Laserdisc players,anyone got one?

[livingdead70]

I am about to buy one of these, mainly because a thrift shop near has tons of the discs for a buck apiece.
And I have fixation for 80s electronics..............
Anyone else out there have one of these? They seem like theyd be cool, and I have seen factory sealed ones for as low as 5 bucks. I want to find one of the LD/CD/DVD players..............
trey

[Mikey]

Never had one in my life .....

Went from VHS to RCA Video Disc to VHS to DVD

[JPkempo]

I have one they where great in there time. Pioneer stoped making the players just this year. You may be able to get a cheep one on e-bay.

[WannabeMego]

Believe it or not, it's actually 70's Electronics...

I have one I picked up at a Garage Sale a couple of years ago for $50 + 24 LD's...

It's one of the last High-End Sony Models that came out here in the States...Plays both sides without flipping the Disc.

Those Models tend to break quicker then the ones you have to flip manually, so I don't use that feature often.

I have several movies that have never been released on DVD as well as many Foreign LD's because they had no Region Codes protecting them back then.

Still love my LD Player...I intend on keeping it as long as I possibly can.

Which reminds me, I gotta transfer those LD's to my DVR so I have a back-up just in case.

Oh...eBay & Amazon have the best varieties of LD Players...Good Luck.

[cjefferys]

I have a Pioneer LD/CD player. It's a model that you can hook up microphones to and play karaoke discs (I don't have any of those though). I still have it hooked up to my big TV, but only really have a handful of laserdiscs. To be honest, they don't look that great on large HDTVs (they still look great on standard def analog tube TVs though), and the widescreen ones aren't anamorphically enhanced like most DVDs are, but in their day, they were state of the art, much better than VHS. I've always liked old and obsolete technologies too, so I keep mine around. I've always wanted one of those really high end Pioneer players released in Japan only, but they are still very expensive to buy, there are a lot of LD collectors out there who keep the rare high end equipment in demand.

[JPkempo]

Some discs are still very rare and the only way you can get a good copy of some movies.
like this one
SONG OF THE SOUTH Disney HONG KONG laserdisc LD - eBay (item 140330919357 )

this copy was cheeper

Song of The South Japan Only Mega-Rare LaserDisc Disney - eBay (item 180376085633 )

[mego73]

I have one and a few LD's

[livingdead70]

Is there a difference between a Videodisc and a Laserdisc?
Thanks for the info guys............
trey

[JPkempo]

Is there a difference between a Videodisc and a Laserdisc?
Thanks for the info guys............
trey

Yes Video disc is analog disc read like a record, the disc is in a cartrage. Laser Disc is digital disc like a dvd but the size of a record.

[cjefferys]

Yeah, the videodiscs you may be thinking of are also known as CEDs. They were made by RCA in the early 80's (after the introduction of laserdiscs), and are the ones that came in big plastic caddies. We had a CED player when they first came out, but got tired of rental discs skipping all the time, so my father traded it in for a VCR. CEDs were a very flawed techology and deserved to fail. Laserdiscs were much better.

[mego73]

Yes Video disc is analog disc read like a record, the disc is in a cartrage. Laser Disc is digital disc like a dvd but the size of a record.

Laserdiscs were also analog in terms of video. In the beginning, they carried both analog video and audio. Later on, they added CD like digital sound to laserdiscs. Earlier players did not have the digital sound playback capability so like videotape, most digital sound laserdiscs had a dual analog track. But a few bonus feature laden discs would put the film soundtrack on digital and the commentary on analog.

Laserdiscs were the first home video format to have a version of digital 5.1 sound. It was referred to as Dolby AC-3 and was on some LD's like Star Trek Generations and Speed. The digital information carried on one of the channels of the analog track.

But the video was always analog.

Here's Leonard Nimoy promoting the Magnavox laserdisc player in 1981

YouTube - PART 1: Leonard Nimoy Demos The Magnavision VideoDisc Player

[cjefferys]

Laserdiscs were the first home video format to have a version of digital 5.1 sound. It was referred to as Dolby AC-3 and was on some LD's like Star Trek Generations and Speed. The digital information carried on one of the channels of the analog track.

And if I'm not mistaken, most (if not all?) LD players required an outboard processor in order to enjoy the AC-3 audio because they couldn't decode the signal internally.

Near the end, some DTS laserdiscs were also released. These are still very collectible among LD aficionados, and supposedly many of these discs sound superior to their DVD counterparts, because the DTS 5.1 audio had much less compression.

Laserdiscs were also the first home video format to offer movies in high definition. These were marketed under the name MUSE and were sold only in Japan around 1994. They weren't very successful though, probably because everything was so expensive and only a very limited number of movies were released in the format. Players cost around $6000, and if you wanted a compatible TV to play the discs in HD, you would have to spend $9000 for a 32 inch TV, or $29,000 for a 55 inch rear projection TV (the latter TV also needed a $7500 outboard decoder). Yikes! And the movies were over $200 each. And people complain about the prices of Blu-ray players and discs.

[JPkempo]

The people I got my unit from would retro fit the AC-3 into the unit. Went to DVD insted.