Laserdisc - Worth starting a collection?

[regdent]

I am getting tired of buying blu-rays and I missed out on Laserdisc but have always been intrested in owning a piece of a/v history. I am considering about buying a LD player and some of the more popular movies and some disney discs.

i have read if you buy high end ld player the quality is not to bad. am i going to be disapointed with the picture quality compared to dvd?

is this a crazy idea?

[SHines-IT]

Yes, spend the money on Blu. Even upgrade your system.

[davidxiphoid]

Originally Posted by SHines-IT

Yes, spend the money on Blu. Even upgrade your system.

+1... IMO slightly better pic than DVD but bulky, very outdated and no where near the quality of blu ray. Of course if your the type of person that owns an 8 track player and thinks 8 tracks are better than cassettes or CD's then by all means go for it.

[SHines-IT]

What kinda of TV do you have, how about Audio?

[Stubblecat]

Laserdiscs are awesome. They're like the vinyl of the home theater world.

The upside: You can find loads of ultra-deluxe box sets as well as Criterion titles that never got ported over to DVD (seek out The Fisher King as a prime example) for a pittance on eBay.

The downside: LDs are not the most stable objects in the world. Laser rot, pitting and layer separation is very common on titles even as recent as the mid-1990s.

Invest only if you're a die-hard archivist with a huge disposable income and the desire to watch your collection disintegrate.

[SHines-IT]

Originally Posted by Stubblecat

Laserdiscs are awesome. They're like the vinyl of the home theater world.

The upside: You can find loads of ultra-deluxe box sets as well as Criterion titles that never got ported over to DVD (seek out The Fisher King as a prime example) for a pittance on eBay.

The downside: LDs are not the most stable objects in the world. Laser rot, pitting and layer separation is very common on titles even as recent as the mid-1990s.

Invest only if you're a die-hard archivist with a huge disposable income and the desire to watch your collection disintegrate.

Sounds like more of a reason to stay away for me.

[Cinema Jaguar]

If a person has the financing and wants to collect in the historical sense of what was available in the yesteryear then,yes.

[crackinhedz]

My dad has a Pioneer LD player and I think Jurassic Park and one other movie but I forget...might even be interested in selling...let me know if youre interested?

[regdent]

Originally Posted by SHines-IT

What kinda of TV do you have, how about Audio?

i am stuck with my tv its a sony 1080i crt, and no chance of upgrading to lcd anytime soon.

audio is just 5.1 and again the room shape is terrible the wife hates wires and is not gonna be upgraded anytime soon either.

crackinhedz - if its pioneer elite i may be intrested.

thanks for the comments guys seem to be alot more negatives than positives at the moment.

[Bigdog]

Why waste money on a dead low quality format, and why not save that money and build something current? 32" LCD tv's are probably cheaper then what some ignorants on ebay are trying to get for ld players while trying to pass it off as some classic format worth something.

Ld was a flop and for good reason, the cost and record like deterioration of the media are reason enough alone to never even think about wasting one red cent on it!

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by regdent

i have read if you buy high end ld player the quality is not to bad. am i going to be disapointed with the picture quality compared to dvd?

is this a crazy idea?

It's not too bad for RF modulated NTSC. But, that makes it, at best with a top-end 3D Y/C separator, non-anamorphic DVD quality.

I expect you will be disappointed with the PQ. Things have come a long way in the last decade.

Now, the stereo LPCM is still amazing. And the DTS is superior to most DVD (which commonly have half-rate DTS).

Gary

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by regdent

is this a crazy idea?

Yes.

Use your money for cutting edge tech, not 20 year old tech.

[STARSCREAM]

Why are you sick and tired of buying Blu-ray's?? . Do NOT do this, if you don't wanna buy blu-rays then upgrade all your equipment until your ready to buy again.

[regdent]

Originally Posted by STARSCREAM

Why are you sick and tired of buying Blu-ray's?? . Do NOT do this, if you don't wanna buy blu-rays then upgrade all your equipment until your ready to buy again.

cause i bought hundreds of dvds which are now worth less than 5 bucks a piece, and i could see my self doing it all over again with blu-rays so at the moment i am keeping my collection small and renting blind buys through netflix.

[SHines-IT]

Originally Posted by regdent

cause i bought hundreds of dvds which are now worth less than 5 bucks a piece, and i could see my self doing it all over again with blu-rays so at the moment i am keeping my collection small and renting blind buys through netflix.

I plain to trade all mind in and get all the Harry Potters or something. I have maybe 20 DVD's. I almost have more Blu Ray, I was not into Home Theatre back them, like I am today.

[Rhylliam]

I am a fan of any home video format. 2 years ago I got a laserdisc player just so I could track down some rareties that have yet to reach DVD (like Hearts of Darkness - which is now on dvd, The Keep, many, many more). Recently got: original Star Wars trilogy, 1997 Star Wars cuts boxed sets (14 2-sided discs in all) for $5.00 a set plus shipping! That's literally 18 lbs of Star Wars! Totally worth it for collectibility sake. I now support Laserdisc, VHS, DVD, HD DVD & Blu-ray. I will continue to purchase releases for all of those except VHS(the most inferior IMO).

[hc666]

Originally Posted by regdent

I am getting tired of buying blu-rays and I missed out on Laserdisc but have always been intrested in owning a piece of a/v history. I am considering about buying a LD player and some of the more popular movies and some disney discs.

i have read if you buy high end ld player the quality is not to bad. am i going to be disapointed with the picture quality compared to dvd?

is this a crazy idea?

Not crazy at all. Go for it! Whatever floats your boat

I'm into vinyl myself, there is something magical about listening to records and enjoying the great sleeves and artworks that they come in. Takes me back!

[Cinema Jaguar]

Originally Posted by Rhylliam

I am a fan of any home video format. 2 years ago I got a laserdisc player just so I could track down some rareties that have yet to reach DVD (like Hearts of Darkness - which is now on dvd, The Keep, many, many more). Recently got: original Star Wars trilogy, 1997 Star Wars cuts boxed sets (14 2-sided discs in all) for $5.00 a set plus shipping! That's literally 18 lbs of Star Wars! Totally worth it for collectibility sake. I now support Laserdisc, VHS, DVD, HD DVD & Blu-ray. I will continue to purchase releases for all of those except VHS(the most inferior IMO).

I noticed ced (rca) america/vhd (jvc japan) are not on the list but i dont believe that there are many players or movies available anyways.

[Erniec529]

I must be cuckoo but I feel that the quality of video nowadays is too much. I miss the crackle of the old big screen. The low quality picture reminded me that I was watching a move and not reality. When things look to real, they may be seen as fact. IDK may be I'm just getting old but like most ppl, I like my star wars movies, unenhanced. I remember the grainy picture and NO I DON'T WANT IT DIGITALLY ENHANCED. I want to remember it, just as I remembered, when I saw it in the theater and since I can't afford the original 72mm film or project and screen, I will stick to my laserdisc.

[GohanX]

First of all, let me state that I'm a pretty huge laserdisc collector. I have five players and several hundred discs, more than double my bluray collection.

That being said...I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone unless they have a local spot that sells them cheap. I got into it mostly because the movies were like a dollar apiece and my favorite movies are from the 80's and 90's anyway. It's a good match. For a particular movie a bluray is $15, a laserdisc is $1... I'll grab the LD because I'm cheap. However in the past year lots more people are getting into LD, and most of them are collectors and not people who watch the movies, and just like vinyl the prices are starting to rise. A couple of years ago you couldn't get more than $50 for almost any LD player but he top end models, now you're dropping at least a hundred for a decent player.

Also, laserdisc players do not play nice with HDTVs. Your set is a 1080i Sony CRT, so it will look better than most modern sets for laserdisc. Otherwise I'd recommend hunting down a SD Trinitron or spending a few hundred on upscaling equipment to make it look good on a HDTV. I actually did both, I have one player hooked up to a Wega SDTV and another player hooked up to a plasma with $300 in upscaling equipment because I'm dumb.

Have I talked you out of it yet? So here are the good points. If you are of a certain age (I'm 37 myself) the tech is freakin' cool. I love old 80's tech. The artwork on those huge laserdiscs are really cool, a lot of the box sets and special editions put anything made today to shame. A lot of love and care was put into a lot of these releases.

Visual quality is decent if you have a decent monitor. Most of the time it's just under DVD in quality, a few titles may surpass their DVD equivalent since there is no compression due to analog video. A few old movies you may even prefer the laserdisc compared to a remastered bluray if the bluray quality wasn't very good. A lot of the B action movies I love look better on laserdisc to me since the bluray (if it even exists) has to use 30 year old film stock that may be in crap shape to do the transfer. The audio quality is AMAZING in a lot of films, often better than the DVD and only matched by the bluray.

If you are laserdisc curious, what you might want to do is check Craigslist and find a cheap player then order a couple of your favorite movies online that are cheap. It's not unusual to find someone's old collection of a player and several movies that the seller just wants to get rid of and doesn't feel like putting on ebay. If you don't like it, you're not out much and you can probably just relist it for close to what you paid.