Why there's not a thread about the LTT video of laserdisc on the forum?

kumicota · September 27, 2023

Linus did a video recently about laserdisc. I wanted to go to the thread of it but couldn't find anything, they even forgot to link it on the description, did Linus team forgot about it or didn't wanted to put because it can lead to a lot of LD fanbase fighting?

Holmes108 · September 27, 2023

42 minutes ago, kumicota said:

Linus did a video recently about laserdisc. I wanted to go to the thread of it but couldn't find anything, they even forgot to link it on the description, did Linus team forgot about it or didn't wanted to put because it can lead to a lot of LD fanbase fighting?

Are laserdiscs a hot topic among enthusiasts? lol. I didn't know that. (I don't know much about Laserdisc in general to be fair).

Kisai · September 27, 2023

3 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

Are laserdiscs a hot topic among enthusiasts? lol. I didn't know that. (I don't know much about Laserdisc in general to be fair).

Not really.

What ensures that a format has any lifespan, is recordable media, and recordable media for laser disc never existed. For things like video games that used laser discs (eg Dragon's Lair) they are preserved in emulators by having the video captured to easier-to-play video files for the Amiga emulators (those arcade machines were Amiga's with a genlock, and a off-the-shelf LD player pretty much)

All other film and television use of LD's, the popularity was limited Asia for Anime and Karaoke. Westerners pretty much had no interest in LD unless they were part of the anime fansubbing community.

wseaton · September 27, 2023

Uh, disagree.

LD was massively popular among videophiles. Had a friend who sold hifi at legit high end electronics store and LD players were stupidly popular. Another friend owned a video rental store and did bango renting LD titles. I went to a few conferences sponsored by THX and Luxeon in the early 90's, and the first words out of the presenters mouth were 'either get an LD player, or get out. VHS sucks'. However, the people attending these things had income to blow. Still, my Sony MDP cost less than $500, but you had to flip discs.

Only conflict among LD owners was CAV vs CLV. CAV disc sets, like Jurassic Park or the Abyss cost $100, but they were worth with it. The quality improvement over VHS was astounding. James Cameron directed all the mastering of his discs and was pretty blunt about the state of the industry in his liner notes and hatred for VHS.

I remember the first time playing Terminator 2 for a bunch of friends with 4 tower speakers running in split mono across the front. I literally knocked one guy out his chair in the opening sequence and think I scared that dude for life. Doly Pro Logic firing off a properly calibrated speaker system off an LD player wasn't a joke. You guys with your sounds bars would pee your pants if you heard Pro Logic running through some Klipsch towers with a 18" Velodyne sub and an LD player. All my friends eventually upgraded to high end LD systems and proceeded to crack their walls. Atmos is good, but the jump from pro logic to Atmos is trivial compared to the jump from VHS audio to LD.

DVD had massive teething problems due to excessive compression during mastering. Wasn't until 480p became standard that things improved consistently over LD.