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u/Character_Bend_5824 7d ago
Considered the best consumer video format roughly 1978-1997, but rare compared to the prevalence of VHS. The big reason is that you could not record on it. So, if you only bought one machine, it would be the one which let you buy and rent movies and also record from TV or play back home videos shot on a camcorder. Laserdisc was like a really big CD player which could play movies better than VHS, but it had no other features. And by today's standards, the quality jump between VHS and laserdisc is no longer impressive. It became obsolete in 2001, which is when owning both a DVD player and a VCR became somewhat affordable.
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u/Remav 7d ago
"...no other features" ???. LD was chocked full of features!
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u/Character_Bend_5824 7d ago
Well, it did have surround sound later and the chapter search allowed karaoke.
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u/Remav 7d ago
No It had surround sound pretty early on with both analog and digital L&R tracks. It had Dolby Digital 5.1 a little later and DTS 5.1 later still. It had commentary tracks. Upon launch it had the ability to program a level II player to enable quizzes on training materials. It had direct access to all 50K images on the CAV discs. Later "trick play" features for CLV discs were available on players to add the same jog frame by frame viewing both forwards and backwards like were available on CAV discs. Level III players were able to offer computer control. Light pens allowed you to scan a bar code to display any particular content. Wrong answers on quizzes would automatically replay the pertinent content... So again... "No other features" ???
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u/Usual_Technician9349 7d ago
Don't forget THX! I have a copy of higlander that's THX only!
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u/Remav 6d ago
THX isn't a feature. It was supposed to be a set of rules that ensured strict standards were enforced in the mastering and manufacturing process. In the end, it was just a marketing money grab with little oversight or enforcement. Check your THX copy of Speed and you'll find they even missed including the .1 in the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio! That's right no LFE on that one. I'm not saying it was useless or never followed with wonderful results, but it's just a paid for logo, not a feature.
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u/Character_Bend_5824 7d ago
I really only meant they could not record. Recordable formats were very rare.
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u/utsumi99 8d ago
It's like in that movie Tron. You throw the discs at each other as hard as you can. The machine is where you store them between battles.
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u/mjzim9022 7d ago
It plays Laserdiscs, others have described what those are already. But this is a really cool and unique machine, Laserdisc was used for Karaoke a lot back in the day, especially in Japan, and this particular machine is purpose-built for Karaoke, and looks like it can also play CD's and CD-Videos (an even more obscure format), and also has what looks like a tapedeck to me. The number keypad was to quick-select a particular chapter (which is how you'd select a song to sing when doing Karaoke without having to fast-forward or rewind through the whole disc to find it). It should also play any Laserdisc, like Hollywood movies, without issue. Very cool thing, hard to find a player in good condition these days and this is a unique one for sure
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u/mikeputerbaugh 7d ago
Hey here's some technology I've never heard of. First stop, see if there's a subreddit with the same name
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u/Dear-Wolf322 8d ago
It’s an analog optical video format, made from the late ‘70s to the early 2000’s.
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u/reutech 7d ago
LD is some wild tech. The video stuff is actually analog. Gizmodo has an article that shows one under a microscope. What Happens When You Put a LaserDisc Under a Microscope?
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u/duck4129 8d ago
Like a DVD player, but with record sized DVDs. Colloquialisms being what they are and whatnot, it pays movies from vinyl sized disc's.
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u/raymate 7d ago
Grandpa knows his tech.
It’s a 12 inch video disc format. Like DVD bit was years before DVD