Laserdisc - The Format No One Respects

HD version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZNd4E29fiY

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A lot of what we now appreciate (and often take for granted) on DVD is actually thanks to the Laserdisc format of a few years ago.

Yet, the history books and home video discussions of the past few years seem curiously silent on this point...

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• laserdisc
• ld
• rant
• history
• special
• features
• directors
• cut
• extras
• commentary
• commentaries
• format
• zaranyzerak

[MRCAB]

Uhg, I really disliked the "director's cut" of Aliens.

[Zaranyzerak]

@MRCAB Really??? It's the only version I'll watch now. Ditto the extended version of Terminator 2.

[Axionwirez]

awesome video man, it's helped me out big time for the advantages of laser disc which I have to cover in my assignment for college so thank you kind sir =]

[Zaranyzerak]

@Axionwirez Nice! Glad I could help! :)

[HeadmasterFox]

I got a laserdisc player from a thrift store for $7, and got a bunch of laserdiscs for $1 each. I like laserdisc over VHS.

[RetroRepair]

Aside from the price and convenience, the other HUGE benefit DVD had over LD was the picture quality. While LD was restricted to composite (even the S-Video and RGB/Component models used post filtering to smooth the composite LD video), DVD had full RGB capability with a truely digital image at large bitrates with plenty of space left over for the "extras" that LD had pioneered like AC-3, featurettes etc. LD was amazing back in the 90s but DVD just blew everything away.

[swiftcirrus]

@Luigi84289 depends which edition! the CLV version on 4 discs or the CAV version on 9!

[swiftcirrus]

Such an informative video! this is what youtube was made for!, however one minor quibble, my early release dvd's were flipdisc's, like a time to kill and Goodfellas (Goodfellas looks better on ld then the first edition dvd did).

[Luigi84289]

The only way to watch the star wars trilogy is on Laserdisk.

[Luigi84289]

@concretespecial They're cheap now though.

[Luigi84289]

Laserdisk was what they used to use when I was in grade school whenever the teacher would give presentations on the current subject.

[pigeonshouse]

06:40 to 07:26 Thankyou for patronising your audience.

[michele11804]

Show some respect! It's a piece of history!

[monty78pig]

Very true, but some could argue that LaserDisc was and is better than DVD since the audio (which is either PWM encoded for analog or encoded in full CD quality for digital) and video (which uses frequency modulation for both the luma and the chroma basebands) does not use any form of lossy compression so does not suffer from 'macroblocking' or any other compression artifacts which result in poorer image quality.