Even more superfluous technology...

[ffutures]

Those of you who know me will not be surprised that after replacing my old laserdisc player with one that can't handle PAL discs with analog sound I went through several phases:

(a) frantic worrying because I can no longer play analog sound laserdiscs then
(b) getting rid of some and replacing them with DVDs, putting some in frames, etc. then
(c) saying it wasn't really that important anyway.

So naturally I've now moved on to phase
(d) and bought another bloody laserdisc player.

Found it on Gumtree, bargained the price down a little, and bought it this evening.

This one's a CLD-D925, e.g. about the best one that wasn't ridiculously expensive (it's designed for general home use rather than the laserdisc equivalent of "put the player on a half-ton slab of concrete" audiophile nutters) and plays both sides of discs, analog and digital sound, PAL and NTSC. Came with about 28 NTSC discs, none of which I actually particularly wanted, and I may well end up flogging most of them, that plus selling the old player should eventually pay for this one.

Reasonably pleased, provided that nothing goes horribly wrong...

later - forgot to say that there was one oddity - a boxed set that was supposed to be laserdiscs contained a 5-disc CD collection, "Elvis - The Complete 50s Masters" Not entirely sure what I'm going to do with this, but the next time I run Elvis: The Legendary Tours there may well be a sound track...

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Where does laserdisc picture quality stand in comparison to say, Blu-Ray?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Nowhere near as good - it's between VHS and DVD. I'm mostly interested in them because I have so many that I got before I got into DVD, and because there are things you can't easily find anywhere else, e.g. the Cosgrove-Hall stop-frame versions of Pied Piper and Cinderella.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Strange, I wonder why stuff never got re-released on DVD. I understand pressing a DVD isn't the most expensive process in the world. But maybe the sales were just so low it wasn't worthwhile?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Old stuff, odd interests, stuff where the rights aren't clear, anime, etc.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

One market laserdisc catered to which oddly wasn't picked up by DVD very much was concert performances of classical music and ballet. Laserdisc had THX and Dolby added to the spec quite early in its evolution and because it used a heavy rotating disc with active speed control clocked off the data read from the disc it produced very precise sound. These discs cost a lot being aimed at the connoisseur market and some of them were never remastered onto DVD. Saying that pirate digital copies of some of these discs do exist; it is trivially easy to rip a laserdisc as they have no DRM or other anticopying protections.

Anime laserdiscs suffer from the rights problem -- most if not all anime ever released on laserdisc has been rereleased on DVD and now Blu-ray but in some cases the soundtracks have changed as the music rights haven't been transferred since they were only licenced for the original laserdisc release. This has caused much anguish and tearing of hair among uber-otaku types.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Dead right - I have a lot of classics on laserdisc, none on DVD.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

It's basically standard TV quality (525i NTSC in the US, 625i PAL in the UK) recorded as a single analog data stream. The colour info is encoded in the analog signal so it's lossy but as Marcus says it's better than consumer VCRs, even S-VHS. I can digitise a decent 480-line image off my laserdisc player whereas if I try to digitise something off tape at the same resolution the results are a lot fuzzier. DVD beats it in all particulars.

The key thing about laserdisc is that there's content that's never been made available on tape or DVD like the original Star Wars trilogy.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ah, the fabled original Star Wars versions. They never did release those on DVD did they?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes and no - there was a limited edition THX remastered set a few years ago which had the "improved" version on disc 1 and the laserdisc version on disc 2.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Did it have "A New Hope" in its screen crawl or was it *original* original?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'd have to dig it out to check - can't recall off-hand.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Reminds me to ask you if you want Kagemushi - NTSC disk, Japanese with English subtitles.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

That's sounds good. Eastercon?

BTW it's "Kagemusha" -- "mushi" means bug as in insect, usually something that bites or stings. I'm kind of pleased I spotted that, my study of Japanese is starting to pay off.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

So it is - OK, I'll try to remember to bring it.