Does anybody remember the laser optical-disc format "LaserDisc" that preceeded DVD? The discs were double-sided and 12-inches wide. For anybody who has used it, I'm curious, what was the quality like?

I never had it at my house, but I remember my aunt and uncle had a laserdisk player at their house and I'd watch movies on that. I was too young to remember how the quality of the picture or sound was, nor did I really care at the time, I just know those disk were HUGE! Like the size of a 33 record (I think 33's are the big ones. Or else 45. whatever). Yeah, this was in the early 90's and they did not go off like DVD's did. My aunt and uncle were the only people I ever heard of that had a laserdisk player. Just a fad that didn't last!

We watched them at school all the time. The sound quality and pic quality was pretty good...better than VHS anyway. But the main thing I remember was that they were not user friendly. The players had more trouble getting to the right chapter and all that. And it wasn't just dumb teachers not knowing how to use the AV equipment. :lol:

We still have a Laserdisc player, and a bunch of movies. I think we have about 200 Laserdiscs- including a bunch of box sets that are not even available on DVD yet. We have old Bugs Bunny-Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Betty Boop, Popeye, and The Art of Tom & Jerry cartoons in box sets. Also a bunch of Little Rascals, Our Gang, The Three Stooges and Keystone Cops on Laserdisc box sets as well.

The price was the big fall back on Laserdisc, but the quality was pretty good. Most of our Laserdisc movies are in DTS and Dolby Digital audio.

I have a few hundred of the things. The quality is generally better than that of a DVD, but they can only hold 60 minutes of data on each side. It would be a bit of a pain to have to flip them after an hour, but most good LD players read both sides so there's just a brief pause while the thing resets to the flip side. But that also means that any movie over two hours has to be on two discs. It's especially annoying with films that are just barely over the 120-minute limit. 121 minutes, and you have to deal with a whole second disc. It's silly.

Because of the size limitations, LDs generally don't have many extras, except for the special multi-disc deluxe editions which are usually much more expensive. Also, I recall there was a big debate in the early years over the dangers of "disc rot", but most of my LDs are over ten years old and I've seen no signs of deterioration yet. Like anything else, they just need to be taken care of, handled and stored properly, kept out of extreme heat, etc.

The other problem is that LD players will probably become difficult to find before the discs themselves wear out. When I first started making the transition to DVDs, I was fortunate to find a high-quality combination LD/DVD player, but I'm dreading the day it breaks down and needs to be replaced.

One bad thing about DVD compared to Laserdisc was if there was a scratch on the disc, the Laserdisc player would just skip over it making the picture "jump" slightly. It wouldn't effect watching the movie that much. If a DVD, however, had a deep enough scratch on it, the disc is basically garbage and needs to be replaced.

We had those for our driver's ed simulators. They always broke and skipped and they were all scratchy.

Originally posted by Pentimento
I have a few hundred of the things. The quality is generally better than that of a DVD, but they can only hold 60 minutes of data on each side. It would be a bit of a pain to have to flip them after an hour, but most good LD players read both sides so there's just a brief pause while the thing resets to the flip side. But that also means that any movie over two hours has to be on two discs. It's especially annoying with films that are just barely over the 120-minute limit. 121 minutes, and you have to deal with a whole second disc. It's silly.


Hey, don't complain. At work, I have to thread 35 millimeter film reels that are only 20 minutes long each. If you go to the cinema, just think what the film projecter operator has to deal with. It takes about 10 minutes to properly thread both the audio and visual tracks of the film strip, and each film reel is only 20 minutes long. 70 mm IMAX film reels are only 10-15 minutes long. And the operater has to constantly change the reels. An average 2 hour movie uses up at least four film reels.