All LaserDisc players go to heaven
LaserDisc is dead.
Pioneer says it's shutting down production of players for the format, successful in Japan but a high-end curiosity in the U.S. and U.K. Introduced at the turn of the 1980s, the LP-sized optical disks were an early predecessor of DVD.
The ubiquity of modern formats like Blu-Ray, pioneer says, is to blame for the cancellation. The DVL-919, DVK-900, DVL-K88 and CLD-R5 models will be last off the line, and its last batch will comprise just 3,000 units. In total, 360 million were made in the last 27 years.
Just think: they could advertise these as the "Ultimate LaserDisc players" and, for once, a hackneyed marketing line would be technically accurate.
In just a few years, they will be mysterious and elusive items: we shall have dreams of finding examples in perfect working order, hidden in curious antique stores. And we shall take them home to discover working pre-production laserdiscs of the mythical 4-hour cut of Dune in the tray, yea.
Photo: Marcin Wichary
Press Release (Machtrans) [Pioneer via CrunchGear]
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I had that Dune laserdisc. The new DVD has the extended cut now. What was even better was the Criterion Collection edition of Aliens with extra footage and tons of extras. The extras were amazing things back when everyone else had VHS.
Color me surprised. I figured they stopped making them years ago.
It looks like the project's website is down ATM, but I thought LD fans might get a kick out of the X0 project.
Basically an attempt to use one of the best LD players on the market to capture the original Star Wars trilogy. The captures are then corrected/enhanced frame by frame. It's taking them a while but it will be really cool when it gets here.
(And I have the Definitive Collection on LD, so I gets to be legal with it too 8)
I know I'm being nostalgic, but it does make me a little sad. I own an old Pioneer CLD-A100 with the Sega Genesis gaming module and still use it pretty regularly. Maybe I should buy a new one as a backup while I still can.
Sir, you do not have the mythical 4 hour cut. You have the 3 hour TV cut, with the drawings and voiceovers and stuff..
My high school still had a working one, a pretty old one, that they were actively using for displaying a physics video that no one bothered to copy to DVD. This was a few years back.
This laserdisc has gone to heaven.
My family had them when everyone else was going VHS or Beta, just so we wouldn't get into that argument with anyone. I saw "The Last Unicorn" and "The Lord of the Rings" on it so many times, I think I wore the discs out.
But color more surprised, they still made them as of this year?
Ding dong the disc is dead,
the huge old laserdisc is dead...
The father of a friend of mine collects laserdiscs. Given how hard a time he has had finding them (and I'm thinking about 7 years ago, the last time I talked with him), I thought this already WAS a dead format. Then again, it seems like many formats die slower and slower deaths these days. Maybe the technology is more durable (which would be good), or maybe more and more of our stuff in non-immortal formats (which is bad but often overlooked).
I've heard that this is the only digital format in which you can find the non-Special-Edition original trilogy of Star Wars... Oh, wait, AB5TRACT beat me to it. I didn't know about this Xo Project thing, though. Gonna have to go read up on that. I used to care about such things a long time ago in a high school far far away...
They don't go to heaven, they'll go to schools in Mexico along with our Apple IIe's and dot matrix printers.
Ah the Magnavision. My dad sold those at his store and I watched many a movie in multiple parts. I will forever have the Discovision intro burned into my brain. Flash Gordon was my fave movie on LD. Some people are still big fanatics for it.
I used to have a few dozen LaserDiscs; the discs themselves are very durable but the players are failure prone due to the weight of the media. Constantly having to support and spin that much weight does a number on the bearings and spindle motor. I must have gone through five or so players over the years!
I finally gave all the discs away to a collector friend of mine.. sigh. I even had the Ziggy Stardust LD!
I unloaded mine on Craigslist for $75 with about 75 discs a few months ago.... I had a hard time getting rid of it.
Have they stopped making 8-track players too? Perish the thought.
Funny, I just digitised my last laserdisc title TODAY. I have two nice old Pioneer LD players- the kind with the HeNe Lasers in them. Not sure what I'll do with them now that they're not needed anymore. Trade them for a working 1/2" Sony reel-to-reel video player, maybe?
Two LD's I know of that haven't make it to DVD in their entirety:
"Something Wicked This Way Comes" - DVD is missing the commentary track by none other than Ray Bradbury (yes, LD's had commentary tracks, on rare occasion.) Somewhere I stored the .mp3 of the commentary track, grabbed before I gave my (small) LD collection to a friend.
"Colossus: The Forbin Project" - DVD is full-screen, LD in wide screen (there's a torrent source of the wide-screen version.) Amazing movie, if you haven't seen it (recently.) What are they thinking, releasing a '70's sci-fi on DVD in pan-and-scan? Losers.
LD is dead, long live LD.
@2: me, too.
@16: you could probably sell it for a pretty penny: for some reason people like the old tube lasers.
More important than Star Wars, for a long time LD was the only way to see the original Blade Runner. Even with the 5 disk collectors set released last year, theres still content on the Criterion LD set that cant be found anywhere else. Main thing is the Syd Mead design gallery which could be viewed using the frame by frame advance feature on LD players.
@4 Nice unit to have, but do you have the PC Engine module as well? If you do I doff my hat to you.
Claud9999, there's a torrent for a widescreen Forbin? IT MUST BE MINE.
Hey guys, remember how when Star Wars came out on DVD, you could only get the f'd up 'enhanced' version with all the CG? And so it seemed having a high quality digital copy of the original was simply impossible?
Aha. I have all the originals on laserdisc. as in digital-no-degradation-of-magnetic-tape laserdisc.
rippin' em ASAP.
@ #12
crap. seriously? laserdisc is analog? you CAN buy original cut on DVD?
i wonder when i changed timelines... this world... it seems somehow unfamiliar...
@#19
I sure wish I had the PC engine Module! ...but no such luck.
@22, Seriously! Laserdisc has always been analog, although at some point they introduced a digital soundtrack, which allowed for a Dolby mix to be stuck on one of the analog tracks, and some commentary or other goodies we like to associate with DVDs to be stuck on the other. Some LDs were really ahead of the time... My collecting has slowed and is now pretty much limited only to Criterion discs, and I'm not sure how much longer I can keep that up.
LD, you will be missed.
@#23 My friend had it complete with both modules as well as a few LD only games. At one point he probably had the most "complete" collection of PC Engine things in all Japan.
I bought a unit a few years back (from eBay, of all places) mainly as "On The Air" (another Lynch project) was only available on that format.
I wasn't aware that thew format was analog: but as far as I know it's uncompressed, correct?
Two other titles I have that are unavailable on DVD are the pUnK rOcK documentary Decline of Western Civilization and the untampered version of THX-1138.