Cotton Candy

Remember those? They didn't make it big, but in between VHS and DVD, there were laser discs. I can get a player really cheap and I was just wondering if anyone had any information on them. Like, do all players work in any country? Which brand is the best?

Any help would be great. Thanks so much!

mukooh

um...well...my family had a pioneer laser disc player....up until recently we were still using it to play music cd's in a spare bedroom......but really why would you want one?.....do you have access to a library of laser disc movies?...from the knowledge that i have laser disc movies aren't even made any more.....when playing a movie in a laser disc player the whole movie won't fit onto one side of the disc so you had to turn the disc over to watch the complete movie. if you had a fancy laser disc player it would do it for you automatically...either way there was a break in the movie......laser disc movies weren't encrypted like dvd's...thus you were able to make a perfect copy of your laser disc by plugging it into a vhs recorder.....then again how many people still watch films with vhs players?...in another couple of years vhs players and pre recorded vhs movies will have gone the way of the laser disc player..will laser disc players made here, work in any country? i really don't know....my adivce to you is to save your money, spend it on something else...i hope this reply helps you in your decision....

Cotton Candy

Well, I collect all of my favorite movies and I like to have them in all the different formats available. I know, I'm a dork. I can buy the movies that I want online for low prices, so I think I'm definitely going to get one.

Anyway, thanks for the help!

UnsilentMajorty

Historically, laser dics actually were supposed to repalce VHS way back in the early '80s.

We can see how well that turned out [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

However, the good thing that came out of it NOT dominating the mainstream market was the fact that it then became for the movie buff and officianado who wanted their films in widescreen (letterbox) because up until DVD (and including early DVD releases like on DIVX), most of the films on VHS were pan & scan (Full Frame) only which, as you know, destroys the aesthetics of a movie's panoramic widescreen presentation.

I used to have tons of LDs... And they even had Dolby Digital 5.1 sound -- Before DVDs -- But of course, as DVD player and movie prices dropped, I switched over for the reasons already stated above (4 hours per disc = no turning a disc over to watch a 2 hour + film; more features and commentaries can be put on a DVD than a LD, etc).

Also, the fact that they WEREN'T copyguarded with macrovision and you COULD make perfect, crystal clear (widescreen) copies to VHS was another reason HW studios wanted to move to DVDs as well... Which doesn't matter because the compression and encoding is just a superior picture anyway (even with macrovision encoding).

Profaine Angel

I never even knew LD's existed until I saw a bunch at uni. I missed that whole thing. Uni also has a LD player so if you want to watch a LD you have to book the room etc. I don't know if it's just the player or if ALL LD's are like that but I'm not really impressed, it's like a record...you want something at the end of side 1 and you just have to watch all of side 1 again, you can't skip or fast forward. Annoying [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

UnsilentMajorty

For the record, that's the academic versions.

The commercial versions are just like CD players. You can jump to chapters and can fast forward and rewind scan scenes like VHS.