We Bought a Giant Movie CD Player and it’s AMAZING - LaserDisc

[James]

Before Blu-ray and Streaming, DVDs, and even CDs, one gigantic platter not only ruled over home cinema, but helped create the entire concept: LaserDisc. But what happened with LaserDisc? Why was it so infrequently used in its time? 
 

 

 

Sources:
- TheDroidWorks Brochure: http://www.typewritten.org/Articles/DroidWorks/ed-485.pdf
- Lost ‘Return of the Jedi' footage discovered on $699 LaserDisc (Verge): https://www.theverge.com/2013/10/27/5035596/lost-return-of-the-jedi-footage-discovered-on-699-laserdisc
- David Paul Greg (Alchetron): https://alchetron.com/David-Paul-Gregg
- Electron beam recording and reproducing system (Google Patents): https://patents.google.com/patent/US3350503
- Record World Dec 2, 1972 (World Radio History): https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Record-World/70s/72/RW-1972-12-02.pdf
- LaserDisc Database:
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/12189/PILF-2870/Tokyo-Raiders
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/44014/060-839-1/Leslie-Cheung:-Passion-Tour-2001
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/00017/PILF-2869/Crimson-Rivers-The
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/21512/LV335643-WS/Bringing-Out-the-Dead
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/32738/LPR-036/Terminator-2:-Judgment-Day:-Teaser-amp;-Trailer
https://www.lddb.com/laserrot.php
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/46431/FY105-55MG/Gone-with-the-Wind
- Pioneer halts production of Laserdisc players… finally (Ars Technica): https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/01/pioneer-halts-production-of-laser-disk-players-finally/
- BBC Master AIV (WikiMedia): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BBC_Master_AIV_(Domesday_System)_(1).jpg
- Pioneer CLD-1010 (LaserWiki): https://bitcrush.io/laserwiki/index.php/Pioneer_CLD-1010
- Bilbo’s Japan CDV (Batini): https://www.batini.com/otherjapancdv/
- LaserActive and Taito Super D3BOS – Unlikely Origins (LaserActive Preservation Project): https://laseractive.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/laseractive-and-taito-super-d3bos-unlikely-origins/
- RadioShack 1991 Catalog (RadioShackCatalogs): https://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/flipbook/1991_radioshack_catalog.html
- Low pricing of ‘Ghost’ on laserdisc shows a key to the current market (Chicago Tribune): https://books.google.ca/books?id=sf1TAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA27&dq=laserdisc&article_id=5171,2873967&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjyiv6Qh5mBAxUbITQIHQM_B_YQ6AF6BAgNEAI#v=onepage&q=laserdisc&f=false
- LaserDisc Europe: A Miss (So Far) (Billboard Magazine Feb 8, 1992): https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/90s/1992/Billboard-1992-02-08.pdf
- LaserDisc Japan: A Massive Hit (Billboard Magazine Feb 8, 1992):
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/90s/1992/Billboard-1992-02-08.pdf
- The Ed Sullivan Show stats (US TVDB): https://ustvdb.com/networks/cbs/shows/ed-sullivan/
- HDTV Sets Now in Over 80% of US Households (Leichtman Research): https://web.archive.org/web/20150314055243/http://leichtmanresearch.com/press/031315release.html
- Electronic Games 1993-12: https://archive.org/details/Electronic-Games-1993-12/page/n1/mode/2up
- Pioneer’s multiformat Laseractive System (Video Magazine Dec 1993): https://archive.org/details/video-magazine-1993-12/page/n17/mode/1up

[Dutch_Master]

Wait, you've posted this video 3 days ago and now you're coming up with the discussion thread? Or is this a duplicate?

 

[LMGcommunity]

2 hours ago, Dutch_Master said:

Wait, you've posted this video 3 days ago and now you're coming up with the discussion thread? Or is this a duplicate?

 

We forgor

[s_k]

This is a painful video to watch with how much wrong information it's providing. Let's go through it. 

First of all; Laserdisc players are NOT expensive to buy. I'm not sure why you picked the most expensive one, but 2, 300 bucks gets you an upmarket one. 
Then, at 4:24, quality of the format is confused with the quality of 'the way people perceived it'. If you throw a run of the mill, well produced Disney VHS tape in a VHS recorder, you'll get a sharpness and colour accuracy (at least in PAL ;)) that surpasses DVD with ease. The sharpness itself is better than LD even, but LD wins in sound (especially the analog ones which use FM modulation) and black levels. That most consumers got a mediocre (or worse, more on that later) recorder and mistreated their tapes, doesn't mean the medium couldn't do any better. 
Then, at 11:50: No, it's not disgustingly analog, it's a disgustingly bad player you are using, that also has tracking errors. As with much misunderstood equipment it comes down to user error (you know, like not knowing that the 'wind' function only works through stop, what you are doing is 'review'. If you press stop first and THEN wind, it actually goes as fas as it can) and badly treated machinery. 
And then, 13:19; LD's do not hold up well, at all. A properly stored VHS tape will outlive many an LD disc. Google 'disc rot', just that. See how many LD's you see among the CD's? Especially european LD's are notoriously unreliable and literally fall apart, completely unusable. Now, some VHS (and other) tapes have issues with their binder and chemical component, causing them to stick or squeek or fall apart as well, but chances of blindly buying VHS tapes without checking them versus LD, and getting a usable one, are much, much higher even WITH all of the mistreatment. 

Now let me make it very clear; I love LD. It's a beautiful format that should have never been replaced with DVD. Black levels, colours and sound are insane for their time. But that doesn't change the fact that the comparisons that are made here with VHS, and some of the 'facts' that are mentioned about LD, are just plain incorrect. How hard is it to google something before you say it? :). 

[Nathat23]

32 minutes ago, s_k said:

that also has tracking errors.

Would stuff like tracking errors not be a part of the format?

 

37 minutes ago, s_k said:

And then, 13:19; LD's do not hold up well, at all.

35 minutes ago, s_k said:

Google 'disc rot', just that

This section is a bit wonky. They do mention disc rot at 13:40, seems it was added in post seeing as the co-host disappears.

[Nene]

2 hours ago, s_k said:

Then, at 4:24, quality of the format is confused with the quality of 'the way people perceived it'. If you throw a run of the mill, well produced Disney VHS tape in a VHS recorder, you'll get a sharpness and colour accuracy (at least in PAL ;)) that surpasses DVD with ease. The sharpness itself is better than LD even, but LD wins in sound (especially the analog ones which use FM modulation) and black levels. That most consumers got a mediocre (or worse, more on that later) recorder and mistreated their tapes, doesn't mean the medium couldn't do any better. 

Then, at 11:50: No, it's not disgustingly analog, it's a disgustingly bad player you are using, that also has tracking errors. As with much misunderstood equipment it comes down to user error (you know, like not knowing that the 'wind' function only works through stop, what you are doing is 'review'. If you press stop first and THEN wind, it actually goes as fas as it can) and badly treated machinery. 
And then, 13:19; LD's do not hold up well, at all. A properly stored VHS tape will outlive many an LD disc. Google 'disc rot', just that. See how many LD's you see among the CD's? Especially european LD's are notoriously unreliable and literally fall apart, completely unusable. Now, some VHS (and other) tapes have issues with their binder and chemical component, causing them to stick or squeek or fall apart as well, but chances of blindly buying VHS tapes without checking them versus LD, and getting a usable one, are much, much higher even WITH all of the mistreatment.

VHS will almost always degrade with age, and just because you could in theory get a sharp (or sharper) image out of VHS that doesn't mean it's going to do that over its whole life. Laserdiscs can also degrade, especially with disc rot, but playing it doesn't cause that degradation, and if you didn't buy a disc with rot it's (probably) not going to just suddenly develope disc rot one day.

 

Disc rot was cause by moisture trapped against the aluminium reflective layer allowing it to oxidise. Without that the disc isn't going to just start rotting unless the plastic layer separates from the aluminium and allows air and moisture to contact it. It's just not as inevitable as you make out, though I'll admit it's a known weakness and not exactly rare. Sony, I'm looking at you and your shitty adhesive.

 

Oh and 11:50? Yes you're right, stopping first and then winding makes it go as fast as it can, trouble is you have to guess how far into the tape you are when you start to play the tape again. There's no way to skip to a chapter and you can't review a VHS tape at an arbitrary speed, because every time you move the tape against the head it causes wear, and the faster it goes the more wear it causes. That's the crux there, playing a tape causes contact with the tape and makes it wear out.

 

Tapes and binders will eventually degrade in storage, can you tell me in all honesty that's not inevitable? It's not a case of will it happen, it's a cause of how much it happens and whether it's noticeable.

[Needfuldoer]

"VHS player", Linus? Really?! You're old enough to know better than that.  

[s_k]

12 hours ago, Nathat23 said:

Would stuff like tracking errors not be a part of the format?

 

This section is a bit wonky. They do mention disc rot at 13:40, seems it was added in post seeing as the co-host disappears.

Errors are a defect. Worn head, worn tape, maybe the thing got a beating and lost its tracking, maybe they accidentally adjusted the tracking (as they obviously don't know how to use the machine). Saying tracking errors are part of the format is like saying lost data is part of the format of a magnetic hard drive. Yes, they built the tracking system in there because it's necessary sometimes, but as soon as it doesn't work well enough to keep the tracking right, the machine (or the tape, or the user) are broken. 
I may have stopped watching at that point, haha. Figured i'd only add more. 
 

10 hours ago, Nene said:

VHS will almost always degrade with age, and just because you could in theory get a sharp (or sharper) image out of VHS that doesn't mean it's going to do that over its whole life. Laserdiscs can also degrade, especially with disc rot, but playing it doesn't cause that degradation, and if you didn't buy a disc with rot it's (probably) not going to just suddenly develope disc rot one day.

 

Disc rot was cause by moisture trapped against the aluminium reflective layer allowing it to oxidise. Without that the disc isn't going to just start rotting unless the plastic layer separates from the aluminium and allows air and moisture to contact it. It's just not as inevitable as you make out, though I'll admit it's a known weakness and not exactly rare. Sony, I'm looking at you and your shitty adhesive.

 

Oh and 11:50? Yes you're right, stopping first and then winding makes it go as fast as it can, trouble is you have to guess how far into the tape you are when you start to play the tape again. There's no way to skip to a chapter and you can't review a VHS tape at an arbitrary speed, because every time you move the tape against the head it causes wear, and the faster it goes the more wear it causes. That's the crux there, playing a tape causes contact with the tape and makes it wear out.

 

Tapes and binders will eventually degrade in storage, can you tell me in all honesty that's not inevitable? It's not a case of will it happen, it's a cause of how much it happens and whether it's noticeable.

I'm not defending VHS here. I was more of a beta guy myself, and as someone who literally owned hundreds of reel to reel machines and thousands of tapes, I know what a pain in the ass tapes can be. The problem is that they got the facts completely wrong when they say tape is unreliable compared to LD, as they are both a bit 'hit or miss'. Also indeed, the sharper VHS image is very theoretical, no one wanted to buy these pro machines, I just got lucky, and on an average consumer machine VHS looks way worse than LD. The problem is that that's not the fault of the medium, that's a budgetting matter. The tape, the medium, is so much better than most people ever saw, and they didn't even give it a fair fighting chance. They did talk about HD-LD, but not about HD-VHS, D-VHS or even S-VHS. No fair. 
As for disc rot and moisture; I'm not sure if that's true as Japanese discs (Pioneer for instance) never ever develop it. It's not JUST user error, that's for sure. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

"VHS player", Linus? Really?! You're old enough to know better than that.  

Oh every time. He was also saying cassette player (and was saying that cassettes sound horrible, which is also just... not true :D). 

[Needfuldoer]

47 minutes ago, s_k said:

I'm not defending VHS here. I was more of a beta guy myself,

Beta II doesn't look any better than VHS SP.

 

47 minutes ago, s_k said:

Also indeed, the sharper VHS image is very theoretical, no one wanted to buy these pro machines, I just got lucky, and on an average consumer machine VHS looks way worse than LD. The problem is that that's not the fault of the medium, that's a budgetting matter. The tape, the medium, is so much better than most people ever saw, and they didn't even give it a fair fighting chance. They did talk about HD-LD, but not about HD-VHS, D-VHS or even S-VHS. No fair.

On any machine, VHS SP looks way worse than LaserDisc because LD offers twice the bandwidth. SVHS was about in the middle (close to Betacam SP), but it needed better tape stock than regular VHS.

  

47 minutes ago, s_k said:

Oh every time. He was also saying cassette player (and was saying that cassettes sound horrible, which is also just... not true :D). 

I remember hearing "cassette player" all the time. At least they didn't say "vinyls player"...

 

Metal and Chrome tapes can sound as good as a CD. It's too bad the only new cassettes being manufactured are mediocre Type I.

[s_k]

On 9/29/2023 at 1:54 AM, Needfuldoer said:

Beta II doesn't look any better than VHS SP.

It did at first, but at some point VHS caught up hard

 

 

On 9/29/2023 at 1:54 AM, Needfuldoer said:

On any machine, VHS SP looks way worse than LaserDisc because LD offers twice the bandwidth. SVHS was about in the middle (close to Betacam SP), but it needed better tape stock than regular VHS.

Have you ever had a properly, and I mean properly pro VHS?
In my case it was the JVC BR-S611U

And holy moly, that's a different league (with VHS, not S-VHS). 
There was a time when these had zero value, should have bought 10 back then!

 

On 9/29/2023 at 1:54 AM, Needfuldoer said:

Metal and Chrome tapes can sound as good as a CD. It's too bad the only new cassettes being manufactured are mediocre Type I.

My favourite cassettes are Type I cassettes. Not the ones they make these days, not TDK D either. But TDK AR-X and AD-X. Also Scotch Master I but those are unusable by now. They are incredibly realistic/organic sounding. Noise levels are low for a ferric tape, but they have a suppleness in the bass response and a completely unobtrusive transparence in the highs that I only heard in one other tape; The Maxell Metal Vertex. And those are so stupidly pricey that I'm happy to use AR-X and AD-X instead. I never heard a chrome tape, or another metal tape, that sounds quite as good overall. Of course there's chrome/metal tapes that have less hiss, or a broader frequency range, but all things considered, those are my favourite cassettes. 
As for it sounding as good as CD; Better, if you ask me, when it comes to the way they reproduce a source that is higher quality than a CD. They do, of course, add hiss though and if you're sensitive to that, tape is not for you. I personally don't care. 

[7bourbon]

When Philips started working on this technology, it was originally introduced as VLP (Video Long Play). After overcoming a major manufacturing yield problem, a fundamental step in the manufacturing process of optical discs was finally understood.

For details, have a look at the presentation of Klaas Robers (an acquaintance of mine who worked in the optical discs group at Philips at the time): https://vimeo.com/53684033

 

So although VLP/Laserdisc was not so successful as a consumer product, the development work on the manufacturing process was a significant contributor to the success of later optical disc products (Audio CD, CD-ROM, etc.).

[wikilex]

It's baffling that with all the error checking very easy to spot mistakes are still in the videos. About 20 seconds in you can hear a different year than shown on the graph.

Does error checking include watching the video?

[LMGcommunity]

7 hours ago, wikilex said:

It's baffling that with all the error checking very easy to spot mistakes are still in the videos. About 20 seconds in you can hear a different year than shown on the graph.

Does error checking include watching the video?

1978 and 1979 are both technically correct, as it was only released in 1978 in Atlanta. 1979 is technically correct for the rest of the US market. The writer posits that 1979 is correct. The editor posits that 1978 is correct. It's not an error; it's a debate.

[ToboRobot]

the realization that facts and history can be "messy" is wild.

[TheLANguy]

4 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

the realization that facts and history can be "messy" is wild.

For real!