How-To Geek
Answer: LaserDisc
Introduced to North American audiences in 1978, LaserDisc was an enormous optical disc (11.8″ across, the size of a modest pizza) that had quite a few technological advantages over the current movie formats VHS and BetaMax. The video quality was significantly better than the two cassette-based alternatives and the disc could include (and usually did include) multiple surround sound tracks in both analog and digital encoding among other additional features like director’s cuts, commentary, and extras not found on competing formats.
That said, however, the disadvantages of the LaserDisc system (especially for North American and European consumers) outweighed the benefits. The discs were huge (nearly a foot across), they weighed almost a pound each, movie releases were few and far between on the format, and the low adoption rate did little to encourage studios to release more films (by 1998 the North American saturation rate was a mere 2%). Although the player and disc prices were kept artificially low in Japan to encourage adoption the saturation rate there never broke 10%. The format and player production was eventually retired and by 2001 world wide production of both discs and players had completely halted. The format retains a small but loyal following thanks to movies released only on the format and never again (mostly controversial movies in North America like Disney’s Song of the South and obscure Anime films in Asian markets).
- By Jason Fitzpatrick on 12/13/11
I did LaserDisc while the rest of the country was doing VHS. Everyone that watched movies in my home theater were so impressed with the Video and Audio qualities over VHS. On note is most popular movies were available on LD along with Criterion releases, but you had to pay a premium for them. We even had a store that would rent LD’s. I still have about 150 LD’s in my collection and my last two working players are stored but can still play the discs. The question is how many AV receivers support Coax digital audio for AC-3?
I bought a LD player in the early 90′s, and the discs were so expensive I bought only a few, but I love that big Star Wars set that was available, and the Criterion Monty Python and the Holy Grail was a great LD also.
RonV, I don’t think receivers have AC-3 RF input anymore. Yamaha had it on their reference receivers several years ago, but it’s been missing from the last few, same for Denon. At one point I had the Yamaha RF demodulator that provided both optical and coax digital outputs, it cost about $100 back in the late 90′s. But when I traded in my older receiver for one that had RF built in, I also traded in the demodulator. That was a mistake. When they show up on e-bay they go for a lot of money these days.
@RonV: For it’s a day it was amazing. My family had a LaserDisc player in the very early 1990s with a dozen or so movies… and like you we had a local rental place (single-owner store, not chain run) that rented LaserDiscs. You needed a reinforced bag to haul them home but they looked good when you got there.
Other major disadvantages were that the discs had to be flipped at a halfway point for most movies, while a single VHS cassette held a whole movie. LaserDisc was also probably quite expensive too.
And I don’t know about the US or UK, but here in Australia pizza diameters have shrunk by several inches; so not really pizza-sized anymore :)
In 1983 I joined a startup called LaserData. We stored digital data on LaserDiscs. We transferred data from a VAX computer, through proprietary circuitry that converted the digital data to analog video, and with added error-correction codes, and streamed it to a 1-inch vide tape recorder in real time. Shipped the tape to 3M in Menomonie WI where they pressed the video onto discs (just like Hollywood movies). Had proprietary hardware and device drivers for PC’s (MS-DOS) and UNIX. Were able to read digital data back from the platter (800 MB per side, which was huge at that time), or stream video, or playback digital audio over still-frames. Applications included full-text searchable multimedia databases. Customers included the National Pork Producers Council (instruction manuals for pig farmers). Along came CD-ROMs and we pivoted, realizing there was no future in the product.
The Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) was a true flop from the era. Although laser disk was expensive and cumbersome, at least you got premium quality picture from it.
When DVD’s first came out some of them were just Laser Disc ported over.
Esp. the “extra” features. I have some old DVDs(Chasing Amy to be exact), when I listened to the commentary track they talk about “this laser disc”.
Cinetronics used the Philips Players in probably the most advanced video game of it’s time (1982), the game, Dragon’s Lair. We had a total of 8 games and about 35 total mixed laser player games by the mid 80′s. We paid $9000cdn for the first Dragon’s (it had the commercial player with a gas laser, life 700 hours) and $4500 a year later for the last Dragon’s Lair (home player, solid state laser, life 50,000+ hours, spindle motor life – 2 months if lucky). I have 2 Dragon’s discs, 1 Space ace, and a Firefox disc, all the coin-op video game versions.
Dragon’s Lair and Firefox were my favourite games.
Note- Dragon’s Lair we put out from day one at a dollar per play and it made $600 to $900 per day! and remember this was 1982!
Even less popular was the VideoDisc players. It looked like a vinyl record in a plastic sleve that was shoved in a slot in front of the player and played with a needle like a record player. (I still have one in storage)
I was told by many people in the industry the primary reason Laser Disk did not make it is because Porn never adopted the medium. Porn still makes up a major percentage of total DVD sales.
@Max
Exactly – which is why I made sure to get a player that did the flipping for me. Well, of course it didn’t actually flip the disc — that would have required an enormous space — but the reading mechanism switched from A side to B side. It worked great with just a momentary pause as it switched and I really liked it, but when DVD was released I knew that the end had come.
L-Cassette? Betamax vs VCR? Th LP player that could skip ahead based on the shiney areas on a vinyl LP? The world is full of tried advancements in sound and video quality. Paraphrasing from Men in Black, “Guess I’ll have to buy “The White Album” again…
I remember, 3 years ago in 8th grade, my history teacher had one of these that we actually watched a lesson from. I was the only one in my class that day who actually knew what it was.
I bought two Pioneer LD players while I was in Japan. They rocked. The sound and picture quality beat the hell out of VHS or Beta. The problem was the early disks would deteriorate from what I called laser rot. The molding process was not good at first but then got much better later. Well that industry petered out. Hurricane Ivan blew my LD disk collection from Florida to Texas. I still have one LD player and gave the other to my brother. I skipped the DVD industry and now have a massive collection of blu-ray. I never regretted buying the LD player…it launched me out of the tape and into the Blu.