Laser Disc Playa....
iron_monkey
985 Posts
Hey, quick question...Found a Poneer laser disc player yesterday for cheap. Is this worth buying? I've never watched anything on laser disc and now w/ the advent of dvd, is there any point to having one of these contraptions?
Comments
the sound however, like with later VHS tapes, is usually digital, so if you're considering buying some music LDs, the sound quality will be pretty decent.
in any case they arent REALLY worth buying for anything more than a curiosity. that said, i do own a laserdisc player, and a copy of the Beastie Boys "Skills to Pay the Bills" on LD that i found at a garage sale a few years ago.
Thanks dood. Hey, I watched that video of your apartment. Cool shit... now tell me where you fid all those crazy boomboxes. I wanna start a collection of my own. Though something tells me that here in LA, people aren't gonna be letting go of their Lasonics anytime soon.
glad you like the collection dude.
if youre serious about a collection, a good resource is http://www.stereo2go.com its my second home online, not to mention the friendliest forum ive ever been on. if half the shit that goes down on soulstrut happened there, EVERYBODY would be banned...haha
I bought mine off eBay after buying tons of really cheap LDs in Japan. Scored some classic 70s and 80s flicks as well as some karaoke discs so the natural next step was to get an LD player with karaoke capabilites. Payed something like $200 for it in the end (fuck the customs) and watched about 5 movies and hosted 2 or 3 karaoke jams before retiring the thing to the basement. When I move place I might set it up but not sure really.
true, mine was $30 and i still barely feel like i've gotten my moneys worth....hahaha
However, one thing you can do with the discs and players is convert them to DVD, so if you're doing some DVD turntable action, you can do it with movies that have not made their DVD debut. The transfers will of course be as good as the quality of the laser disc themselves, so if you're doing VHS conversions, it's essentially the same thing, transfer-wise.
I've never done them myself, but I have seen a few laser disc transfers that are quite good, such as one for Pink Floyd's Live At Pompeii[/b], which was released by Polygram Home Video as an LD. The recent DVD version is a bit of a mess, and the Polygram version is the best for audio and video.
There are a number of music and concert films that have not come out on DVD (especially from Japan) and probably will never make it to Blu-Ray, so while the market is small, there's a lot of goods out there that are worth converting.
http://www.criterion.com/asp/laserdisc_browse.asp
lots of goodwills and other stores will lump all the LD's in with the records, not knowing what they are. so, if your local shops are like mine, while the VHS are still $2-3, and DVDs are usually $6+, you can still cop a lot of goodies on LD for the same price as the records. IF youre lucky.
also, im sure lots of video/book/whatever get these in and consider them a dead format (they arent wrong...) and mark them down infinitely.
basically if you find em in the US, they SHOULD be cheap.
then again, since we are all record heads, maybe you should be looking more into movies on VINYL...anybody remember CEDs?:
IMG src=http://www.cedmagic.com/museum/ced-player-guide/sft100.jpg>
IMG src=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ed/Ced_cart2.jpg/200px-Ced_cart2.jpg>
http://www.cedmagic.com/selectavision.html
i still see these discs a lot. i have a Toshiba player, but it needs a new belt.
its because of CED that this film will never be available in digital form (other than on HDTV):
I am sure there are a number of torrent sites and forums where people will put up laser disc rips, as I have seen on a few music torrent sites, so if someone wants to view them DiVx style or as a homemade indexed DVD, you can find them. When VHS was still "reliable", that's how a lot of habbyists used to get their footage and make it available to fans, whether it was Prince concerts or Kikaida episodes
That and of course publishing/ownership rights on the music itself.
http://www.cedmagic.com/home/rca1-160.mov
a/k/a "the laser disc player for beginners". Anyone remember in the early 80's when they first came out, and MTV would promote them by playing videos from the format, such as The Who's "Baba O'Riley"? For years, it would state that it came from The Kids Are Alright RCA disc.
I always see the CED's and laser discs at thrift stores every now and then, some of them quite good. I don't have a need for any Jane Fonda films, but I did find (and bought) the LD for Juice. Was there a laser disc for Car Wash, because I wonder if it has the scene with Danny DeVito that was eventually edited out. Anyway...
The only CED I have in my collection is this one. Don't know where my camera is offhand but a scan will do:
En guard, I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style.
tical.....tical....what's that shit a niggas smokin
I got all my classic Ghibli anime joints on LD, def worth keeping the player for.