Just saw a hundred beautiful laserdiscs...

[Jayrosc]

If the player was there too I'd a bought the whole batch. Was at an estate sale of a retired classical pianist today and this guy had three crates of laser discs, all of Opera's done at Met and every other premium venue in the world. Best of the best. Superb packaging and flawless discs. I've never actually seen a laserdisc play, but this looked like a valuable collection. But without that darn player, well, I just kept on moving. I could go back and get them tomorrow if anyone here with knowledge of this format weighed in with a couple thumbs up. I don't even know if these titles are available on blu ray. They all looked special and expensive, like some oddball niche product.

 

[1tumbleweed]

Most of those are likely on DGG or Philips, they seemed to have a lot of titles. I used to have a few, but sold them all. There's only so many times you can watch a conductor waving his arms, or perhaps irrelevant scenery. When I listen to classical, I prefer to close my eyes and be immersed in the music. The opera sets might be a different story if you like opera.

That said, these titles are likely high quality, although I don't care much for DGG's Vienna Symphony stuff. Doubtful that they're on BluRay, but who knows?

I don't know that I'd buy them just flip 'em, unless they were super duper cheap. If you have any interest in the material, decent players aren't all that hard to find.

Cheers,
Larry B.

 

[Jayrosc]

Most of those are likely on DGG or Philips, they seemed to have a lot of titles. I used to have a few, but sold them all. There's only so many times you can watch a conductor waving his arms, or perhaps irrelevant scenery. When I listen to classical, I prefer to close my eyes and be immersed in the music. The opera sets might be a different story if you like opera.

That said, these titles are likely high quality, although I don't care much for DGG's Vienna Symphony stuff. Doubtful that they're on BluRay, but who knows?

I don't know that I'd buy them just flip 'em, unless they were super duper cheap. If you have any interest in the material, decent players aren't all that hard to find.

Cheers,
Larry B.

I'm tempted. I'm thinking of going back and throwing an insane lowball figure out there.

 

[Tom Brennan]

I don't know that I'd buy them just flip 'em, unless they were super duper cheap.

Cheers,
Larry B.

Hell, I had trouble giving the damned things away, even supposedly collectible ones like the restored Wayneamo set and the Star Wars "face" set, and in Chicago no less. I gave away about three feet of the things and threw many more than that in the trash. Fact is, compared to bluray and even DVD they look pretty crummy. Better than VHS, yeah.

 

[superdog]

Once you sleep on it you'll be glad you left them.This happened to me with some nice film cameras.After I realized I really had no use for them it was very hard to get rid of them.

 

[Jayrosc]

Hell, I had trouble giving the damned things away, even supposedly collectible ones like the restored Wayneamo set and the Star Wars "face" set, and in Chicago no less. I gave away about three feet of the things and threw many more than that in the trash. Fact is, compared to bluray and even DVD they look pretty crummy. Better than VHS, yeah.

Oh crap! There's the deal breaker....I thought they were blue ray quality but just a format that lost out to a more consumer friendly one.

 

[hendertuckie]

I have two working Laser Disc Players and about 40 Disc. When compared to DVD and Blu-Ray the picture is not very good but some sound much better than the DVD replacement. The movie "The Russia House" with it's wonderful jazz soundtrack sounds warm and intimate, the DVD is harsh but the outstanding picture beat the Laser Disc. BTW player flips the disc without me getting up.

 

[thomo57]

I was on eBay late one night and someone listed 3 Laser disc players and over 250 Laser discs.
Buy it now $1
And l did
Made a handy profit on those

 

[1tumbleweed]

Oh crap! There's the deal breaker....I thought they were blue ray quality but just a format that lost out to a more consumer friendly one.

A well-mastered LD can approach - but not equal - a typical DVD. BluRay is, of course, considerably better. Nevertheless, the PQ on a good LD on a good display looks quite good. Where the LD has the advantage is sound quality. Mostly uncompressed, easily CD quality, and - in later Dolby and dts discs - quite impressive.

Good LDs easily beat VHS, BTW.

Cheers,
Larry B.

 

[Awesomeaudio]

I wonder if this format is truly dead or may just be a very tiny niche for some.
I remember when my brother had built his home theatre in the mid 90s when Laser Disc was THE digital movie format just prior to dvds.
He still has his original Pioneer L.D. player and all his L.D. discs.
Nice memories.

 

[Djcoolray]

There weren't many good Lazer Disc players with the exception of the Pioneer CLD series and I just retired mine. Just as clear as DVD and blue ray with the right high grade video interconnects plus much better sound. It is sad how audio-video never caught on because it was such an experience. For those of us that had premium stereo equipment back in the eighties MTV was straight up.....the bomb ! Kind of a bummer with just a television speaker.... it's a shame how that medium was forgotten.

 

[Awesomeaudio]

If I recall, wasn't the connection via scart ?

 

[Tom Brennan]

I wonder if this format is truly dead or may just be a very tiny niche for some.

Why not, Hell, we have people who collect old vacuum cleaners (which probably pick up dirt better than a laserdisc presents video). There's no end to the odd things some people find value in. But as a video format it's totally obsolete and takes up lots of space.

I had a very high quality machine, a Pioneer 704, and was loathe to get rid of it, I made all kinds of excuses to keep the thing---it plays CDs great, I might want to watch a disc unavailable on DVD or BD (Young Man with a Horn?) and other such nonsense. Finally, having not used it in over four years I sold the machine and my last stash of "must keep" discs to a guy for $50, just to be rid of them. And that was that, thank God.

A funny thing, one of my must keep discs was "The Lighthorsemen", a very good movie I wanted to keep just in case. Well, I can watch it now on youtube.

 

[4-2-7]

I find the Laser Disc to be great, I buy them at the record store for $2.00 to use as dust covers for my turntable platters. Most my platters are acrylic or acrylic with a thin fabric on them. The can also help in table setup acting as a mirror but are a little to soft for setting anti-skate.

 

[1tumbleweed]

I remember when my brother had built his home theatre in the mid 90s when Laser Disc was THE digital movie format just prior to dvds.

A common misconception, but LDs were actually analog video, not digital...although eventually the audio was digital, like a CD.

If I recall, wasn't the connection via scart ?

For you Ozzies, and other areas, yes. In the USA and everywhere else it was composite video. Even with players with an S-video connection, the information on the disc was just composite, depending on an internal split to obtain the S-video signal.

Cheers,
Larry B.

 

[Nightwisher]

I find the Laser Disc to be great, I buy them at the record store for $2.00 to use as dust covers for my turntable platters. Most my platters are acrylic or acrylic with a thin fabric on them. The can also help in table setup acting as a mirror but are a little to soft for setting anti-skate.

 

[onwardjames]

I had a ton of these given to me, they sit, unloved. Star Trek is in there, along with some other high-profile films.

Meh.

 

[Chris Brown]

I still use my Panasonic LX-1000, a very good player in it's day, in my home theater and I am quite happy with the results. The video on Laserdisc is analog, and so just like with a turntable, the equipment has a huge impact on quality. I also use separate hardware to deinterlace the picture. I've heard many say that they have never seen a Laserdisc look so good. It's still not HD but very watchable. I have many classics on Laserdisc that I watch, and I don't really feel the need to acquire them again on another format. We have DirecTV and there are still some channels which are SD only. Those channels are also watchable if it's a good movie, and I would put the Laserdisc picture quality ahead of that (at least on my setup).

Also keep in mind that the Digital audio on a Laserdisc is uncompressed stereo PCM, identical to CD audio. That will be better than Dolby Digital or DTS on a DVD in terms of audio quality. Dolby Digital exists on some Laserdiscs also but was a hackjob, transcoded onto one of the legacy analog tracks and does not replace the digital PCM track. It's best to just ignore the DD track and use the PCM track anyway. For the few DTS laserdiscs out there, the DTS track replaces the PCM track but DTS laserdiscs are very rare.

 

[Beatnik]

I can never keep up with all this, but I thought the audio on LD was analog ? Wondered why it wasn't eventually just sold as a high quality, less prone to damage analog replacement to vinyl.

 

[Chris Brown]

I can never keep up with all this, but I thought the audio on LD was analog ? Wondered why it wasn't eventually just sold as a high quality, less prone to damage analog replacement to vinyl.

Laserdisc originally just had a stereo (two channels) analog track. The format evolved and added a stereo digital track (PCM) also, while keeping the analog tracks for compatibility. Eventually, it got to the point where almost everyone used the digital tracks and no one used the analog tracks, so the analog tracks began to be used for other purposes. Often one of the analog tracks would have the Dolby Digital data transcoded onto it (which required an AC3 demodulator to work), while the other analog track would contain a mono commentary track or a mono foreign language track, etc