Laserdiscs

[CJackson]

Does anyone else here have LDs?

Here is my collection

Ikiru
Patton
Midway
Apocalypse Now
The Wrath of Khan
Definitive Edition Star Wars Trilogy
Faces Star Wars Trilogy

Post your collections and discuss laserdiscs.

[Scarface32]

I honestly never even heard of LaserDisc until DVDs were around for a couple of years and I heard people comparing them to LDs on TV.

No one I knew had one. Not my family, none of my friends, no one in my neighborhood.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

I honestly never even heard of LaserDisc until DVDs were around for a couple of years and I heard people comparing them to LDs on TV.

No one I knew had one. Not my family, none of my friends, no one in my neighborhood.

My 2nd cousin had one and that was the only one I saw in a person's home. I think she had an animated show like The Pink Panther to show us. We did have an electronics store, which had them on display and playing in the background, but I think they were very expensive and the thought of changing sides was off-putting, when comparing them to tapes, which were mostly rentals.

I think there are other Laserdisc threads on the forum and they show off people's collections.

[sk33tr]

i still remember the first movie i saw on laserdisc.

i went into an electronics store to look at some car speakers and amps and they had just got some players in with a few demo movies. the one they were playing was top gun. i was amazed out how much better it looked than vhs. one of the salesman saw me stop and look at it and was talking to me about the whole laserdisc thing. he showed me what they looked like and how the packaging looked and the players and all that. he knew i wasn't looking to buy one and was there to talk about car audio, but he knew i was intrigued by them.

i wish i'd gotten into them and bought a player and some movies. i'd more than likely still have them if i did.

a few years back, during the format wars, a friend of mine bought a pioneer laserdisc player and the 3 original star wars movies. he was going the hddvd route at the time but wanted to get an ld player and those movies just to be able to watch them in that format for old time's sake.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by chip75

but I think they were very expensive and the thought of changing sides was off-putting

Yup, I agree with this. Especially not being able to sit through the whole movie without have to change discs or swap sides.

I never had a laserdisc player. Honestly by the time I got to a point where I started to appreciate movies on a level above just simply watching them by whatever means were available and most convenient (i.e. starting to REALLY understand the benefit of OAR and the like), it wasn't long before DVD launched anyway.

I can only recall one person that I knew who had laserdisc. It was someone that I went to school with from 1st through 8th grade (I went to a small Catholic school that had Kintergarten through 8th grade all in one building). I don't recall him talking about the format much in general, but his mom had a graduation party at their house when we all graduated from 8th grade, and I remember seeing it and asking a question or two about it. We didn't watch anything on it because for the most part the party took place outside.


As I was saying earlier, by the time I started really paying attention to things like OAR and the like, I was in my teens. I remember specifically getting Jurassic Park in a Letterboxed Edition on VHS. I was 13 at the time. It was probably a few years later, around the age of 16 or 17 (this would have been around 1996 / 1997) that I paid more attention and would make it more of a point to buy movies in widescreen where possible. Prior to that I was paying more attention to it, but I didn't put as much importance to it as I should have. For example, for the "final" VHS release of the Star Wars Trilogy in it's original versions, I bought the fullscreen versions instead of widescreen because the box was more shelf friendly. In hindsight, that was a bad idea.

But a year or two later is when I took more intetrest in it. I only ever had a handful of movies in widescreen in my VHS collection since that collection was never anywhere near as big as my DVD/BD collection, and at that age I didn't really have much spending money. But during that rough time frame, if I did buy a movie and there was a widescreen version available, that's what I opted for. I remember buying Men In Black in widescreen on VHS.


Also, after I started driving, I would hang out at the local mall more often, and one of my favorite stores during the late 90s and early 2000s was Suncoast. A friend of mine and I would go there a lot and the one manager there, whose name wa Bill, was really cool and we always talked with him. We came to refer to him as "Suncoast Bill." I remember when the Austin Powers figures came out and some were hard to find (like Mini Me), he heald them aside for me, which was cool. I also reserved and purchased the first VHS release of the Special Editions of the Star Wars Trilogy in widescreen there.

Anyway, I remember Suncoast being the first place that I ever saw the DVD format right after it launched. I wasn't able to buy into it right away, and even if I had the income, I would have been hesitant to buy into a brand new format like that immediately. But I remember having a good feeling about it. The fact that the discs were physically the same size as CDs and had the entire movie on them without having to flip the disc over was already appealing. I also remember not long after the format launched, I saw an episode of Siskel and Ebert where they were talking about it, and were even doing side by side comparisons to the same movies on VHS and laserdisc against the DVD versions to show the improvements that DVD offered.

When I graduated high school in 1998, I used some of my graduation money to buy my first DVD player, and it was all down hill from there (at least for my wallet). That's when I became a big collector of movies on a level that I had never previously been.



While I'm sure there is some content that came out on Laserdisc, particularly bonus features for some movies, that never made it's way over to DVD that I would be interseted in, overall I'm actually glad that I missed the boat on laserdisc. It was definately a step in the right direction, but given the huge cost and the combersomeness of the format, it's something that I'm glad that I never invested in.

Honestly hindsight being what it is, I have no regrets about buying into DVD, but I do feel like Blu-Ray is what DVD should have been to begin with. But I digress, and will just say that I feel like I got into this sort of thing at the right time.

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by chip75

...tapes, which were mostly rentals.

I heard this from several people on here, how tapes were so expensive because they wanted you to rent them, but I never really experienced this. There was a store by me that sold new tapes for around $10-$20 each back in the last 80s and early 90s.

Now I guess you could argue "back in the 80s, $10 was like $100" or something like that, but it still wasn't nearly as expensive as some people on here were saying it was.

[swifty7]

I still have my Panasonic LD player and a handful of movies. It can play both sides of the the disc. However for some reason it can't play cd's anymore . At least it can play LD's well.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

I heard this from several people on here, how tapes were so expensive because they wanted you to rent them, but I never really experienced this. There was a store by me that sold new tapes for around $10-$20 each back in the last 80s and early 90s.

Now I guess you could argue "back in the 80s, $10 was like $100" or something like that, but it still wasn't nearly as expensive as some people on here were saying it was.

Back in the 1980s paying $10 for a tape wasn't like paying $100. People were actually paying $100! It wasn't until the late 1980s that retail prices came down, but rental copies were still over $100 in the UK. Something like The Last Crusade was £80 if you wanted to beat the rental/retail time-gap.

There were pages on Wikipedia which had some of the Disney VHS tape prices, but I can't find it, most of those were up near a hundred bucks. They were very expensive, initially.

[atomik kinder]

Yes. VHS tapes were around $100 each. I think Top Gun was the first VHS priced for sell through.

Anyway. I knew many people with LDs. I still have a few hundred. I used to work at a store that was exclusively LD. That is how I knew so many people. The owners would let those of us who worked there buy them at cost and we got free rentals too.

[Rhino73]

Originally Posted by swifty7

I still have my Panasonic LD player and a handful of movies. It can play both sides of the the disc. However for some reason it can't play cd's anymore . At least it can play LD's well.

Same here, Pioneer CLD-2950. Works great as a CD player.

[stevo4264]

Yeah still got my player, Pioneer CLD-D790 and around 60 odd discs

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by chip75

Back in the 1980s paying $10 for a tape wasn't like paying $100. People were actually paying $100! It wasn't until the late 1980s that retail prices came down, but rental copies were still over $100 in the UK. Something like The Last Crusade was £80 if you wanted to beat the rental/retail time-gap.

There were pages on Wikipedia which had some of the Disney VHS tape prices, but I can't find it, most of those were up near a hundred bucks. They were very expensive, initially.

Originally Posted by atomik kinder

Yes. VHS tapes were around $100 each. I think Top Gun was the first VHS priced for sell through.

Anyway. I knew many people with LDs. I still have a few hundred. I used to work at a store that was exclusively LD. That is how I knew so many people. The owners would let those of us who worked there buy them at cost and we got free rentals too.

Maybe if you went to Blockbuster or other rental store, they might charge a lot for tapes. But if you went to a store that just sold tapes, not rent them, the prices were more reasonable. I have tapes from the early 1980s that had inexpensive price tag stickers on them. My family never paid more than $25 for a single tape, the average being around $15.

I can only assume you people went to a Blockbuster or similar to buy your tapes.

[Wibbler]

I still have a LaserDisc player and a load of discs, although they are all boxed in my attic now...

I bought it when the Star Wars trilogy came out and was amazing compared to the VHS editions...

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by Wibbler

I still have a LaserDisc player and a load of discs, although they are all boxed in my attic now...

I bought it when the Star Wars trilogy came out and was amazing compared to the VHS editions...

How does the LD version of Star Wars compare to the 2006 DVDs, as far as video quality? I know the DVDs are just LD ports, but did they improve the video at all from the LD days?

[greenguy]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

I heard this from several people on here, how tapes were so expensive because they wanted you to rent them, but I never really experienced this. There was a store by me that sold new tapes for around $10-$20 each back in the last 80s and early 90s.

Now I guess you could argue "back in the 80s, $10 was like $100" or something like that, but it still wasn't nearly as expensive as some people on here were saying it was.

Actually tapes were very expensive. I had a video store from 1986 until 1991, and brand new movies when appearing on home video for the first time were sold through video distributors at a cost of $67.13. Platoon was the first tape I paid over $70 for, I think it was $72/$73.

atomik kinder is correct, Top Gun was the first release to be put out at a sell through price just above $20. Eventually, one could find VHS tapes in retail stores at a sell through price, but not when they were brand new.

I even sold about a dozen high priced copies of Dirty Dancing to rabid female fans when it was released brand new. I thought they would faint when they heard the price, but they did not. I actually did not sell it to them at the suggested retail price, just a few bucks over to pay for the shipping.

In those days my prices were $1.50 rental a day per tape, rent two get the 3rd free. Eventually around 1990 I had to go to $2 a tape, and no more 3d free. With more and more tapes going the Platoon route and falling between $69 to $72 it took A LOT of $2 rentals to make my money back, and then make a profit.

So if there was a store by you that sold new tapes for $10-$20 new, they may have been new, but not brand new to home video. Or if they did, it was when finally everything went to the sell through pricing, but not in the time period of the 1980s. I still have some of the old Major Video Concepts distributor catalogs that show prices.

Since this thread is really about laserdiscs, I can say I bought my player in 1993. Right away I bought many Japanese laserdiscs, I still have those to this day. Bought a lot of U.S. releases too, some of those I've since sold off. I probably have 40 or so left, and I still buy some LD's to this day. Things that are not out on DVD/Blu-ray, or overseas LDs

[Wman1996]

I have known about Laserdisc since about 2008 or so (thanks to YouTube), but I never knew anyone that owned one.

I just purchased a Pioneer CLD-S201 on eBay two days ago, as well as two Laserdisc releases: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Jurassic Park.

[Strapped4Cash]

I bought my LDP in 1992-93, and acquired over a hundred discs. Fortunately I sold off most of them for a decent price as Used to an LD store a couple/few years later. And that was also how I theoretically could have financed a lot of them, by renting the Japanese version of Song of the South, dubbing it to VHS, and then selling copies to some of the affluent and Disney die-hards in my area. But of course I did NOT do that, because even though I was young I'm sure I still would have known it to be wrong.

And of the approx. 25-30 laserdiscs I kept (which I can't get to at the moment to do a definite count) my collection still includes all 3 Star Wars and at least 2 movies which, afaik, have not yet been released on DVD, Blu, etc. "Listen to Me" and "Silence Like Glass". So I'm happy for that. Of course I also think that I still have the Criterion LD of Chasing Amy, so it's not all roses. Ah well, I was young.

As far as the VHS prices go, then based on my knowledge then most people here have it right. Originally VHS was around $60 msrp and then crept up to as much as $160 by the later 90's, with certain titles, categories, studios being higher than others. Once some movies did well at sell-through prices (like Top Gun as has been mentioned) then more followed, like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Home Alone, but others stayed high. On movies where the studio thought that there might be big demand then they took a risk and priced them reasonably, as well as with certain categories like music videos, but other categories like the late night cable movie series never went down because they thought there never were going to be millions of copies sold of "Animal Instincts" or "Red Shoe Diaries".

[greenguy]

Originally Posted by Strapped4Cash

I bought my LDP in 1992-93, and acquired over a hundred discs. Fortunately I sold off most of them for a decent price as Used to an LD store a couple/few years later. And that was also how I theoretically could have financed a lot of them, by renting the Japanese version of Song of the South, dubbing it to VHS, and then selling copies to some of the affluent and Disney die-hards in my area. But of course I did NOT do that, because even though I was young I'm sure I still would have known it to be wrong.

And of the approx. 25-30 laserdiscs I kept (which I can't get to at the moment to do a definite count) my collection still includes all 3 Star Wars and at least 2 movies which, afaik, have not yet been released on DVD, Blu, etc. "Listen to Me" and "Silence Like Glass". So I'm happy for that. Of course I also think that I still have the Criterion LD of Chasing Amy, so it's not all roses. Ah well, I was young.

As far as the VHS prices go, then based on my knowledge then most people here have it right. Originally VHS was around $60 msrp and then crept up to as much as $160 by the later 90's, with certain titles, categories, studios being higher than others. Once some movies did well at sell-through prices (like Top Gun as has been mentioned) then more followed, like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Home Alone, but others stayed high. On movies where the studio thought that there might be big demand then they took a risk and priced them reasonably, as well as with certain categories like music videos, but other categories like the late night cable movie series never went down because they thought there never were going to be millions of copies sold of "Animal Instincts" or "Red Shoe Diaries".

I think back in the day many of us had the same ideas as you did with Song of The South. Of course many DID do that with certain titles. I know I ran across bootlegs at cons that were made from Japanese LD's.

I have those Star Wars discs also, along with my Japanese discs. I still have a few random mainstream titles that I don't think I could even give away. I bought just last year the three Japanese Airwolf LD's, I found them at a great low prices, and they have killer cover artwork.

An American Tail and Batman (1989) were two more that came out at sell through prices while I was in business. I remember shortly before AAT was released one of my distributors had some sort of deal going, or if a store did some sort of promotion they had a chance to win some big prize package. Anyway, I was talking to my rep about having a contest with a picture of Fievel the mouse in a newspaper and giving kids a chance to color the mouse and bring it in and I would pick a winner and give away a copy of the movie to the winner. I didn't have a picture of the mouse and the rep said she would contact the studio and try to get one. She called back a few days later and said: "I can't get a picture for you to use, and you can't have a contest like that". She went on to say: "Steven's (Spielberg) assistant said and this came directly from Steven, if you print any picture of any of our characters for a contest I will sue you to the fullest extent of the law" Needless to say, no contest...LOL

[atomik kinder]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

Maybe if you went to Blockbuster or other rental store, they might charge a lot for tapes. But if you went to a store that just sold tapes, not rent them, the prices were more reasonable. I have tapes from the early 1980s that had inexpensive price tag stickers on them. My family never paid more than $25 for a single tape, the average being around $15.

I can only assume you people went to a Blockbuster or similar to buy your tapes.

Blockbuster was not around back then. There were no stores that sold only movies around here. The local rental store would sell "pre-viewed" tapes at $35 and you could reserve a copy the day the rentals came out.

But yes, back to LDs. I think I still have a couple hundred.

[AZBrowncoat]

I still have my LDs in storage - keep meaning to dig them out and make a list

Unfortunately my LD player was stolen at one point and I've never bothered to replace it.