played videos from them, as if that was the next shit?
they had a couple early 80s JCPenney virtual catalogs on LD too, and im kicking myself to this day for not buying them.
Virtual catalogs from JCPenney, never knew those existed. That would be good to transfer to DVD, and use them on those DVD turntables.
But the transfer on the discs was very bad MPEG2 quality...
...which just so happens to look fine on a TV.
aside from the audio on later ones, LD video is entirely analog, right? it uses a laser pick-up but im pretty confident its still an analog format.