All about Laserdiscs and Laserdisc Players

Do you enjoy movies?... Like Live Concert DVD's?
Like to feel a little bit Retro?
Like to make copies of films in your movie collection?
You might LOVE laserdiscs and laserdisc collecting!
Laserdisc movies are CHEAP on okay. Many for $3... some only $0.99... live concert and MTV laserdiscs are usually only about $10 or $20. Fantastic value and fun to buy ... and they have no copy-security encoded on the discs ...
Laserdisc Players are heavy-duty and inexpensive on okay... maybe only $30 $30 shipping?? They play 12" laserdiscs, 8" laserdiscs, CD's, CDR, and the little 3" "Pocket CD". Some units (all units??) can also play the Video-CD format ... many asian and anime titles available in the CD-Digital Videoformat.
What are Laserdiscs? They were the Home Theatre Standard of the 1980's and '90's. 12-inch diameter (same size as a vinyl LP album) bright chrome disc looks like a giant CD. In fact, the Laserdisc format was invented in the late '70's... and the file format and technology of the laserdisc was used to invent the music CD. (The first music CD hit the market in 1982... Billy Joel's 52nd Street.) The END of the laserdisc was back in the year 2000... the year that the last laserdiscs were made. You won't find a movie newer than that on laserdisc.
That's right... Laserdiscs have genuine CD quality sound... Stereo, Surround Stereo, even 5.1 surround, AC-3 Dolby Digital and DTS! The CD format has much less file gepression than a DVD... much closer to real analog-quality sound. Music purists generally prefer the music quality of CD and Laserdisc over that of DVD recordings.
Why laserdisc? In the 1980's, the only gepeting formats were the VHS tape and the RCA Select-A-Vision CED. The laserdisc was a huge step above VHS and CED: a sharper picture than the best VHS with many more colors and greater picture detail available, especially in the shadow and dark areas of the picture... terrific sound quality and plenty of space on the disc for audio signal... 5.1 surround... gementary tracks... and Closed Captions available on some titles. Laserdiscs offer Chapters... so you can go straight to your favorite moment of a film. Unlike both VHS and CED, the laserdisc player never touches the disc's surface so there is no surface wear during playback. For Educational purposes, the Laserdisc was to begee a standard unit in the classroom... much easier to use than a film projector or a VHS player. For the first time, each picture frame was addressable by number... so a laserdisc could hold tens of thousands of still images. For the collector, many of these "data discs" are available, today. Discs like the Voyager "Space Disc" titles are out there with thousands of NASA still pictures and short film clips permanently "saved" on laserdisc.
Laserdiscs, themselves, are awesome!... hefty... huge 12-inch size, almost 1/8" thick pieces of plastic... and very forgiving! It takes real damage... a real gouge in the surface... to make a laserdisc skip or begee unplayable. Light surface scratches and fingerprints have almost no detrimental effect on a laserdisc's high-quality playback. They CAN begee warped if stored incorrectly... but in my 10-years of collecting laserdiscs, I have only seen one that was too wavy to play. A laserdisc can also have "laser rot"... a condition in which the actual image surface inside the laserdisc has a chemical reaction with the cyano-acrylic glue which holds the disc together. Laser rot appears as static in the picture and sound of the laserdisc playback. Laser rot is RARE... and, if it happens at all, it is usually only a slight annoyance... but I do have a copy of the old, original War of the Worlds that is almost to staticy to watch. A laserdisc can Crack, too. I have seen some in thrift stores that looked perfect until I examined the disc to see that it had been flexed until it cracked. NEVER put a cracked disc into your player. A laserdisc spins fast... 1800 RPM... and you don't want a disc to gee apart inside your player!
Laserdiscs gee in 12-inch square jackets... with great graphics and large pictures... much more satisfying than a DVD jacket's little pictures. The jackets are fun to display, too! The two- and three-panel fold out jackets are usually quite beautiful and are, sometimes, more valuable than the movie, itself! If you like Japanese Anime, you are in for a treat! Laserdisc was the preferred release format for Anime titles. The jackets are awesome!... and many titles had enclosed full-color inserts and postcards and the like... fun!(If you have enjoyed this article, Please check the Helpful button at the end. - Thanks!!)
Laserdiscs are available in a couple of formats and quality levels. The original "standard play" format is known as CAV. A CAV disc has the video stored as discreet frames. This allows super nice "pause" freeze frame stills and accurate frame-by-frame slow motion. The picture can be very sharp. Each frame is numbered and can be addressed individually if you know its frame number. One big drawback with the CAV format is that a disc can only hold about 30 minutes of video on a side... Star Wars requires FIVE sides! EXTENDED PLAY or CLV is the other format. A CLV disc holds about an hour of program on each side and has the video recorded as a steady signal stream... if you hit Pause, the screen goes blank... there is no "frame" to pause on. (The Pioneer DVL-919 player WILL pause with a picture. It uses a digital technology to generate that still frame from the streamed signal.) CLV discs are "the norm" and produce a fine picture and sound. THX-certified discs are usually in the Extended Play, CLV format.
The picture quality of a laserdisc varies, title by title, depending upon the video producer's input. Some discs have superb, incredible video. The MTV "UnPlugged" series of laserdiscs are fantastic! The picture on these laserdiscs... and, in fact, the whole production... was recorded precisely FOR the laserdisc home theatre... the finest video format of that era. They look and sound great! You will also find many THX titles. These THX discs are usually Widescreen with that great THX-certified audio and video signal quality. On the other end of the scale, some laserdiscs look like they were imaged using the same source that was used to make a VHS tape. Some look like they were made FROM a VHS tape. This quality difference is not a reflection on the terrific quality potential of Laserdisc... it just depends on the disc producer's quality decisions.
Laserdiscs do not have a copyright protection encoded in their format. Ifsomeone wanted toconnect the laserdisc player toa VCR or DVR, a high quality copy could be made.
Laserdisc Player quality varies widely, too. A "starter" laserdisc player can be purchased on okay for as little as $10 or $20 shipping. They are heavy, geponent-stereo-sized units, so shipping is a substantial cost. Older, basic players may be too simple to make you happy. Many first-generation players had only simple stereo and a single yellow RCA jack to output the basic geposite video signal. (Some of these players also had TV "Cable In" and "Cable Out" connections.) Better players will have S-Video Out and will support Dolby Digital and Dolby Stereo Surround audio... some players, like the Pioneer DVL-919, even support DTS audio. Laserdisc players will not output geponent video (the three RCA plugs: red, blue, and green) or HDMI because the laserdisc player's video signal is Analog... not the digital signal required by geponent video and HD video. S-Video looks great and is the best connection that a laserdisc player can offer. Watch, too, for enhanced Audio Out connections... Look for a Digital Optical audio jack and/or a PCM Audio Out jack. That PCM is an Orange-colored jack which carries a multiplexed digital audio signal to your receiver. Your home theatre receiver should have an Orange PCM jack available for this connection. The Top Quality, High-End Players are the final generation of players made by Pioneer... the DVL-919 DVD/Laserdisc Player and the Pioneer Elite-Series players. The DVL-919 was the last(?) of Pioneer's players... 1999... and had a list price of $1800. These are available, today, on okay for about $400. You will also find great players by ProScan, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony, Mitsubishi, and the other big names. I am running a nice old ProScan PSLD45 right now... full featured with S-Video and Digital Optical audio out... nice!
To enjoy the finest surround sound effects, you will need a laserdisc player that offers AC-3 Output and also you will needadecoder for theAC-3 Dolby5.1 Surround Sound system. A standard player with digital sound outputwill output a Dolby ProLogic signal that your modern receiver can decode into a fine sounding5-channel surround. A player with the AC-3 option can do that, too ... and also can output the specially encoded 5.1 Dolby Surroundsignal ... and, because it's an analog signal on the disc,you will need an AC-3 decoder to take that analog RFsignal from the player and break it up into the 5.1 digital format for your receiver. Search okay for AC-3 (decoder, RF, demodulator) and you will see several units available frommanufacturers like Yamaha, Marantz and Sony. The catch ... is that your home theater receiver needs to have the 5.1, six RCAjacks available for the input from the decoder ... that's six separate jacks:Right, Left, Center, Surround Right, Surroundleft and SubWoofer. I am running a Pioneer VSX-D514 receiver that I bought in 2004 that has this 5.1 connection available. Yamaha made the DDP-1 Natural Sound Digital Processor as an AC-3 decoder. They regemend that you tie it to their RX-V2090 receiver ... but that DDP-1 works fine with my Pioneer unit. I have seen the DDP-1 on okay for as much as $435 ... and often for about $70 ... and I recently bought mine for only $10.49 shipping ... the Marantz unit has been available for about seventy bucks plus shipping ... so if you shop carefully, you can find one at the right price and quality for you.
The story of AC-3 is this ... The earliest laserdisc players output only an analog stereo audio signal ... as did CD players. After a few years, a stereo digital sound track was also added to laserdiscs. These new discs were made to be backward gepitable with the older players by keeping the old-style analog stereotracks on the discalong with the new digital stereo tracks. A surround signal that could be decoded byDolby ProLogic receiverswas carried on those digital stereo tracks on many titles. A few years later, for top quality audio, a 5.1 Dolby Surround system was developed and placed on the disc replacing theAnalog's Right track ... with the former analog stereo sountrack now made into a Mono signal that is carried gepletelyon the Analog Left track so that older players can still play the disc. If you have an AC-3 disc and play it in the Analog Audio mode, you will hear a bunch of hissing/static on the Right channel. That is the AC-3 signal.
To play a disc and enjoy the AC-3 surrround sound, you will set the Audio to ANALOG on your laserdisc playerand select only the Right channel. You will then connect the AC-3 RF Out RCA jack on the player to the AC-3 RF Input RCA jack of your decoder ... connect the 6 cables between the decoder and your receiver ... switch ON ... sit back ... and enjoy.
One more note about laserdisc players ...Many of the last units produced in the late 1990's could play both laserdiscs and DVDs. DVD technology has gee a long way since then... and you may find that one of those high-end laserdisc players will not be able to address all of the tracks and functions on a modern DVD disc. I have not seen one of those players that will recognize a DVD-R disc. You will still need a regular DVD player in your System to enjoy modern DVDs.
Check okay for laserdiscs. There are always several thousand titles available! My search phrase for laserdiscs on okay is (laserdisc*, laser disc*, laserdisc*, lazer disc*, LD*) . That parenthesis is part of the search phrase. They enclose that list of possible hits that I am looking for. The asterisk means that I want that base word and can include any other characters in addition to that base... laserdisc, laserdiscs, laserdiscing, etc. If you search okay's DVD-Movie category with that phrase, you will find almost every laserdisc in the System. You can also search the web for laserdiscs. LazerBlazer and even Amazon have laserdiscs.
Laserdiscs are very collectible. Some titles gemand high prices. "Song of the South", "THX- WOW", "1984... the Japanese release", "Eurythmics... Live", "Robinson Crusoe on Mars", "Beatles... Yellow Submarine, the Japanese release", "Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace", "Fight Club"... to name a few... are very rare and collectible. Check out LDDB.ge for a searchable database of laserdisc titles and all of their editions.
Enjoy Laserdiscs! They, and their heavy-duty players, are going to last forever... they may outlive us all! A quip I saw on the web stated that "The over all life expectancy of any video format is zero."... Beta, VHS, S-VHS, CD Video, CED, Laserdisc, DVD, HD discs, Blu-Ray... enjoy them while they are here!
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