We Bought a Giant Movie CD Player and it’s AMAZING - Pioneer LaserActive CLD-A100
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ค. 2024
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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?
For a much deeper dive into LD, check out Technology Connection’s videos on the topic: • Technology Connections...
Sources:
- TheDroidWorks Brochure: www.typewritten.org/Articles/D...
- Lost ‘Return of the Jedi' footage discovered on $699 LaserDisc (Verge): www.theverge.com/2013/10/27/5...
- David Paul Greg (Alchetron): alchetron.com/David-Paul-Gregg
- Electron beam recording and reproducing system (Google Patents): patents.google.com/patent/US3...
- Record World Dec 2, 1972 (World Radio History): worldradiohistory.com/Archive...
- LaserDisc Database:
www.lddb.com/laserdisc/12189/...
www.lddb.com/laserdisc/44014/...
www.lddb.com/laserdisc/00017/...
www.lddb.com/laserdisc/21512/...
www.lddb.com/laserdisc/32738/...
www.lddb.com/laserrot.php
www.lddb.com/laserdisc/46431/...
- Pioneer halts production of Laserdisc players… finally (Ars Technica): arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/...
- BBC Master AIV (WikiMedia): commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
- Pioneer CLD-1010 (LaserWiki): bitcrush.io/laserwiki/index.p...
- Bilbo’s Japan CDV (Batini): www.batini.com/otherjapancdv/
- LaserActive and Taito Super D3BOS - Unlikely Origins (LaserActive Preservation Project): laseractive.wordpress.com/201...
- RadioShack 1991 Catalog (RadioShackCatalogs): www.radioshackcatalogs.com/fl...
- Low pricing of ‘Ghost’ on laserdisc shows a key to the current market (Chicago Tribune): books.google.ca/books?id=sf1T...
- LaserDisc Europe: A Miss (So Far) (Billboard Magazine Feb 8, 1992): worldradiohistory.com/Archive...
- LaserDisc Japan: A Massive Hit (Billboard Magazine Feb 8, 1992):
worldradiohistory.com/Archive...
- The Ed Sullivan Show stats (US TVDB): ustvdb.com/networks/cbs/shows...
- HDTV Sets Now in Over 80% of US Households (Leichtman Research): web.archive.org/web/201503140...
- Electronic Games 1993-12: archive.org/details/Electroni...
- Pioneer’s multiformat Laseractive System (Video Magazine Dec 1993): archive.org/details/video-mag...
Discuss on the forum: linustechtips.com/topic/15332...
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MUSIC CREDIT
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Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High
Video Link: • Sugar High - Approachi...
Listen on Spotify: spoti.fi/UxWkUw
Artist Link: / approachingnirvana
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
2:33 Electron Beam Data Storage
3:06 Did it "fail"?
3:45 LET'S WATCH A LASERDISC
5:08 Resolution
6:00 Audio
6:15 How it evolved
8:50 Problems
11:40 Side by Sided with VHS
13:50 Durability
14:28 Big in Japan
17:50 Enter PlayStation
18:55 Playing SEGA on LaserDisc
20:15 Storage Density
22:22 Gaming with Cartridges
23:30 SEGA Pricing
25:00 Outro - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
As someone who collects these and watches them regularly, I'm so happy to see this video.
Snap, it's great seeing them get some good attention!
my laserdisc player belt broke with no available replacement. i was forced to get rid of it
Big dvd disc seem useful. Large dvd rw for major gb size
@@shawnalfaro6943 That sucks, there is a person that is having new stuff like that made and he sells on eBay. Only has a few products now but amazing that new things are being produced.
Same here. I'm shocked they shelled out for a Laseractive though. I have a Pioneer CLD-D702 that has dual sided play by flipping the laser assembly. Also, I facepalmed when he had trouble inserting an EA cart in there. Couldn't have gone with a standard Sega cart there?
Another interesting tidbit is that RCA video connections only offered so many lines of quality, stunting the display of the Laserdisc. For that later players offered S-Video output, which was a lot better.
Absolutely amazing sponsor spot by Dennis lmao. Having him do these is actually genius
Indeed
For real. I actually watched it.
Welcome to the grifter club. Something I am not apart of, but you win the award. PFT,
I thought he was fired.
Ad spots are legitimately his super power.
Special features like freeze frame, slow-motion, step-frame, etc only were available on CAV discs. So that's why the feature disc would be in CAV while the movie was in CLV. Also, there were some game laser discs that worked with just the remote. One of the features of laser discs is that they could be programmed by the content to stop at certain points, and you could then jump to new points with the remote. And there were a series of arcade games that used laser disc as content, like Dragon's Lair and Space Ace.
You were able to do the special features on CLV discs on mid to higher end players that had digital memory. It wasn't as perfect as a still frame on a CAV disc but it was a welcome addition.
If I recall correctly, though, digital frame store wasn’t an option until at the earliest the late 80s or early 90s.
@@BG-vj7wmyep storing even a single frame digitally needed costly ADC, memory and DAC plus supporting electronics. If i'm right the most problematic part was the memory.
A full frame of uncompressed video PAL frame at 576*450 laserdisc resolution is roughly 7 776 000 bits with 10bit color depth RGB. almost a megabyte of data 25 times per second
The to 4
I have also found the CAV discs to look better on my pioneer s201.
Less analog noise so much closer to dvd quality.
I bought a Laserdisk back in the late 80's at a garage sale. I LOVED it! I could never afford to buy the movies, but the public library rented them and I watched every single one! Loved it!!
ROCK! What's your age? 55-60? Just curious. I don't mean anything by asking other than it is interesting and a little informative as to who experienced what, when, and how.
@@alexkx8599 No worries, great guess! 55 this year in fact!
At 9 minutes it felt like the video was ending but wasnt even near. The writers did a good job with this one
How many gigabit were these laser disk
@@univera1111 none, since they were analog and there was never a purely digital variant.
I found some estimates based on carrier frequency of the video signal, that it could in theory fit some 4-8GB of raw data - since there must be some error correction, it'd be less in reality.
@@Papinak2That's incorrect, as mentioned in the video there was a data variant for the BBC's Domesday project.
@@jimbotron70 Domesday was still mixed content of analog video and data.
@@Papinak2 But nothing would have prevented from using a laserdisc entirely as data storage media.
Why does this video feel different? It feels like more of a mini doc than a regular LTT video. LOVE IT!!!!!
Linus must really like laserdisc
Yeah I like this style, very similar to the D-VHS video from a while back
@@kellymoses8566 or they took the criticism seriously
I fell they've videos similar to this in the past. It just doesn't happen very often since they were usually about older media, which can be expensive and hard to get the hardware needed for the video
i found it cringe.. maybe because of the co-host and the fact that you feel that the video is super scripted.. or the co-host isnt confy infront of a camera.. i didnt liked it so much and i watch ltt for years
Linus, The reason that CAV discs were provided for the final part of the movie was for the trick play features present on the remotes of most of the laserdisc players. That way the grand finale could be rewinded and fast forwarded 1 frame at a time. Allowing you to trick play explosions for example.
That's pretty cool
Great insights. The Smithsonian released Laser-ROM discs which included hundreds of thousands of photographs. Just the NASA disc alone had over 100,000 photos on it. Maybe not in today's expected web quality but probably 90% of them are nowhere to be found online. The Japanese David Lynch Dune boxset had at least three different versions of the movie. The Star Wars Special Edition box had a really nice hardback book in it. Then there is the epic Syd Mead Kronolog box.The Criterion box of 2001 had some great ROM extras on it. Art, documents etc. Almost all of Kate Bush's videos came out on laserdisc, and or Video CD, none of them were ever released on Blu-Ray or DVD. Out of the hundreds of discs I have, maybe two or three got disc rot.
The hardcover book came with the 1993 Definitive Collection of Star Wars. Special Edition refers to something else with those movies.
The reason removing discs from the sleeve was uncomfortable is because, like with a record, you're meant to store the thin paper and/or plastic "inner sleeve" the other way around, so that you take the disc out still inside the inner sleeve, which is infinitely easier to remove safely. It also defends against dust better.
Aren't you supposed to put it like "sideways"? So that when you put it on a shelf the outer opening was against the wall and the one opening pointed up?
Yeah.@@the_devolper
Yeah I was gonna say make the opening for the disk on top so it's not getting dirty from the elements but also so it doesn't drop out from gravity when you go to pull the disk.
@@the_devolper I don't think that matters too much, I think that's just sorta "OCD"(not actual OCD, but needlessly fussy people who claim to have OCD) level.
You just need to ensure that both openings aren't facing the same way, mainly so that, as someone mentioned, the disc doesn't accidentally fall out both sleeves at once.
I could be wrong.
Record liner notes were printed so that the opening on the liner was at the top for the notes to be readable as you slid the liner in or out of the sleeve.
*Laserdisc has a very strong relationship with fansubs (groups that subtitle and share anime)* around the world, as it was a way of obtaining raw films in excellent quality and with subtitles that facilitated translation (in addition to Japanese-speaking fans, there were also private payments for translators )
It was something very expensive, it usually involved an Amiga Computer, “Genlock” (connecting two devices to the television and processing these two images simultaneously), these generated VHS matrices from these sources that were spread around (known as “tapesubs”, different from fully digital fansubs pos DVD/Internet)
Every time someone traveled or imported a laser disc it was synonymous with a party in this niche, much of the impact of anime around the world was born like this.
Funny, my first time seeing Anime was on a laserdisk. Bubblegum crisis. I remember being very upset when the original ended like it did. Crash did not have the same feel.
@@joee7452 I still have my Bubblegum Crisis LD in my collection.
Akira was one sold tons that first week in the US. I did work the first anime conventions and mainly for AnimEigo at cons. Laser Disc sale big I have the lot of Japanese anime releases box sets but know that fill 2 or 3 rooms. My collect fits on a shelf(a very heavily reinforced shelf) I have 2 players but needs new belts and TLC it dies still play CDs. the other a Pioneer player that has BNC out and RS 292 connector as many players we set up to work Arcades. Space Ace and An Dragon's Liar we big LD game (of which the Lds of both)And they do play with the game controller and add game motherboard. The big change in players were the type of laser used in the first one were real laser and were top loader that sounded like jet engine spinning up. and they were limited in what format they played. The next get after used the type now many systems now and made production easier that real helium-neon German laser on player I had for short time.
I didn't know this was a thing, thanks for sharing!
That's such a cool use of the tech back then. I still have one of those genlocks for the Amiga, albeit no computer anymore. Was fun times with those and a VidiRT digitizer and the Scala software, I still call most video transitions 'scalawipes'
Thanks Linus for the great short documentary on LD! Really enjoyed this. Been waiting for a good vid on LD. Always enjoy your stuff!
I was the proud owner of a Pioneer LD player for many years. This format presented to me for the first time, extended and deleted scenes from what still remains my all-time favorite flick, ALIEN. It was an amazing box set, as was ALIENS. In the sequel, the HUGE extra scene that showed us what happened to Newt's family in the BEGINNING of the chaos BEFORE the Sulaco (spacecraft Ripley returned to the 'scene of the crime' on), was incredible to view for the first time, especially on this format. I purchased quite a few classic titles, but my 'pride and joy' LD's were the box sets - and of course I can't forget about the debut print of the 4-hour version of 'Dances With Wolves'. Cosmetically, that was the most beautiful, well-packaged and presented box set EVER. It was a reminder of the good old "LP" record days, with the album covers big enough that their visual design was given more focus and concern, because of the larger canvas the recording and visual artists had to work with. If you're under 30 years of age reading this, trust me - you missed out on a pop culture many of us have very fond memories of. LD was definitely a good part of it for quite a long time.
It's hard to describe but the vibe of this video feels really different to other LTT videos. And I don't mean that in a bad way at all. I would love to see more videos like this! Props to the writers as this must've taken a long time to research!
Feels like technology connections lite
@@jakobwest4811Or Techmoan
Hard for them to get facts and graphs wrong in a video like this!
Agreed, but LGR has been doing this and better work by himself for years now.
@@rado78231LGR is only able to get out a deep review video every few months too. Much of his other content is lightly researched and more unboxing style, except it's old tech.
One key disadvantage of CLV vs CAV discs is that with CAV, the player could, almost instantly, seek to a specific frame. This is because, as you mentioned, each frame is exactly one concentric track. So a frame number corresponds directly to a specific head position.
This was popular in library document retrieval systems. Libraries would scan in printed material a-la microfilm/microfiche, with each page consuming exactly one frame. You could then very quickly jump to any page you want or step from one page to the next.
With CLV, it was not nearly that straightforward, so direct frame access was typically not possible. And certain freeze-frame/slow motion effects would frequently only be supported on CAV discs.
BTW, if you look at a CAV disc, you can actually see the scan lines within each frame, because the horizontal blanking intervals all align with each other. So you see several hundred "radial" lines running from center to edge, each corresponding to where one scan line ends and the next begins. With CLV, the scan lines don't all line up, so you don't get that cool visual effect.
BTW, one disadvantage of LaserDisc over CD/DVD/BD is that the clear plastic is acrylic (vs. polycarbonate for CD/DVD/BD). This is why alcohol-based cleaners cloud it. It is also easier to crack and it is easier to warp in extreme temperatures. I'm not sure why LD didn't move to polycarbonate - maybe there is a technical reason I'm unaware of.
Zathras is totally into LaserDiscs.
^ this person should be a consultant to LTT for old school video hardware.
CLV discs couldn't freeze frame or slow motion or even fast forward. You would get a black screen. However higher end players like the one Linus has does have a digital memory feature. Allowing the player to digitally reproduce all these things. However lower end players would just get a black screen if you tried this.
Also one of the coolest CAV only feature is still with sound feature. Allowing you to freeze the video on frame, but the sound would continue to play normally. You could even then set the frame to change every 90th frame or something (you could set it I think from every 180 frame to eveyr other frame). Essentially allowing you to watch the movie as a slide show. I watched BTTF this way on my Laserdisc player that has digital memory feature.
All of that is true. But don't forget that old knackered laser discs combined with the clock mechanism from a cheap IKEA clocks made for VERY cool wall clocks. :)
Polycarbonate is more flexible than acrylic, maybe it would flex too much due to size of the disc?
Thanks, you brought back a lot of happy memories of my Pioneer Elite Laserdisc days collecting movies on laserdisc with my brother. The late 90s when laserdisc was still hot doesn't seem that long ago. Its amazing how fast times have changed. I wish i knew you back then Linus.
I always rememebr my Uncle was a huge tech guy, even back in the 90's. He had a LaserDisc player in his home theatre. I was staying over one night, and heard some noises... I went to investigate and he was wathcing T2: Judgement Day on LaserDisc on his home theatre. It was amazing. I stood in the corner with by mouth agape, feeling the floor vibrate as Arnold saved the world from the T-2000. Such a cherished memory.
That's the T-1000 my friend 🤗
Its about time we have more Dennis! He's a gem and always been my favorite! 👍
I agree “ you need thermal paste to put on the CPU “
We just need a surprise appearance of Nicky v to reach maximum ad power
that bumbag hes got does make it look like hes got his belly on show though lmao
he's a menace
He probably doesn't even ask the female employees to twerk.
Thanks, guys! This was a great blast from the past. A couple of other notes:
1. A LaserDisc was used in the video game Dragon's Lair for the entire gameplay.
2. Most high-end LaserDisc players could play both sides, with the read head flipping over to the other side when the disc reversed direction.
3. Pioneer had a DVD/LD player in the late '90s.
I was in love with LD and used it with Pro Logic receivers to get surround sound out of the 2-channel stereo. It would provide the best 4-channel audio experience with the center, left, right, and rear channels without degrading the dialogue when music was playing.
IIRC, that wasn't a feature for the first few years but was available by the mid 80's or so.
I had a Pioneer LD/CD player. Held 5 CD's next to one another in the same ring that the LD used. Was very cool!
Also the BBC Domesday Project is pronounced “doomsday”
I remember when there was a company that sold Dragon's Lair LaserDiscs (only) in the 90s. I remember they also sold Lasers up to a few watts of power but most were a 1/2 watt, they were called Meredith (something). I don't really remember since this was the early 90s, so over 30 years ago. I am so glad they did release Dragon's Lar 1 & 2 and Space Ace games on PC CDs, and DVDs later. I also love the Laserdisc format but never owned one, it took me months back in the 80s just to save up for a VHS player and my Commodore 64. Also, pay for my college education.
You didn't notice that huge mixup in Dolby formats? 7:38
freaking amazing!!!
that content has an academic level, all sources there and more great stuff!
THANK YOU!!
At school we were once shown a BBC master running the domesday disc and at the time, it was absolutely amazing. Remember the best we had back then were 8 bit machines. To scroll around a high detail colour map on an 8 bit micro was like a vision of the future.
LaserDiscs were also used for Industrial/Army systems.
Disney parks rides were using LaserDiscs for animations that needed to be projected and looped continuously for each ride. The fast chapter seeking + no wear of the laser light on the disc meant that only the player needed to be serviced/replaced once in a while. A VHS tape was just not an option.
and Dragon's Lair. For an even more innovative use check out "Walk Around an 80s City with LASERDISC".
another interesting fact knowing japanese culture, some 70% of these karaoke places were in fact prostitution places run by yakuza, so thanks yakuza for nintendo and laser discs
@@usuario2967 Who is and or are, "Yakuza"? ...oh, wow. A criminal syndicate.
One of the biggest reasons why Laserdisc was CRAZY POPULAR in South East Asia is the fact that the humid climate did not really harm Laserdiscs. Tapes however would get moldy very easily. So for the humid climate there, an optical medium like Laserdisc was ideal. There were even Video Jukeboxes across the world that would play Musicvideos instead of just songs from Vinyl or CDs. In fact such a Laserdisc Video Jukebox was one of my first contact with this medium, A local Burger Joint had such a thing standing in their place and i would use it once. Was really awesome. That must have been around 1998 or so. My other only firsthand experience with Laserdisc was the "This is THX" demo disc being played at my local electronics store in 1997 or '98, to demo their super huge back projection TVs and Surround Audio systems. And yes here in Europe (especially Germany) Laserdisc movies were expensive as heck. Wayyyy more than a VHS tape. And due to technical limitations (Bandwith) PAL Laserdiscs could hold only PCM audio but no analog audio tracks. Only the original Laservision discs had analog audio but no PCM. However the picture quality of PAL Laserdiscs was WAYYY better than NTSC Laserdiscs. Towards the end of the Laserdisc lifespan where were even some "squeezed" releases that contained an anamorphic picture that would look perfect on a 16:9 TV screen because Laserdisc was predominantly a 4:3 medium. So it was either native 4:3 (either opened or zoomed) or letterbox. This is why most early DVDs were letterbox too because they re-used the laserdisc videomasters. Like the first DVD releases of "2001 - a space odyssey" or "The Great Escape" and also "TRON". However only very few "Squeezed" releases were on Laserdisc.
good point... tapes sucked with humidity in the summer
Humid climates eventually cause disc rot though. But that's a '20 years later' issue.
But it's plastic. How can mold grow on plastic?
@@fuzzywzhe The side facing outwards is pure PVC but there is a gap where both disc halfs are bonded together with glue, varnmish and the reflective aluminium layer and it can get in there, growing and attacking the reflective layers. Fungus can grow on any surface and spread over time. Ever seen fungus / mold growing in SLR camera lenses and destroy the coating on the glass? Fungus and mold is tough and always finds a way to spread and grow. However it takers wayyyyyyy longer on Laserdiscs to get affected by it. Just as it would take a lot longer on a CD or DVD for example. A cassette is a roll of PVC tape and the gaps in between each layer of tape rolled up on a spool, creates enough breeding ground for mold to grow perfectly. This is why you also find so many moldy videotapes in wet basements or houses. This is why a tape can grow moldy much faster than a Laserdisc or other optical medium.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 I'm just surprised. Although these components are basically based on plastic which is organic, I'm surprised mold can grow on it.
I guess it doesn't matter, since we have solid state memory cards, would could possible attack that? You know how much storage you can have on an $11 SD card? More books than you can read in a lifetime, more audio you can listen to in a year, a months worth of video than you can watch in a month.
It's smaller than a fingernail and weighs less.
I love the variety of sponsors you guys get. Legit I check out several of them
Kudos to the writers. I can only imagine how much research goes into a piece like this. I have no interest in LaserDisk, yet this was still fun to watch.
I highly recommend Technology Connections if you want to know even more 🙂
* Laserdisc
It's a historical quirk, but while floppy disks and hard disks are disks with a "k", compact discs and laserdiscs were discs with a "c".
This is because "disk", with a "k", is one of those deliberate misspellings the computer industry was fond of - such as "byte" or "nybble", spelt with a "y" - to differentiate them from their plain English equivalents. So, because floppy and hard disks were a computer-based medium, they adopted the computer industry misspelling of "disk", while compact discs and laserdiscs - intended for a general audience - adopted the plain English "disc" with a "c" spelling.
(I know. You don't care. But this was the opportunity to "info dump" that in a comment for those people who do care and wanted to know.)
@@klaxoncow That's actually pretty interesting. Thanks. Honestly didn't even notice until you pointed it out. 👍
Laserdisc was killed in 1997, people needed smaller disks, not needing quality at all....
@@lucasrem Huh? I thought d.v.d.s were way higher quality. What are you saying?
As a young nerd who loved technology, audiophile stuff, and movies I was lucky enough to have a friend with a doctor as a father. His father was so busy with work he didn't have the time to watch movies, but he had a great home theater setup (in 1993) with Pioneer Elite electronics, including a laserdisc player. I can't remember what he had for speakers but they were all high end, and it was a 5.1 setup (would have been Dolby Surround though so only 4.1 channels of actual audio). We had free reign of this stuff. He belonged to one of those columbia records style 'we send you all the latest movies every month' so a half a dozen movies would show up every month. We organized his movie collection once and he had almost 400 laserdiscs, including all the classics, Criterion collection, etc. I did realize at the time just how lucky I was to get to watch pretty much whatever movie I wanted in the most premier setting possible. Now I'm an old nerd and I haven't lost the bug. I'm thankful for those days. We watched Reservoir Dogs and thought it was the worst movie we had ever seen! We were too young.
I'm not too busy right now, but I feel that I've lost the interest in watching new movies. May be, at some point you get a feeling that you've seen it all.
@@GTI8855 I don't watch as many movies as I did as a kid, but there are still plenty of great and original movies being made today.
I love movies, but i'm not a fan of the new stuff, so instead I go hunting for older movies that I haven't seen. I'm surprised by how I continue to always find new classic movies that I have never heard of.@@GTI8855
What happened to the Pioneer Elite electronics and hi end speakers?
400 laserdiscs? my god
Great to see this vid! I’m a collector (3 players and ~500 discs, so far). Them becoming trendy in the 2020s means the limited supply available will only increase in value as time passes. Some of my laserdisc’s have never made the jump to DVD or later formats, so the ones I have are the pinnacle of picture quality you’ll find for these films, and since the digital sound they contain is always uncompressed - the sound you hear is also better than with later formats, since all of those utilize compressed audio.
I started collecting in the mid-80s when I was stationed overseas and American films in English were only available inside the Base Theater. That meant that only certain films were shown, and if you were a connoisseur of art-films or others with a limited audience draw, you were just out of luck. Films seen in Off-Base theaters were nearly-always dubbed into the host country’s native language, by Hollywood itself. Once a month, for about 6 years, I’d throw a movie night party at my flat for me and my film-loving mates. I’d show the films I’d ordered that month on a Mitsubishi rear-projection 60” professional grade monitor that served as my TV, which I bought from a local company in Italy after they’d been used as displays for the Milan Auto Show.
The quality of laserdiscs at that time simply could not be beaten by anything else publicly available, HD was barely a blip on the big electronics manufacturer’s radar then. Now I run the laserdisc video output through my Onkyo AV Receiver, which up-converts the picture to 1080p extremely well.
Great video! It's nice to see that Laserdiscs are becoming popular again! We hear about them more and more.❤❤
I'm not sure if this was mentioned or not, but my favorite difference between Laser Disc and VHS (besides the obvious video quality advantage) was widescreen format (via letter box for 4:3 Tvs)! I remember seeing Star Wars being demoed in a store on LD and was blown away that I could see all of the extra Storm Troppers on the side of the screen with Darth Vader boarded Princess Leia's ship.
I had a few Widescreen VHS releases and oh boy... this really was NO format for widescreen with that low resolution.... Still was nice to have some movies in OaR at one point. I was super proud to finally have the Star Trek movies (except for the first one) on VHS in widescreen, back in 1998. But yes on Laserdisc with the higher line resolution it sure looked like what could have been if S-VHS would have actually become dominant.... but sadly that never happened. I really only got my Laserdisc experience in 2000 when i got my first DVD player and had some DVDs by Laser Paradise (a german bootleg label) that contained clips from some of their own Laserdisc releases. They were one of the very few labels who actively supported the laserdisc format in Germany, together with the label Astro and also did their own releases. They supported the medium till the very end and when DVD became popular they pushed that format a lot in Germany. Was nice to see how "Mad Max II" or "Last Boy Scout" looked on Laserdisc compared to DVD picture quality. It did have such a strong analog charme but looked WAAYYYY better than VHS.
I worked in a video store and boy was it a chore to try to explain widescreen releases to people. I finally discovered that I had to give them a quiz. I would ask them what shape was the screen when they saw the movie in the theater (a rectangle)... then ask them what shape is their TV (a square) and i would draw it out on a piece of paper. Then ask them how to fit a rectangle into a square. Once I drew the rectangle into the square that usually registered with them.
And then their not quite so technical reply was "but I will lose all that screen realestate at the top and bottom and the picture will be smaller. I want it (square) or 'full screen' ". *Which was not really "full screen". @@MiddleAgeBMX
@@MiddleAgeBMX Why would that be hard to explain? With this and or that said the way I would say it is that I don't think I realized any value in these details until you experience them. I don't know...
My uncle had a laserdisc player and a huge 40" CRT TV with Bose Surround sound in the 90s. I thought that was the pinnacle of home theater and nothing could get better than that. I remember watching Speed (aka "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down") and being blown away at the experience.
The technical leap of that setup compared to everyone else you would've known at the time -- it's difficult to imagine anything now that could replicate how unique that would have been.
Being exposed to good stuff like that was both a blessing and a curse for me and my wallet. Also being of an age where was both going from audio cassette and vhs, to cd and dvd around the times of getting a bit of money and starting working.
The dvd movie that really sold me on home theater was Heat. At that time I had a 32" sony widescreen 100hz tv, some of their higher end 5.1 speakers and amps, and a really nice high end sony dvd player ( what can I say.. I was a bit of a fan of Sony at that time)
The surround experience of that movie was just amazing, the bank gunfight scene was/is still one of the best ever.
Fun trivia - one of the reasons that scene sounds so immersive is Mann used a load of microphones placed around the set to record the audio live, not dubbed in later.
That thing must have weighed 400 pounds,
I had 100" with Sony CRT projector and LD in the 90's.
@@nickwallette6201My grandfather’s early 90s home theater puts a lot of modern ones to shame because he had a quality amplifier and two human size speakers. A lot of modern surround systems cheap out on the speakers to maximize more of them and are wimpy little satellite ones. A quality 2.1 system can hold its own in immersion.
Wow, a working LaserActive... The undisputed king of LD players; you don't see too many of those, much less in working condition. My buddy bought one and had to do a full capacitor replacement on it and the modules to get it running- a mindblowing difficult and tedious task for these. He has several LaserActive games as well as both the Sega and PC Engine modules. It's one hell of a cool curio.
There were other modules made for them that could transform these into karaoke machines (I think my friend has this one as well), a computer interfacing adapter so you can control the deck from a media center or write control software for it, and there's even a 3D module that you could plug proprietary goggles into for 3D movies. LaserActives were decades ahead of their time.
The nostalgia is too much!! Lol. So weird. Literally, the first time I ever saw T2 was on laser disc.... and yeah, I still remember it 'til this day. The picture and audio was better than anything I had ever experienced in those days. Cool vid, guys. 😎
A pretty good overview of LaserDisc, Linus, Tanner, and LTT peeps; as others have also said, Mat of Techmoan and Alec of Technology Connections have done various, more in depth videos on LaserDisc, as well as on RCA's CED and JVC's VHD.
The Technology Connections video playlist on LD is linked in the video description...
We had a laser disc player when they were new. My dad was looking for a karaoke machine and many laser disc players were also karaoke machines. We were lucky enough to have a laser disc rental store nearby too. It was so much better than VHS, but by the time DVD hit, nobody touched laser disc. Few people watched them on CRT. DLP or rear projections were the most common TV at the time.
Can I ask what year you bought this? I'm probably younger, than you so I'm interested in knowing
I still have my parent's Laser Karaoke and it plays DVDs as well.
Couldn’t you assume that the VHS tape may have degraded some
@@toyota420xpPlus if had been played a ton of times, or was originally a rental store tape later sold for discount. I always notice the front of tape and just as the credits started at end always looked the worst, since people tended to fast forward to that part or hit rewind at the end in the same spot.
I’ve had laserdisc/laservision since the fully analogue massive Philips/Magnavox player. Still have Pioneer DVL919E.
One thing you didn’t mention is they produce interactive Laservision as well which stored text in the Teletext/Ceefax signal. Probably more of a UK thing (British Garden Birds BBCV1005L)
I love how I am watching Linus explain how before VCRs you could only watch TV live. I lived through all that (most of my childhood my family only had a black and white console TV)
The laserdisc years were great for many reasons. The picture was a BIG step up from VHS. The sound could approach theater quality with the right home setup, and buy the discs was a joy because the large package meant a lot of detail and extra stuff could be put into the box besides just the disc.
People who remember how much more fun buying an LP record was rather than a cassette tape or of CD package know the feeling.
I have the 12 disc Star Wars Laserdisc with lots of extra footage (horribly produced) and My Fair Lady (includes a book about the production design or the movie) Nightmare Before Christmas (with an accompanying book).
It was a great video with a very thorough research on history and market analysis. Amazing quality content! And I can relate to this a lot!
I am from Hong Kong, and my family used to own a LD player. We rented LDs from some major chain video rental store, and had a few Karaoke LDs. The video quality was really great at that time compared to standard VHS. I rememeber I despised VCD (Not CDV) when it gained wide recognition and popular because even though the technology was newer, the video quality was much worse than LD, and I refused to accept something worse than before as the future.
And it is really entertaining to me that you found a Japanese version of Sailormoon R (the one with lots of Japanese words on the jacket of the LD and a Hong Kong version of Sailormoon SuperS because I used to watch Sailormoon on TV in Hong Kong but listened to Cantonese dubbing, and used to go to some LD shops to admire all the cool covers of LDs of Japanese anime though I had no money to buy and could not understand Japanese at that time. I did not know there was LD release of Cantonese version of Sailormoon! Now I understand Japanese and seeing you switching the audio between Japanese and Cantonese (my mother tongue) of a Sailormoon episdoe just made me so happy. Thanks for this great episode!
As a kid of the 80s, I vividly remember begging to a laser disk player and getting told how crazy expensive it was. Only the wealthy families in my area had one, and like you pointed out they had theater rooms
Eh, well it was the very few wealthy people that owed them that helped LaserDisk NOT gain any popularity and made VHS be the standard. Eh, since many did not own one, the flaws of LaserDisk were barely known to the public. Eh, the few that owned them were able to testify on their flaws, which was enough for the general consumer to say "Nah! I'll stick with VHS". Eh, the disk was vulnerable to high heat. Eh, the player tray gets stuck or the gear belt breaks and parts for it were not easily available.
@@alwaysemployed656 Eh, Eh, Eh, Eh, Eh..........
LTT in several years after Technology Connections covered these in depth. He actually did a really cool deep-dive on audio and video recording history, in general.
@@dwgray9000 love both of those channels, high quality content on vintage media
It's true: only one major channel can cover a topic - especially if it's well-researched and literally published years later.
@@pjforde1978 Honestly, the LTT audience is probably orders of magnitude larger than Tech Connect, and any sparked interest and subsequent google searches will probably send those who are interested in learning more down the previously mentioned rabbit hole. I just was giving credit to where I learned about these originally in the cheekiest way I knew how. :)
@@dwgray9000 "hilarious vinyl precesedors" actually came after laserdisc, because it took RCA more than a decade to bring them to the market.
this screen flip edit at 17.07 was subtle but so good
Just wanted to mention the revolutionary arcade game 'Dragon's Lair' (1983) which featured interactive beautiful full motion video (or FMV) of Don Bluth animation utilized Laser Disc technology. Considering at the time the most popular games would have been games like Donkey Kong, Pac-man etc which were basically ~8bit, it was really eye catching quality. Dragon's Lair was also the first arcade game credited for costing $1 per play while most games were still only $0.25 cents.
14:02, a lot of laserdisc players by late 80s had dual side play capabilities. Sony even had a design called quick C in which the laser rides in a C channel that can go from one side to the other in just 5 seconds.
Mentioned at 17:05 that there were.
@SkippyDa they still had one laser that flipped to the others identified. also there were dual disc's players.
17:04 bro just watch
C-Quick Reverse, is actually design for karaoke 😂
@@PlayRstar Karaoke was big in China. C Quick Reverse was pretty quick.
Really great video. I enjoy these longer dives into past technology. My experience with LaserDisc was in middle school in the early 90s. My music teacher put us through a musical theater unit and was absolutely stoked that the school had let him buy not only a laser disc player, but a bunch of musicals on LaserDisc. He said it was "the next best thing to seeing them on stage". As 12-year-olds, we were a bit less enthusiastic, unfortunately. Not sure we really appreciated the experience. I do seem to remember reading somewhere that they did have relatively high adoption in schools. Maybe schools could afford the expensive players more than your average 90s home consumer. They also might have figured that the LaserDiscs would outlast VHS tapes, many of which would start to break down after only 15 to 20 plays. Can't help but wonder how many schools out there have LaserDisc collections gathering dust, with nothing to play them on.
Rather fun to hear it pronounced as 'dome', too - It's doomsday, echoing the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book
Churches and schools are the best sources for good used players. Iykyk
I remember, must have been 5th or 6th grade, so around 1993 my science teacher got one and played a educational video on space. I remember it standing out as a pretty crisp image and maybe even having information pop ups but I’m not sure. As far as my class I think that was the only time it ever came out of the closet.
My dad worked on a cargo ship that would go to Japan and he had one in his room he borrowed when I visited. I remember him thinking of getting it to take home but didn’t. I know he had a movie or 2 for it but I can’t think of what they could have been. Probably good call him not getting one, my parents didn’t even buy vhs movies so it probably wouldn’t have been the best purchase.
If you want videos about old tech, i'm pretty sure techmoan has done better videos with less ADHD in them
A fascinating overview of a long overlooked format. Well done.
I am a Laserdisc veteran. I remember those days quite fondly. A LaserDisc player plus a Faroudja line quadrupler/scaler feeding a top end 9" CRT projector like an Electrohome Marquee, Barco Cine 9, or Sony G90 was the Dream Team and I had it.
My dad was an audiophile and an early adopter of LaserDisc. We had over a hundred movies on disc, and I watched them all the time. It was amazing, and one of the greatest advantages was that the media doesn't degrade like VHS does after multiple viewings. So, when I watched The Empire Strikes Back for the 4000th time, it still looked great! I still have the Star Wars discs, though I no player.
those are worth $$!
Treasure those VHS players. I needed to convert a tape to DVD and bought one on Amazon, a dual VHS/DVD recorder. I was just going to copy the tape to computer and then burn the DVD, but that Sony model was it, the only one I could find on Amazon new in box, and it was $400 four years ago. I'd bought similar units at Wal-Mart ten years before for under $150.
I had a friend who had laserdisc. They had Star Trek the Motion Picture, and just like your Star Wars, the amazing clarity made it a different movie.
@@ScotttheCyborg There's plenty of second-hand players on E-bay for less than $100. Connect it to a computer with an analog video input (TV) card and you can digitize it directly to the computer.
If you only need to convert a single tape of home movies there are services that will do that.
@@writerpatrick Sure, but I wanted a new in box one. I only wanted the VHS player because I had a converter card in my computer. No VHS only were available. Now I have a USB adapter and half a dozen players from yard sales.
Note: Batman Returns was the first film released in Dolby Digital in cinemas but on Laserdisc, it was Clear and Present Danger in 1995. It required a special player and demodulator, and the audio was stored on one of the analog channels.
Not sure what the first LD with digital LPCM was though.
popcorn Bob GCC
THX was the premium format used on the Laserdisc too, Clear and Present Danger in 1995, backwards compatible with PCM audio !
It was never released on HD Laserdisc.
Audio is just a container, multiple streams on the disc , you can do any format of audio on the disk, as long as you do backward compatible format for compatibility ! Stereo stream on it in PCM too etc !
@@lucasrem THX is only a mastering Standard, not a Soundformat. The Soundformat is always the Standard of this Time aka Dolby Surround or AC3 aka Dolby Digital. And DD can go from 1.0 to 6.1.. I think one of my LDs was also THX certified but only the original Mono Soundtrack (could be Terminator).
THX should be a Standard for perfect Sound and Picture but there were enough Flaws. My Hunt for red October LD was missing one of the Rearchannels on Side 3 and the Centerchannel of my Stargate LD was perfect but from the Rearspeakers 😞
I should reactivate my old Pioneer CLD-2950 with my Yamaha DDP-1 AC3 Decoder but the new AV Receiver are missing the necessary Input. A Round of Twister would be Fun.
This was an awesome look at a wonderful piece of retro tech! Good job guys! Another great one to cover would be the mini-disc. Light years ahead of its time. Was still in wide use in Japan the last time I was there in 08 or 09.
I bought my CLD-A100 new in 1993. All three modules, controllers and extensions. Still like new to this day :), so this video was awesome!!
Also - great video! Alec from Technology Connections has, of course, done an amazing set of videos on this format.
It’s also worth noting that there was another disc format, one from RCA! Again, Alec has done a whole series on this. :)
I really doubt the writer of this video didn't watch the Technology Connections series. So much info.
Was about to say that...watching a video about laser disc or RCAs' CED without Alec feels kinda wrong at this point :/
Back in the early days of LD, you couldn't freeze frame or jump easily through a CLV disk. That would come later with digital video buffers that could hold a few frames of video realtime. But you could single at the time on CAV. So you'd sacrifice storage density for pause, single or scrubbing of video. They also included video text. I have a copy of 2001 that has a ton of documentation in video text from Arthur C. Clarke.
Which version of 2001 was that? I have a laserdisc player, and I'm a big fan of Clarke.
You also couldn't slow-motion on a CLV disc without a fancier player. Nowadays, for me, its mostly noticeable as "the screen blanks when I pause". The reason the last disc/side was CAV when possible was in theory so that the finale / epic parts of the film, where you'd be most likely to want to pause or slow-motion, would have that ability.
Yep, I had a Magnavox player and it couldn’t do the “special effects” on CLV discs. Ah, memories.
Yeah, this is why when they have a bonus side of just random features, trailers, text, still images, etc, it's almost always CAV.
@@longbottle I don't recall, but it's in storage and I can't find out easily.
I have two Pioneer Laser disk still. The newer of the two is a dual laser and made it nice when watching the T2 Box set. I had a 53" rear projection TV with 5.1 Pro Logic surround system and that was my first home theater starting in 1993. I have been wanting to hook it up with my 1080p projector, but haven't yet. I remember going to two different AV stores and renting laser disk to watch. Some I bought and some I recorded to VHS with a high end VCR at the time. That was fun back in those days.
the archery range that I frequent has a virtual shooting range which consists of a giant screen and a projector that displays deer and other wild game on the screen and it registers contact from the special blunted arrows they give you when you pay to use it. it's operated by a super old DOS computer which is attached to a laser disc player. All the programs and wild game footage is on laser disc. and they're still using it to this day. idk i thought that was so cool.
The first LD player marketed in the US was the Magnavox (Philips) player. Friends of ours had one, and it suffered HORRIBLE abuse at the sticky hands of their children. It seemed no matter how much gunk the discs collected, they rarely glitched out noticeably. Using a soft rag with some warm water and a tiny amount of Dawn cleaned them right up. The Magnavox was notable for predating the wide availability of semiconductor lasers and had a HUGE helium-neon gas laser inside. I remember cracking open our friends player to clean it. This was after 4 years of the aforementioned abuse. When I was done with it, it continued to work flawlessly for several more years.
Phillips co-developed the technology.
Laserdisc is the Neo-Geo of home video formats.
My Mom got me a Neo Geo when I was a kid in the early 2000s.
@@Finger112 My condolences.
Except that's its actually the turbodou/Sega CD, especially that model that Linux is using. It literally has a slot to swap in various video game systems.
@@arnezbridges93 Yeah I know what it is, I simply meant the format had a similar history to the Neo-Geo AES. In that, it was expensive but technically superior to competing technology, had a small but dedicated fan base, and was supported for longer than you would think.
I owned a laserdisc player and over 100 discs. The video quality of the disc was somewhat dependent on the care/effort the studio used in mastering the movie for the laserdisc format. Big movies like T2, the studio went all out and video quality was very good. Smaller movies often did not have as much effort put into the mastering and it showed.
I guess that smaller studios (like TV in 90's) mastered their footage on videotape and it shown once transferred to Hi-Fi media - great example is Star Trek NG, which had to go through complete remaster from original footage for BD release.
My copy of Quartermas and the pit looks 3 times better than any vhs copy, or crt picture. Against a dvd, it looks half as good. But that equates to a very clear picture with tons of viewing features. And the discs command respect by their shear weight and presence.
Similar to vinyl in that regard. There were a lot of shitty masters back in the day, and with the resurgence of the format, more often than not the quality isn't there.
I ran the video dept at Virgin in Vegas. We blow out soooo many laser discs for super cheap about a year into DVD hitting the market. (I did not get any myself) for a buck. Star Wars Box Sets, OG Bade Runner Cut box set, Criterion Collection of The Killer. All for a buck a piece. It is true about some discs having shitty transfers. Sometime you pay more for a special edition version just to get a better Transfer.
It is weird thing about the stuff I order for that store and sold over the years is now super collectable. I ran the video games too. I was I think the only place to sell Steel Battalion Box Set (twice) and that Special DVD GameCube (It was in the store forever but I sold it at price). And I know I sold what would be now super pricy RPG's for PlayStation and N64. I even carried more pc games then CompUSA
I still have my laserdisc player and movies.
In 1985, I bought a JVC HR-D725 VHS VCR that would do frame by frame playback, both forward and reverse, It had single step as well as 2 FPS to 8x speed with about 12 different speeds available.
Not the same thing. LD was real picture by picture, the CAV format ws used for a lot of interactive video stuff because of the precision.
Someone else probably mentioned it, but CAV allowed for crystal clear still frame pause and frame-by-frame advance. CLV disc did not. A pause reverted to a blue screen. So that final side of a movie in CAV for the climax allowed film buffs to geek out over every frame of a fight scene or explosive battle. One example of that was The Fugitive where the first side was CAV so the train crash scene could be watched frame-by-frame.
I loved my LD with Dolby Pro-Logic and 36" JVC CRT in grad school. I still have one and all of my discs, but rarely watch them on the Epson projector.
As a Laserdisc enthusiast, there is so much to unpack with the format from history to technicalities, so thanks for taking the time to get things right, good video :)
They got so many things wrong, though...
@@jcpt928examples?
I love how you guys didn't just get a standard laser disc player for this video but basically the holy grail of LD players. Cool you got the Sega Genesis module too but sad you didn't mention you could also get a PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16) module as well. Regardless, the LD envy was real back in the day, cheers!
To video game collectors this is true. To laserdisc enthusiasts this player is actually below average.
When they said they spent $1000 on a player, I thought maybe they'd been taken for a ride, until I saw what it was
@@RaydenUMK3
I know right? It's kinda dog poop for LD collectors. Doesn't even auto switch sides for a thousand dollars? Lmao
The Holy Grails are usually considered to be HLD-X0 (Japan), HLD-X9 (Japan), CLD-D925 (Europe), CLD-97 (USA), LD-S2 (USA).
2nd tier would be CLD-97 (USA), LD-S9 (Japan), CLD-R7G (Japan), etc.
The CLD-A100 has bad reputation because it will also need to be fully recapped to operate normally after all these years.
Gotta give em props on the ad reads/sponsor plugs. Sometimes it's so fast I can't even skip. Well played.
I still have my Pioneer CLD 704 that I got around 1996(?) It had a dedicated mini drawer that would play an audio CD, and it would play BOTH sides of a laser disc without you having to get up and flip the disc yourself. I used to watch it on a 27" Toshiba CRT and would wow people who visited. My roommate had a surround system hooked up to his player, and his go to demo was Terminator 2, first chapter where the endoskeleton foot crunches down on the human skull.
People jumped every time.
I haven't played with the player in a few years and I remember that somewhere I bought a replacement drive belt online that should fix the problem I had with a long spin up and spin down time with the unit, as well as it not playing until you banged it down on its feet a couple of times. I still have my 250 or so discs, and a hard to find Yamaha receiver amplifier that has BOTH S Video AND an HDMI out so that in theory I can play my LD player into the amp and still get an HDMI image on my 65" Vizio TV. It's all still a work in progress.
The Domesday project was absolutely incredible as a kid - we didn't have internet remember, and here was this full colour digital encyclopedia that sat in the corner of a classroom, which used a giant shiny metal LP because it was *digital*. DIGITAL?! Its the sci fi future guys, right here in the 80s!
Also, changing disk part way through a movie was absolutely NOT a chore
- in cinemas until the 90s films tended to have an intermission for snacks and toilet breaks anyway, so a film stopping half way through was fully normal.
- Vinyl was still very popular, as were cassette tapes... which you had to flip part way through.
In short, this is just how media was consumed. So the fact you had to swap a laserdisc simply would not have crossed anyone's mind as an inconvenience.
@@MenaceInc Although, correctly pronouncing it "doomsday" does always sound rather apocalyptic.
Never bothered me on CLV.. But it did get annoying if you ever owned a CAV only release. There's a Ben-Hur CAV version for example, that has 9 changes you'll have to make counting the disc swaps. That's a bit much!
was that a modified BBC Micro computer that was used to access it?
@@bluespartan076Had the optional 4MHz 65C102 co-processor installed, an additional 64KB of memory, and a SCSII interface adaptor.
A major drawback of CLV discs, was that you couldn't pause and get a solid image, because pausing just gets you a single ring and CLV doesn't hold only one frame per ring. Mixed disks were so you could fit the movie more efficiently, but still have special features with pausable images ... at least on all the players I interacted with.
Yep, still an analog signal. Couldn't really get a single still 'frame' until digital, since analog sources didn't really deliver complete individual 'frames'. 480P FTW! Remember when 'Progressive Scan' was a big buzzword for high end displays?! And DVDs with ANAMORPHIC video that the encoder could 'squeeze' and then be 'stretched out' for playback so none of those precious 480 lines were wasted on saving BLACK Letterbox Bars!
Some players had a memory buffer that would allow for freeze frame CLV disks as well. I think the feature was called Digital Memory
My family has that exact Pioneer + Sega Genesis Laserdisc! It's crazy to see how expensive it's going for now considering it was only like $150 when my mom bought it.
1. Dennis if you see this you have grown so much confidence over the years we are proud of you 💜
2. LLT team let him/get him to do more please 💜
This was super cool, it felt more like a dedicated documentary episode rather than a usual daily, and I diggedy-dug it. It might just be a placebo but it felt like you really had the time to enjoy, and more importantly, properly cover, all the different points and features and facts, whereas a normal "before" upload would have cut off about half way in and dismissed a lot of the lesser points due to time. Nice work team!
My parents rented a house in the 94-96 and in the awkwardly really well finished attic (only accessible by pull down stairs) we found a laserdisc player with a tv you could never fit up the stairs and a bunch of “Corn” movies.
Gread video! I live in Colombia, here laserdisc were a rarity, only wealthy videophiles and audiophiles had access to them, disc where scarce and usually had to been imported. I remember very well a demo at school in the early eighties, I was blown away by the quality compared to Beta and VHS. I was a kid then, so the idea of owning one was just a dream. About 10 years ago a friend gave me one he had in storage as a gift. I got about 50 disc through ebay and vintage stores here in Bogota. I have the player hooked up to a vintage CRT TV and it's great fun. On digital TVs the image is terrible but on CRT it looks amazing. You should make a video about super 8 and 16mm film, that's another rabbit hole. Amazing quality if you get the nice stuff.
Had an LD player with 100ish movies. LOVED my collection! It ended up in a Value Village a couple of years ago, tho...
Quick note: some VCR models could do a frame by frame forward function, though it did not compare to the right pairing of Disc and Machine. Most of the VCR models with this capability were intended for tape to tape editing rather than strictly playback.
Yes, that is right, but there was always a warning with those VCR that that function could damage the media.
Still frame and frame advance was sometimes a selling feature for VCRs, though rather pointless for home use
Yeah, I remember ours had that, though it was a higher-end unit. One of my favourite movies was "Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra", and we'd use the frame by frame function to watch the scenes where they throw Romans around in slow motion. Good times.
There were... _a few_ .. VCRs that had digital frame memory, and thus a perfect pause. Most just held the tape stationary and spun the read heads in place. It was noisy and imperfect, because the tape is meant to be moving through the path of the heads for the timing to line up perfectly. (This is what's responsible for the staticy "bars" in the video on pause and search. The heads aren't reading the part of the tape where the image is supposed to be, because it's moving at the wrong speed, or not at all.) But, if you used twice as many read heads on the drum, you could get a decent quality still by switching between them at different points in the frame.
With LD, the laser just stopped advancing tracks. It would sit right there and read the same "groove" over and over again. It was just as clear as it was in motion. Changing the frequency at which the laser pickup advanced to adjacent tracks is all it took to turn normal playback into high-speed search, slow motion, or still frame. It was basically a "free" feature of the way the video pickup worked anyway. Just change the servo that stepped the laser's focus to the next track and let everything else just keep doing what it does normally. It was an amazingly elegant solution that just happened to be the simplest thing you could have thought to do.
My dad wrote an award-winning human anatomy program that is still in use to this day in medical schools (though massively upgraded) and it was pressed to laser disc. When he was working for NASA at the Ames Super Computing Division they also used laser discs for their programs.
I still have my laserdisc player (connected to my 75" 4K tv no less!) to this day. I own about a hundred discs, mostly Disney and other animated films... nearly all of my collection is CAV - in the LD world there was a higharchy and there were some snobs (like me) who thumbed their nose at CLV discs. The main reason was, CLV was not able to freeze frame or scrub at different speeds while video was playing.
Another really amazing feature was frame search - if you knew the frame number, (and if you had a remote control with a numeric pad) you could key in the precise frame you wanted, and you would immediately hit that on a crystal clear still shot. Perfect for people who collected production animation cels - you could go right to the Frame in the movie that was hanging on your wall.
As to the flipping discs, yes, you had to do that every 30 minutes (or 60 if you were watching CLV as stated in the video) - but there was ONE model that was sold in the late 80s that was really pricey, and I only saw it in a store ONCE. It had two drawers and two lasers. The 'next' laser would pick up on the reverse side immediately as the first laser ended. Then THAT laser would move to the bottom drawer and pick up where the last laser stopped. It allowed for two hours of uninterrupted play.
It was sold at 'LaserLand' - a laserDisc only store in the Chicago area. I wish I had bought that damn player!
That Radio Shack catalog brings me the feels, as I worked there from 89-96. Sega Genesis FTW.
Love Laserdisc. BTW it's pronounced "Doomsday" and was a bit of a disaster. It became almost impossible to decipher years later when the tech became outdated. They managed to digitise a lot of it however and I think is now accessible on the BBC archives.
There's a grass-roots project out there to tap into the high-frequency signal directly out of the LaserDisc player's laser pickup, bypass all the video and sub-channel decoding of the player, and process the raw PWM directly from the disc in software. This has yielded access to all the data on those discs, as well as providing a "perfect" backup solution for LD video -- assuming the disc can be read accurately. But, an offshoot of that project is a repair method that can average the reads from multiple copies of the same pressing and correct errors.
@@nickwallette6201 i have a partial rip of the T2 special edition linus showed here, i only have the you could be mine music video because that laserdisc is the highest quality version out there. (It was only released on laserdisc and VHS)
I remember exploring that bbc domesday disc, (I believe there were 2 discs), around 1990 in my upper school library. It was fascinating. The whole thing, if I remember, was to celebrate the 900 years since William the conqueror's domesday book, his little "how much can I tax my new subjects.?"book
@@noahkrause2835 You're waaaaay out of li-ee-yine
@@Lord_of_Dread For the appetite for destruction box set they released a bluray with all the music videos. They did not do the same thing for Use your illusion 1&2 box set so im making my own bluray by remastering the videos and adding in the 2022 remastered audio.
The lack of music and pulled back production of this is actually really fascinating and honestly, I enjoy it.
My first LaserDisc player didn't have a piddley little laser diode in it. It had a 14-inch He-Ne laser tube. It took a few seconds for it to warm up, but that was OK, because it took even longer for the belt-drive to spin the disc up to speed. Oh, and it was top loading. When you stopped it, the lid remained locked until the disc actually came to a stop.
A friend of mine had a matched pair of players that could be connected with a proprietary cable that allowed one player to cue the other. It also linked to his television. He would get two copies of a movie. Put disc 1 side A into one player and the second copy of disc 1 flipped to side B into the second player. When side A finished, the second player would start playing side B (and the TV input would be switched to the second player). It was nearly seamless. Then he had about 20 minutes to load disc 2 side A into the first player, etc. It was remarkably similar to what happened in the theaters, with the projectionist loading the next reel into the idle projector.
I've got a LaserDisc player in storage. I wonder if it still works. I'd love to watch the un-specialized Star Wars trilogy in glorious CAV again.
A few arcade games used LaserDisc. I was never any good at Dragon's Lair, but I played an awful lot of Mad Dog McCree, which was all live-action.
super nice to see this. I have two laser players and also laser disk films and they still work
technology connectiona got me interested in these discs
Sorta Same! My highschool Latin teacher was OBSESSED with them which I found awesome lol
But Loved his video on them too!
Disclosure: 2:09 real footage of linus inserting a Normal DVD into a normal disc player
I remember in 11th grade chemistry class seeing a laserdisc player that was left out with an image paused from the previous class. I’d always hoped my teacher would mess around with it because LDs were so fascinating to me. Perfect, crystal-clear freeze frame…awesome!
Love my Laserdisc player. I collect Laser Disc's and go around to pawn shops all the time to add to my collection.
The Technology Connections TH-cam channel has a great video on this and other optical media subjects.
Omg, Dennis sponsored spot always crack me 😅
I get it being able to record TV was a way more useful thing than have better image quality, I can't remember how many animes and cartoons I would miss if I didn't record TV when I was in school 😅
It is crazy to think how much all this tech we used to need was huge now all fits on our phones.
my only experience with the media was in elementary school, cant remember what the presentation was about but it was on laser disk and the presenter made a big deal about the menu on it. it was a documentary with a built in interactive question/answer round.
The CLV/CAV in the same set was not a marketing gimmick, it had some major practical application, but was mostly for things like special features. Because CAV is frame-addressable and can be paused perfectly, they could do things like text screens that would stay on screen until you hit the next frame button, so you wouldnt have to keep pausing to read them. Also the same for still art galleries and anything else similar. They would also use it on the last disc part of the movie if it fit within 30 minutes because, why not? It cost less to do and like you say, you could pause/skip/FF perfectly for the final part of the movie.
My grandfather had a LaserDisc player when I was a kid. I remember being amazed at the video and especially the audio quality compared to VHS. Even back then, and even as a kid (admittedly a very nerdy kid), it was a HUGE difference.
Kids have better hearing and vision than adults, so I don't understand your even as a kid comment.
I love this video format. I have a fairly big collection of movies and watch these at regular basis. Some films I have on both DVD and LD, some other only on LD.
Please do a video on CED Videodisc next. I love that format.
Thx for this. Was big fan of LD's on the 90's. Probably have a hundred movies on LD. During the Covid shutdown, I pulled out my LD gear (CLD79 & DVL 91, Lexicon demodulators) out, had it serviced by the last place in Los Angeles that worked on them. Its now running great in a nice home theater system. I can't find any HT processors or converts that do SVHS to HDMI conversion, but my Marantz 8802A converts the composite video to HDMI nicely. We enjoy watching all our big boxed sets - Abyss, Aliens 2, all the Bond films, Fair Lady, Star Wars, the Star Trek movies, Terminator, etc. Both Pioneer units play both sides (our friends are always amazed how that works), and their video & sound is much better than anyone expects (like on the Aliens 2 box set).
I have a little over 800 discs so far - most players made in the middle 90s onward are dual sided so most movies you didn't need to flip. It happened automagically.
Automagically? Really? Are you kidding me?! That's amazing.
This was a 25min video I didn't know I needed :) I am old enough to remember and watch movies on beta max. vhs, laser disc and dvd/blueray. Back in the early 90s I had one friend that had a laser disc player but it was OFF LIMITS for anyone to touch :)
It's just a regular Laserdisc, the misunderstood gem of home video in the 70's, 80's and 90's.
I instantly recognized the LaserActive in the thumbnail! Nice to see one featured here! About 15 years ago, I picked up a Pioneer LaserActive with the Sega PAC, original LA branded controller and remote for dirt cheap (around $200 USD). A few years later, I found 2 of the LaserActive LD games at a used book store for $5 a pop. Good stuff!
Even before the "soft launch" in 1978, a Laserdisc player can be seen in action in the movie "Airport '77" which came out in March of 1977.
Wow, haven't thought about my old set up. About 23 years ago I had a Pioneer LD player I bought it right after getting a 80" RCA rear projection 4:3 tv with freeze frame, split screen and could preview up to 9 channels at once. Had surround sound and that picture and sound was amazing! Even had the old webtv hooked to it. Could talk with up to 20 people in one chat room and PM 6 more at the same time and keep up! LOL
I remember these in the pubs a jukebox that played music videos. Mind blown at the time.
Batman Returns was the first film to have Dolby digital in theaters but the first LD to get a DD track was Clear and Present Danger in 1995. Jurassic Park had DTS in its 1997 release on LD so laserdisc supported multiple formats
The big downside of DTS on LaserDisc was that it used the digital audio track, meaning that if you didn’t have a receiver that could decode DTS audio, you had to fallback to the inferior analog audio track. It also meant that there weren’t any LaserDiscs that had both DD and DTS as DD used the right channel of the analog track to store the signal (which had to be de-modulated into a regular DD signal that could be decoded by a receiver (though some receivers in LD’s heyday did have this capability built in without the need for a separate device)), which would had left mono audio as the only audio option for people without a receiver.
Yes, but DTS on laserdisc is very easy to use nowadays, as any receiver from the past 20 years definitely can decode it. DD requires a demodulator. However, DTS discs fetch such a premium in the current market that the cost of a demodulator is easily recuperated in the cost savings of the discs once you buy like 2 movies. Plenty of discs are like $10 with DD and $80 with DTS on ebay. I've got a setup capable of playing both but I've never bought a DTS disc due to cost. Supposedly they sound better but if we are buying discs to nitpick quality, then I will just get a 4k UHD Blu-ray
@@sgdude1337 I was more or less talking about the downsides of DTS for those who didn’t have a compatible system back in the day, or those who don’t have a surround sound system today. I was also talking about why there weren’t any LD releases that had both DD and DTS.
I still have a Pioneer Elite Laser/Dual-Sided LD-DVD Player with several Box Set Movies, still a great format for the timeframe. Terminator 2 Box Set is simply awesome in this format and highly recommend to show off your LD Player. Don't forget the THX Openings on Laser Disc: THX Train, THX Helicopter, THX Toy Story, etc.
LaserDisc was one of, if not the greatest consumer-electronics product ever. And movies on LD were way cheaper than they were on VHS and Beta... as noted here (but actually denied by some people today for unknown reasons). Most buyers shunned it because it couldn't record, but as it turns out a huge fraction of those people NEVER recorded on their VCRs anyway. Then there was the fact that you couldn't record on CDs either, and people snapped those up.
Really the biggest limitation of LD for movies is that there was no anamorphic mode, so for widescreen you're losing all of that vertical resolution from the letterbox.
CX is an analog noise-reduction system. If I remember correctly, it's a "compansion" system like DBX. I think the audio was dynamically compressed to a high level during mastering to raise the signal as high as possible above the noise floor, and recorded on the disc along with a separate gain signal that was used to restore the dynamic range on playback. Clever.
I still have my laserdisc player, although I haven't used it in ages. The one I have plays both sides so you don't have to flip the disc over yourself. The thing I miss the most about it compared to DVD and Blu-ray discs is that when you put the laserdisc in the tray and push the play button, it takes maybe a few seconds for the disc to load and for the movie to begin playing. With most DVD and Blu-ray discs, you have to skip over the ads (previews of other movies) by jumping to the menu, then navigate the menu options and finally start playing.