Laserdisc: Features, Follies, & Evolution
Okay now that we know what laser disks are and why they never achieved mass market adoption let's, look at some of the technical details of the format as well as how it evolved over time so. First I haven't yet made the exact distinction, between CA V discs and CLV, discs these, stand for constant, angular velocity and constant. Linear velocity their. Names explain the difference a CA, V disc rotates, at a constant, 1,800, rpm each, rotation, contains, exactly one frame, of video this. Encoding, method was simpler and let the player do some neat things but, at limited recording, time to 30 minutes per side a CL. V disc slows the discs rotational, speed as it progresses C, as the laser moves towards the edge of a disc the, circumference, of the disc along the spot it's reading continually, increases, constant. Linear velocity encoding. Slows the disc down as the laser progresses, to keep the speed of the disc relative, to the laser constant. Rather, than keeping its absolute, rotational, speed constant, this. Allowed recording, an hour per side of the disc but, it also could, increase crosstalk, noise and because, the number of encoded, frames per revolution was, constantly, changing the, trick plate features of the CA V disc were eliminated, pioneer. Would reduce crosstalk, by modifying, CLV, into CA a which. Slowed the rotational, speed in, steps CA. A standing. For constant, angular acceleration was. More of a behind-the-scenes, alteration. Though and these discs were still marked as CL V on their sleeves real, cinephiles, once CA V discs there are a number of reasons for this but one of the most interesting, is the way the discs are indexed, play, a CL, V disc and the display acts like you would expect you. Get the chapters available, and the time counts up from zero but a CA V disc well. Just watch that's. Right these are frames, in a CA V disc each frame, is directly accessible by number and you, can simply type in a frame number and the player will nearly instantly, get to it and that, freeze-frame is perfect, this, opened up a lot of interactive, possibilities, of historical. Note is the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago's, use of laser discs to allow guests, to view every, front page of the Chicago Tribune, newspaper, this. Was back in 1980. There. Were also arcade, games and even home video games, Sims developed, which used laser discs as a random, access video system remember, how I said the collector's market saved, laser discs from dying completely, well. Much of that was due to special editions, like this Pocahontas, box set I know, there could be better films, to explore but this box set is actually perfect, for showing what laserdisc had to offer look. At all this extra stuff, the, first three sides are the film itself in CA V format, the analogue soundtrack, contains a commentary, track on the left channel though. It's mastered, very very poorly for some reasons back, that was I think John Pomeroy was the one who led. The character in animation the. Right channel, contains Dolby, Digital sound. More. On that briefly the, fourth side is in CLV, as it's an hour-long making-of, feature but. The third disc is where it gets really interesting. First of all look at all these chapters there are 48 alone, in special features but. The laserdisc was able to tell the player to freeze the frame this. Was used extensively in box sets like this to organize collections, of still images I'm.
Not Going to show you much of the actual content, because, I don't really want to get in trouble with Disney but I will go through some of the title cards so you can get an idea of how this is navigated, after. A brief intro the disc automatically, stops and you see the little leaf with step appear that's. Because what follows is a sequence of still frames if you, press play the, player will just resume normal playback, and you'll get an info blast style mess until, it receives the next command to stop but. On the remote the step button allows you to advance just one frame at a time and since, each of these frames has a discrete number you can get back to it simply by entering the frame number when, there's a segment of actual video the, leaf instead, says play so, you know what to do next you'll, see that there are also a lot of commentaries, here as well on the analogue tracks sure, the special feature section on a DVD can do all these same things but it's really something that an analog format from so long ago can do it too and I'm, left to wonder if there's anything on these laser discs that hasn't made its way onto a DVD or blu-ray release, in, fact there's a lot of content, on laserdisc that hasn't left the realm of laserdisc. And one, more thing before we move on the, search by chapter nature of the laserdisc made it prime material for the education, market this, desk here well. It's a weird one a showcase. Of computer-generated imagery, from 1986. I kid. You not this disc is the vaporwave, community's, dream and I, know this because when I learned what vapor wave was there. Was a video featuring this laser discs opening clip ah. But. There's more there's, this, this. Time-consuming. Process creates. Highly, detailed and, spectacular. Images. And, this. For your object. But. You don't know what color it's really gonna be until you light it and it, also features this creepy talking ahead. I'm. Fairly sure this was meant as an educational, disc but I'm not certain, oddly enough the, Voyager company the producers, of the disc was the publisher of The Criterion, Collection perhaps. The most famous collector's, edition laser discs anyway. Having, near-instant. Random access to any part of the disc made laser discs great for teachers if there, was a particular, clip that would easily show a concept you could cue it right up this, was particularly, useful in science classes to show experiments, quickly a VHS. Tape would require a lot of effort and patience, to queue up but, if the lesson on Newton's third law of motion was, chapter, 14 of a laser disc just, type in 14, and you're, ready to go on that note CLV discs took significantly, longer to cue up a new chapter because. Of the discs enormous size it takes a while to speed, up and slow down so. When searching for a chapter that's well away from the start the disk needs to slow down a lot, to get to the correct speed the. Laser doesn't take much time to get from one chapter to the next but it has to wait for the discs to get to the right speed before it can actually play now, I've stepped a little far ahead here showing, discs with digital sound and Dolby Digital let's. Take a step back and look more at the evolution of the format I had, mentioned in my introductory, video on laser discs that while the format began its life as a product, of a joint venture between Philips and the music Corporation, of America called, disco, vision the, Pioneer company of Japan would sort, of take over the format they, were part of the official renaming, of the format to laser vision and they, were the ones that branded their own players as a laser disc from, the mid-1980s, until the end of its life pioneer, was almost, the only manufacturer. Of laserdisc players there, were others with Sony producing, a good show but, it was pioneer that kept pushing the format and adding, new innovations, perhaps. The first major innovation, was the use of a solid-state, laser you might have noticed that this machine is massive. It's a lot wider than the VCR we were putting it up against which itself is big and bulky and this, is by far the largest piece of AV equipment I have ever run across much. Of its width comes from the laser carriage, initially. Laserdisc, players used a helium-neon laser tube, as its source of laser light this. Tube is quite large and so is the necessary optical, path the beam has to make to be focused onto the disc and reflected back to the light sensor I'll, be doing a teardown of this machine in a later video but let's take a quick peek this, entire, carriage, moves left and right as it scans the disc oddly.
Enough This tiny little motor is responsible, for moving this whole thing and yes. That black crud is from the completely, disintegrated. Belt that was on here when I got this machine I have, a somewhat, suitable replacement, on here but it seems to have trouble reversing, the carriage it, advances, just fine though inside, this black plastic shield are a pair of mirrors attached to small Wiggly things and by shifting the angle, that the beam hits the glass ever so slightly you could maintain fine, tracking, on the disc see. Unless the disc is exactly, perfectly, centered which with this fine of a data strain it most certainly won't be the, laser will need to be constantly moving left right left right to follow the spiral groove of pits I strongly. Suspect that's what's wrong with this player as it, exhibits severe, crosstalk, when playing a CA V disc it. Does appear to be able to maintain focus distance as the objective, lens can move and it produces a picture but, without fine tracking, control the output will be a mess I don't, want to get started on this project quite yet though that'll, have to wait in either 1983. Or 1984, it, seems there's some date disagreement, pioneer, introduced the LD 700. Player which incorporated, a solid state laser this. Was also the first player to introduce a tray loading system by. Switching to a solid-state laser the, machines could be much smaller as the laser assembly was a small fraction of its previous size but, there was a small compromise made the. Helium-neon laser produced. A red orange light but, the laser diodes used in laser disc players shared, the same infrared, light of the compact, disc audio format the longer wavelength, of the infrared light could it be focused, quite as tightly as the shorter wavelength, red orange light this, meant a player with a solid-state, laser would be more susceptible to crosstalk, and scratches. Or other damage to the disc would affect its ability to read the pits to a greater degree however. The many advantages of a solid-state, laser pickup, system greatly outweighed this single, disadvantage, and thus, infrared, became the way to go by 1984. It was clear that laserdisc, would stay in the realm of the video file as the video cassette recorder seemed, perfectly, fine for the masses with, that in mind pioneer, started adding new features to their players and updated, the format along the way the, first main addition was that of digital, sound. You thought FM stereo wasn't enough how about uncompressed, 16-bit, stereo PCM. Audio when, introducing, a player with digital sound capabilities, pioneer, killed two birds with one stone by also, letting it play the newly introduced compact, disc the, digital audio on a laserdisc is encoded much the same as a CD so, pioneer already had the circuitry onboard to process the digital audio from a CD, thus. The CLD 900. Could play both, weirdly. Though this player contains, an odd mechanism, with two separate spindles, with one for holding a CD and the other a laserdisc, looking. On the laserdisc archive it seems many early players were designed this way I'm guessing. This was due to difficulty, in designing and controlling, one spindle, motor capable of spinning both the massive, laserdisc and the tiny CD correctly. Eventually. Though a single spindle but the collapsible, Center was used for both CDs and laser discs because, laser discs held two separate audio tracks in ntsc, discs one of these can be replaced with the digital soundtrack while, the other could remain as an analogue conventional, soundtrack a signal. On the disc would indicate to the player that the disc contained, digital, sound and it would switch to the secondary soundtrack, containing, the data the. Analogue soundtrack staying on the primary channel and older, players would just ignore the signal to switch to the secondary track but, the addition of digital audio caused, some compatibility issues, for, one pal discs didn't have two separate audio tracks not, sure why but, they didn't this, meant that a PAL laserdisc, was either digital, or analog, and an analogue only player could not play a disc with digital sound this.
Probably, Didn't help the already poor sales in Europe at first, pioneer, had to sacrifice playing, time to fit digital audio on the discs the, first digital audio discs only held 55, minutes per side which, left some titles like this copy of Back to the Future released. As analog only even though digital sound was available at the time of its release because. This film is 1 hour and 56, minutes it would fit on a single disc with analog sound but would need a second, disc for digital sound so, they stuck with analog, to keep it on a single disc. By. 1987. Pioneer, had figured out how to get an hour runtime and still have digital sound Hey look MCA then, we get to surround sound, laserdisc, was pretty much the only way to get true surround sound until DVD came along but, the way surround was encoded was to, put it kindly, messy. If, a disc contained a Dolby AC 3 soundtrack the AC 3, data was FM modulated, on the right channel of the analog track and required, the use of a receiver capable, of demodulating. This into a digital output, modern. Receivers, don't have this functionality, so, to get the Dolby AC 3 soundtrack off a laserdisc, requires, an external AC 3 T modulator, but. Because it'll be AC three encoded disc uses one channel of the analog tract and leaves standard stereo digital sound in place these, discs can only be played in mono on an analog only laserdisc player not. That many of those stuck around for very long as once digital sound was introduced nearly every player manufactured, could utilize it then there's DTS, audio a DTS. Encoded, disc uses the digital tracks so, to play it on a normal player required, switching back to the analog tracks as, an example this copy of Casper has a DTS, soundtrack because. If there's any movie that needs DTS, surround its, Casper, when. You play it the player doesn't know it shouldn't be reading the digital track and it's producing a garbage, output you, need to manually, switch back to the analog soundtrack if you want to hear the movie so. If you want a digital surround sound you, need to match your player to a compatible receiver and then also make sure you're buying the right discs, there, certainly are people, who are that dedicated, but, not many ok so aside from format, technicalities, let's look at some of the more clever things pioneer did my. Personal, favorite is what they dubbed both side play just. As Auto reverse cassette, recorders came on the scene to save you the trouble of flipping the tape pioneer, also developed laserdisc players that can play both sides of the disc and the, way they go about it is just, so, awesome so your both side play is my favorite example of forced engineering, I'll, explain what I mean there but first let's have a look at a machine with this feature this, is a pioneer, CL DD, 502, their. Model naming scheme by the way helps explain what the machine can do it wasn't, entirely consistent, over the years but in general this c and c LD means it can also play audio CDs and CD video discs not video, CDs though the, D means it can play both sides and, the 502, is the model number with, higher numbers generally, having more features for example the, CL DD 702, added, extra AV out ports featured an altered VFD display and had better video performance a model.
Like The CL ds2. A one could only play a single side there. Were also the CLD and models, which featured a 5 disc CD changer alongside, normal, laser disc operation, this. Channel used to have a video featuring one of those machines however I've taken it down temporarily, because I want to redo that video properly, and not in the very rambley, style of the first incarnation, stay, tuned for its replacement anyway, you might know what's involved in playing the second side but for those who don't see, if you can guess I'll. Start the disc on side a. Okay, so it's fun the disk up and is now playing but, listen to what happens when I switch to side B. You. Probably noticed it's stopping the disk then, the motor that moves the train in an out didson moving about and there, was a third sound you, haven't heard yet along, with the disk spinning back up, obviously. A good deal of stuff just happened, so let's, look inside in, addition to usually being a little bit taller than a single sided laserdisc, player both, side play models generally have this protrusion, out the back this. Houses the laser turn, mechanism, that's. Right in these machines the entire laser assembly has moved to the top side of the disk this, is some pretty crazy engineering, in a number of ways so. Let's see it in action the. Laser assembly normally, sits here and rides along the bottom rails but, when it needs to read side B it travels all the way to the rear of the machine where, it enters the sort of ferris wheel like contraption, this. Lifts the laser to the top as well as flips it upside down and, then the laser moves forward, and engages with the second set of rails on the top the. Disc stops to reverse direction as, it would otherwise be spinning the wrong way let's, look at that in slow motion because, why not this, is no simple feat as the laser needs to derail itself from the bottom and reattach, to the top it, also requires, a relatively complex, and delicate ribbon, cable situation, to actually send power and retrieve, signals from the laser head assembly but. The fact that this was necessary has to yet another reason laser disc didn't achieve mass-market. Success see. If someone were interested today, in making a CD or DVD player that could read both sides of a disc which, admittedly isn't really ever necessary almost. Certainly the cheapest, and simplest way to do it would be to place a second, laser assembly on the top and simply, change which one was being used in fact. There were a number of stylized, CD changes available, that simply had multiple, CD player mechanisms, stacked in a tower. Obviously. It was pretty cheap to make a CD player assembly. But, clearly there was something about the laser assembly of a laser disc player that, made it much more expensive and, I'm not talking about the rails or the motor that moves it I mean this guy itself, if it, were easy to make why not just use two of them why, bother with engineering. Manufacturing, this elaborate, mechanism, I suspect. That the analog nature of the laserdisc meant, tighter tolerances. And higher quality components. Were required here see with a digital format the clarity. Of the signal coming from the laser is pretty. Much irrelevant so, long as a pit can be distinguished, from Al and the, output would be the same in other, words a fuzzy, and hard to decipher one, zero zero one one one zero zero means. The same thing to a digital to analog converter as a strong and clear one zero zero one one one zero zero in, other. Other words the signal to noise ratio, is irrelevant, in a digital format either the signal is there or it isn't signal-to-noise. Ratio, can get really bad before the data is not recoverable, but. Since laserdisc, was an analog, format the signal to noise ratio, did matter if the, pits become harder to distinguish from the lands then, the Patriot produces, gets less clear as well I suspect. That the laser assemblies, of compact, disc players can be made much more cheaply that laserdisc, players due, to this fundamental, advantage, of the digital format, if you look at the list price of a basic CD player made around the same time as this laserdisc player you'll, see that they could be had for about a hundred dollars this. Laserdisc player is listed at 459, and the C LD s 201, a single, side machine is listed, at 319. Now. If manufacturers. Could turn a profit on, a CD player at, just over $100 that, laser pickup, probably didn't cost more than $30.00 or so to make of course. A laserdisc player has much more circuitry, and a larger spindle motor than a CD player but. The way the data is read from the disk is the same I'm, sure, if pioneer could have figured out how to make an acceptable analog laser pickup for $30, this, mechanism, would have been ditched for a second laser permanently, attached to these upper rails but.
That Clearly wasn't possible as pioneer. Was forced to keep using similar laser transfer, mechanisms, until the end of laserdisc digital, formats were also helped by the implementation, of error correction a CD. Player can, detect errors and correct them through cross intraday, 3d solemn encoding and it can also use interpolation, to mask a very large error in fact. I have a copy of Lincoln, by they might be giants which has a bunch of small holes in the aluminum layer. You, can hold it to a light and see right through them but it still plays fine as even, with chunks, of missing data the, CD players were a bust error correction, allows it to make it through a laser. Disc enjoys this sort of redundancy, in its digital soundtrack but, the video has no such error correction, a large. Enough scratch on the disk will be visible sometimes, as a simple black speck, in a, CA V disc the speck would briefly stay on the screen in the same place but. In a CL V disk it would dart around the screen and then. There's laser rot ah yes, laser, rot someone, in the comments noted, that it's called disk rot as it has nothing to do with the laser which. Is technically, correct but laser rot is the term used when specifically. Talking about disk rot occurring. On laser discs the. Original disco vision manufacturing. Plants made their disks very sloppily, it, wasn't, uncommon for the aluminum reflective, layer to start to oxidize and, lose its reflectivity likely. Due to poor adhesive, which didn't seal the discs correctly, you. Can forgive them a little though as they were literally, writing the book on how to make an optical disk oxidation. Of the aluminium layer would cause a disc to exhibit more and more visual artifacts, and eventually, become unplayable, this copy of Star Trek the motion picture, from 1980, exhibits, severe, laser rot you, can see that this disc is completely, gone just by looking at it it should, not look like that but, its companion, while not showing physical signs of rot doesn't, play well at all take. A look.
Intruder, Identified, the. Luminescent. Cloud to be enormous. Power field, surrounding. Aside. From the frequent signal dropouts the player isn't able to maintain tracking. And sometimes, gets locked reading the same spot, you. Haven't logged a single star hour in two and a half years. That. Plus your unfamiliar. Most. Discs don't rot so badly that you can simply tell at a glance this. Disk is a true disaster, laser. Rot wasn't that common possibly. Affecting as few as 1% of disks according to the laser disc database, of course, that exists, but certain factories were notorious. For producing discs that are rotting today, the. DA DC, plant in Terre Haute Indiana seems to have been the worst offender, with. 1490. Titles from this Factory known to have rot including. This disk of Fargo the, 21st most commonly, reported discs with rot. Okay. Yeah, I. Think. I'll take a drive down there then oh yeah. Twin cities oh. Yeah. No. Wait, they were real clear they said they'd call tomorrow with instructions, and it's got to be delivered by me alone it's, my money I'll deliver, it wow. This video got long quickly, we're almost done with the saga on laserdisc and I'll leave you with this machine, this, is a pioneer, DVL 700. The. D at the beginning means it can also play DVDs. This. Is a very early DVD, player from 1997. As we, know DVD was a huge success and they continued to sell in large numbers already. DVD, is as old as laserdisc, was when it died but DVD, shows no signs of dying quite yet in the. Next video we'll look at some of laser discs features that we didn't get in the States and we'll, also see why DVD was able to succeed, where laser discs failed thanks, for watching I hope you enjoyed the video if this is your first time watching this channel and you liked what you saw please consider, subscribing this. Channel is made possible by supporters, on patreon, patrons. Of the channel are what keeps these videos coming in fact, with the support of viewers like you I now spend more time on this channel than, I do at work if you're, interested in helping out as well please check out my patreon page for the link on your screen or, down below in the description thanks. For your consideration and, I'll see you next time. With, the advent of three-dimensional. Computer animation. Different. Looks and styles have, evolved.
2018-02-24 14:58
Stream it. Don’t own it
Bright-red-yarn-watch continues
4:02 Bottom Left-Hand Corner.
Amazing in-depth LD analysis! You're the best, mate!
Great Job! Very informative, well-researched, and well-structured. There's a somewhat distracting resonance/ring on the narration, probably coming from the acoustics of your green screen studio, around 435ish Hz. In the short term you might consider a very narrow EQ cut there, and if it's realistic cost-wise in the long term, some acoustic treatment in your studio would help even more. Thank you very much for making these videos - I'm really enjoying them.
I had one of those discs with computer video, was quite amazing at the time
that because dvd's are cheap and easy to pirate almost any stock computer can do it(except for Chromebooks) where blurays require expensive drives. not to mention 4.7 gbytes is easier to store than 20
i downloaded the old version of that video with the disk changer
i was givin 2 ld players that a room number and sience on them
You need a new presenter
Hey, I had a CLD-D502! Wow, that's nostalgia.
I absolutely love special editions. Dances With Wolves might be my favorite. Such a great package and extras. Idk there's just something about laserdiscs I love. Feels like an event playing them.
I had a little orgasm while seeing that laser lens switching mechanism. so awesome!
Little bit of trivia: In _one_ _frame_ of Disney's The Little Mermaid in both film print and LaserDisc Ariel is topless. In was put in as an 'in-joke' by the animators. Under normal viewing you'd never see it, but on the disc, you'd have to know which specific frame it is and pause it there. When Disney found out, they made sure that frame was removed for the VHS and DVD releases.
Holy shit are those demo “science” videos trippy
Your Magnavox LD player, while huge, still looks quite a bit smaller than a Video2000 player I used to own.
I'd like to make a minor point about the way Laserdiscs store information. Laserdiscs are 'analog' in the respect that the info they contain is analog in nature. But the way they store information is actually digital. By 'digital', I don't mean binary data, I mean that the disc contains a series of discrete pits & lands, just like a CD. I can't find any articles to back this up, but I *think* the player contains a series of oscillators that are frequency-modified by the pulses captured by the pickup in order to recreate the original analog signals. (Something kinda like a class-D amplifier.) The reason I bring this up is that I don't think the S-N ratio for an LD pickup is as important as, say, a tape head or LP stylus, which is sending a widely-varying analog AC signal to the player. Just like a CD player, the LD player's pickup only has to send a pulse of some arbitrary DC voltage. All the player cares about is the length of the pulse, so it's a piece of cake to electronically filter out any noise. My own opinion about why Pioneer and other manufacturers opted for that goofy-ass disc flipping mechanism is that it was still cheaper to implement than any dual-pickup setup would've been. Dual pickups mean two sets of rails, two stepper motors, two lasers & photodiodes, etc. The only component you wouldn't need is the shuttle that moves the pickup from one side to the other. Those fancy-pants CD changers you mentioned cost a small fortune and were more status symbols than anything. The more affordable consumer units only had the one player mechanism on-board.
When I was in school many years ago, the educational discs came with a book and the LD player had a light pen barcode reader. The teacher would scan the appropriate barcode and the segment would play, I thought I was living in 2002!
Way good job....
19:58 NOT LINCOLN! That album deserves better!
AHHH why did you not show the legendary BeoSound 9000 at 17:28? :c
I remember in school our laser disc player had a barcode scanner. I thought that was the neatest thing in 1998.
Should show the difference between the 3 types of both side play mechanisms, if you can get your hands on the different players
well done. good luck on never "working" again, you charming bastard :)
There was one cool feature LD.had that I have never seen on DVD. A lot of educational disks had bar codes by the chapter titles on the sleeves. There was a little scanner pen that would let you scan the bar code to jump to that chapter almost instantly.
I've worked with a variant of this where they did this with a computer. It was an 80x25 DOS text mode application which attached to the LaserDisc player using a special video card which could take the PC's output and mix it with the LaserDisc output. The end result was that they'd draw a player window using the ASCII box drawing characters and then run through a lesson with full color video and basic DOS everything else. At the end, there was a test and it would tease you if you failed. This was for Ford technicians to learn how to work on the "state of the art" 1990's vehicles that were coming out. I tried to preserve this system, but it was one of those IBMs that had a CMOS battery built into the RTC chip, and it was an extremely uncommon variant of the machine - none of the IBM BIOS setup disk images I could find would work. And for whatever reason, this is what killed the machine. Once it lost its CMOS setup values, the video card wouldn't initialize anymore. I saw it in operation before we decommissioned it, though, and it was really cool. Too bad that sitting in storage for a year finished off the battery.
I'd wonder why DVD's are still around when Bluray has existed for so long, but having gotten a few blurays more recently I'm no longer so surprised. Of course, a basic factor that it just takes a while for successful older technology to be replaced. It took about 15 years for VHS to more or less vanish, after DVD arrived. But I think DVD has two advantages over bluray. First, the quality is 'good enough'. Yes, bluray is better, but DVD is still pretty good unless you're quite fussy. Secondly, and this took a while to realise, Blu-ray suffers from film industry paranoia and contains seriously obnoxious levels of DRM. Like, I've almost never had DRM-related problems playing a DVD, even when using a computer, but I've had to jump through complex hoops more often than not getting a bluray to work reliably, and some of them still don't work. At least, not on PC... That's... And of course, with bluray being such a pain, and the rise of streaming and downloads... I guess it makes sense, to some extent, that DVD would still be the more popular choice in terms of physical media...
Once DVD came along it killed off Laserdisc in just 3 to 5 years. LD releases here in the UK stopped in 1999. Deep Impact, Armageddon, Sliding Doors and Small Soldiers were the last releases here.
Michael McConnell You could be right--especially if 4K/UHD Blue-ray continues with its kind of ridiculous markup--but on the flipside of that, I'm genuinely surprised how quickly 4K TVs have become actually reasonably affordable. It's actually a bit of a head-scratcher to me as I personally felt like the resolution bump is hitting a point of diminishing returns--especially for filmed content. Of course that could translate into more 4K support from streaming services in the long run and 4K Blu-ray will be a niche thing until it dies--it's kind of hard to say at this point seeing how tepidly these companies are treating the format so far.
Blu-ray and even standard DVD, yes I agree they won't go away anytime soon. But I'm skeptical there's a major market for another physical format when physical sales have long been in slow decline and the 4K TVs needed to appreciate the picture are years away from replacing all the 1080p TVs sold just a few years ago.
Michael McConnell A few years back, there were questions if there would even be a new line of video game consoles and especially dedicated handhelds. And now we have the PS4 and Nintendo Switch selling tens of millions and still moving a lot of physical software, so I think there should definitely be some life left in Blu-ray going forward if the companies pushing it don't market it terribly or stifle its growth in some boneheaded way.
I'm a bit surprised that there's ultra HD/4K blu-ray discs and players now coming to market. A couple years ago, a writer suggested blu-ray would be the last physical disc format due to the rise of streaming, which made sense to me. But now we have a handful of 4K discs. I doubt that 4K discs will end up being more than a niche for people who want to show off the best picture and sound possible -- like laserdisc in the 90s.
Personally, assuming that the masters of both are good, I feel that DVD is often adequate for older films that may not have always been filmed on the best of cameras, so I don't typically sweat it if the movie is like 40 years old or so. Now if there's a BD version right in front of me at little-to-no extra cost/inconvenience, then I'll obviously take it. I tend to notice the difference a lot more clearly if it's animated.
In some cases, the price difference between DVDs & Blu Rays, is diminishing. Best Buy has bins of inexpensive Blu Rays, as customers don't always buy mediocre movies just because they look good. One of my favorite films is "A New Leaf" with Walter Matthau & Elaine May. I was happy to buy it several years, & spent $5 or $10 more for the BluRay. I was a bit disappointed to see that the transfer had been made from a worn copy of the film. A regular DVD would be adequate, & IF there was "less quality" this could disguise some of the wear. Years ago, I read that MCA was spending a lot of $ to open a pressing plant for Compact Discs, in Orange County, California. This plant also had quality problems. When a Compact Disc is made, a thin layer of a lacquer is supposed to be applied, over the thin aluminum material, to prevent corrosion. This apparently is not always done. I have, fortunately just a few, CDs which have developed dark spots in the middle of the playing area, even though I always take care of them, returning them to their cases. I can't see the transparent, 'clear' lacquer. Aluminum CAN corrode - I learned this in airplane part fabrication. Sometimes my CD player will play though these dark spots; other times, it can't. There must be economic justification for both formats. A little more money is made on BluRays, and people keep buying DVDs. And they are less expensive to make than the obsolete formats. "The Industry:" typically doesn't like to keep multiple formats of the same item; it's a lot more work. Sooner or later, one has to go. BetaMax vs VHS. Monophonic LPs vs Stereo. We'll have to wait & see!
I think for a lot of people, it's simply because they can just pop a DVD into their laptop, VGA+3.5mm/HDMI output if they like and start watching with a DVD (especially back when Windows still natively supported playback--not sure how Mac supports it, tbh. VLC exists either way.). Basically no PC builder--and especially not laptop manufacturers--will ever include a Blu-Ray reader, and this limits the format's usability for a lot of people. As for standalone Blu-Ray players, I think for a long time, the cost of these also hurt its adoption up until right about the same time streaming started to become viable for a lot of people, which would result in a lot of people holding on to DVD players or using a laptop or whatever and renting/buying DVDs, and then just signing up for a Netflix account or whatever one day and never touching a Blu-Ray when it's all said and done. (Of course _now_ you can get a ~$50 USD PS3 used if you're so inclined, and even new dedicated players can be very reasonable around that same price now, but I'd argue the low-cost options came way too late.) DVD players and movies are almost always a little cheaper too, of course. And seeing how rental stores are still a thing at least in the States, I'd venture to guess a lot of casual movie viewing people still can't/don't want to stream everything they watch. And surely not all of those people have stumbled into a cheap Blu-Ray player yet. It's also further possible that some of those people just continue to use DVD because "they know it works" and probably continue to plug "that yellow, red, and white" set of cables into their TV because "they know it works", perhaps believing their old cheapo 720p TV totally incompatible. : P (ofc if it's still a tube TV, then they are probably better off with DVD.)
mmmh. Yeah, I can't imagine why you'd need to read both sides of a DVD. Even though I HAVE come across double-sided DVD's, (in fact, I'm fairly sure the Lord of the Rings DVD's I used to own were double-sided - but also some DVD's I rented around 2003), there's no meaningful reason to switch disk sides quickly. In the case of the LOTR DVD's, one side contained the cinematic release, and the other was the Extended cut. Should be obvious why you wouldn't flip sides actively while using it. On a Laserdisc though, it's a feature that makes considerably more sense...
I've seen double sided DVDs that contained a 4:3 Pan-and-Scan and a 16:9 variant. Rare, but useful in some cases. Indeed these wouldn't need to be flipped during play either.
Laserdisc was the first DVD actually. This is why I find it funny that those old VHS players are now what are going obsolete, matter of fact I don't even know anyone who still owns a VHS or BETA player these days. So while laserdisk in its original format was not as popular, in the end the laser won this battle and blu-ray is still clinging to life on some titles.
It's fascinating watching this method of double-sided laser pickup. I have a CLD-D606, which has this insane roller coaster assembly, where the laser pickup travels to the back of the unit, and the motor on the back of the pickup winds it through a C-shaped track on the back, at which point it hangs from a track on the top of the unit. That's a bad description but the overengineering in these players are insanity! I also had that LaserDisc on computer animation as a kid, it's in my basement now. I have that thing virtually memorized by now.
I happen to own a very old but working Pioneer DVL-919, the "very last" LD player. Im yet to get an LD for it though.
This LD series has been the best explanation I've seen of the format's successes and shortcomings. Excellent work!
http://2x-file.blogspot.com/2013/07/what-i-like-best-about-laserdisc.html
LGR Clint, you watch Technology Connections too? That's so awesome!
The Powhatan Indians shared food with the Englishman, showed them how to plant corn and yams, and introduced them to the ways of the forest. Without their help, the Jamestown settlers would certainly have perished. As it was, all but 51 of the original 143 colonists who arrived in 1607 died within a few months.
He talked about the rot, but not about the warping. Yup, they could deform in a conic shape... Which is why you are never supposed to leave them in the player, and store them vertically.
Despite the low "91" in the model number, the Pioneer DVL-91 was the best player ever in my opinion. It's original retail price was $1,800. It could play laserdisc, DVD, and CD. It had a smaller tray that could open when you wanted to insert a CD. It had some advanced features, such as some kind of superior video circuitry. Somehow this and some other higher-end models could do freeze frame and step, even with CLV discs. It also had a jog/shuttle on the remote, which I always found convenient. With a Pioneer RFD-1 RF demodulator, you could get true Dolby AC-3 sound on any receiver that had a digital optical input. I think there was something along the lines that the Pioneer RFD-1 would detect when there wasn't Dolby AC-3 and pass through the other sound, so you only had to use one input on your receiver or you didn't have to manually switch.
*somewhere in Japan* "...putting a _second_ laser pickup on the upper rails of the machine? What a brilliant idea!!! Why didn't we think of this!?"
That was great, thank you.
funny. theres a CLD S201 in my entertainment center not used as often as the D503
hi you should consider to change on screen font and please stop long text while you are talking. PLEASE CHANGE FONT!!!
This channel keeps getting better and better.
Thanks for this long video, these are my favorites ^^ and please do not finish the LaserDisc saga so soon, I am loving every video you make, and I am still very happy to be able to understand English better and better, since for now I only speak Brazilian Portuguese as a native language and my own language that I created I love this format so incredible, but unfortunately I can not have one because here in Brazil it is very difficult to find one of these.
I love your channel. Please make a video about minidisc. I loved my sony minidisc player.
The reason PAL LDs didn't have Analog AND PCM audio was Bandwidth reasons. You see the picture resolution in PAL is much higher than NTSC so there was no room to squeeze in extra Audio channels into the Stream. But that didn't matter anyway because PAL LDs never really used Audio commentaries, DTS (with a few exceptions I think) or AC3 anyway. It just wasn't as big in PAL countries like it was in Japan and the USA and was really just a neglected niche.
The Disney Archive Box Laserdisc Release of Tron is another great example of why this format was amazing once embraced & properly used by Studios. It's one of the finest releases on Laserdisc. And one of the reasons why i even started collecting them. All of the Bonusmaterial was later re-used for the Special Edition DVD in 2002.
I vaguely recall one of the reasons PAL CDV movies in the UK didn't have an analogue soundtrack was that at about the same time as the transition between Laservision to CDV was going on, the government had changed the laws regarding movie classification with regard to graphic content (Video Nasties...). To enforce the changes, analogue audio support on CDV was dropped as a way to make the back-catalogue of Laservision titles that had not been classified under new terms incompatible with new hardware.I might be very wrong about this, though, so best have a route around to see if any of this holds up.The other reason may have been down to the extra line info a PAL signal required eating into space for both analogue and digital sound to co-exist...
It's interesting, I really already know most of this stuff, but there's something about the way you present it that captivates me and gets me to watch anyway.
Hey Technology Connections, do you know of the 1980's BBC Domesday Project (pronounced dooms-day) in the UK which made use of the random access features of laserdisc? :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project
Checking Ebay for a Laserdisc...
I like laserdiscs because it looks like if you sharpened the edge sufficiently you could take a man's head clean off with it!
Heh, I have that CGI laserdisc on my shelf right now. Imagine how long it took to render each frame on something with the computing horsepower of a Dorito, especially those ray traced scenes. Everyone who does 3D rendering should watch those old documentaries -- there were several on TV, but this is the only LD version I remember -- to appreciate how easy they have it these days. Fun fact: to actually get that imagery *out* of the computer in those early days, you had to lay it out frame by frame to tape. A frame would finish rendering, and a machine-controlled Beta SP deck would wake up, cue up to the right frame on the tape, come out of pause to record the frame, and then go back to waiting. When the next frame was done rendering, the process would repeat. You basically "stamped" it out a frame at a time. The process was murder on tape decks, so there was much rejoicing when things like the Personal Animation Recorder came along on the Amiga that finally made it possible to store frames locally and output a stable video signal.
"This copy of Back To The Future"... >Paused >Search : Back In Time Huey >[click] True story.
I love my dvds but I never watched a laser disc in my life hopefully one day I’ll be able to watch a laser disc
I'm wondering why the double sided player couldn't just elevate the laser above and under the disc and use a 90 degree mirror assembly to read them instead.
Incorrect aspect ratio on the Star Trek sequence towards the end. Can that still be fixed?
John Jenkins, Technology Connections: I *may* have just taken a screenshot and some measurements and may have figured out that the width of the distorted footage would need to be increased by about 15% for a roughly correct aspect ratio. Of course, since the aspect-ratio distorted image is 4:3, that means that if this originated on a 4:3 medium, it would have been slightly letterboxed there (or maybe they cropped bits at the top and bottom). However, if we reproduced that letterboxing inside this 16:9 YouTube player, it would result in windowboxing, so it's better to increase the width than reduce the height. PS: What's that you ask? Having a life? What's that?
John Jenkins: It may well be pan and scan, though I don't know what medium the (pilot?) episode/film originated on, which could have been straight-up 4:3, but either way, that doesn't change the fact that the aspect ratio is in fact incorrect. The distortion isn't extreme, but it's enough to bother people who want to watch what the director intended. Look at the engine section of the Enterprise at 21:40. That oval in the middle is supposed to be a circle. Also, all the Star Trek people's heads are slightly stretched. However, it seems that in the Fargo scenes, the aspect ratio is correct again. In the author's excuse, it could well be that the distortion was present on the disc this is from. Unfortunately it's not unheard-of that even commercially produced DVDs etc. are cranked out quickly, without care and attention during mastering. I personally own a DVD set that includes at least one film with a similarly slightly bollixed aspect ratio.
ropersonline No, it's pan and scan. :(
i feel like i'm watching nova on pbs
Would a Blu-ray laser make a Pioneer laser disc work better
Its Disk-Rot, not Laser-Rot, the problem was not specific to Laserdisks, early CDs suffered the same issue too. why create "CD-Rot" or "Laser-Rot" when a generic term exists? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
Very informative video, I always wondered why they didn't implement the dual laser method to solve the disc flipping problem. Although I wonder if it was more to do with cost vs benefit. The major delay in changing sides seems to be not the laser moving but rather the stopping and starting of the disc. So having 2 lasers would dramatically increase the cost but offer little benefit to the end user. Now that I think about it, if they reversed how the information was encoded on side 2 then you wouldn't have to stop and start the disc, of course this would mean the loss of backward compatibility. Unless I'm misunderstanding how Laserdisc players worked.
Absolutely superb video, easily training quality, affable host and just all around great info!
Three people will get laser rot in their media
Of course LaserDisc Database exists, it's my website! :-) And you've also been linked back! http://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=7574
I really appreciate and enjoy the level of detail and research in these videos. Looking forward to seeing the next episode.
Come for the convoluted LaserDisc details, stay for Fabulous Twirling Tiger.
Would love to keep watching, but that is one distracting neckbeard.
24:00 Creepy clown dog... :O
Thank you for making such fascinating videos
Laserdiscs aren't as susceptible to scratches as you think. The PWM encoding, while analog, is generated with the pits and lands of the disc. So as long as the pits and lands are readable, you're fine.
One of the issues I was told that delayed laser disks was the need for a higher quality substrate than was readily available in the early 70s. This bedeviled both RCA and Philips (my source was familiar with the RCA issues specifically). As I understand the problem the video bandwidth and signal requirements were severe enough that the available materials were not acceptable for good signal to noise ratios; audio was not a problem.
You're doing it wrong. It's "1001001, in distress!"
Those fingerprints on the inside plate of the laserdic player you were gutting bugged me a little, maybe use some laytex gloves? Of course I know that particular player is defunct but if you're keeping it for display purposes you may wanna keep from mucking it up. I'll curb my OCD now, great video.
how about covering cd+g / ld+g ?
Laser rot tends to affect analog audio and video to a similar degree; the clips you showed here look pretty bad, and I can imagine they've pretty badly rotted by now, but the audio hasn't suffered quite as noticeably as the video. I have a rotten copy of The Saint which looks fine for the most part, both the film and the disc itself, but it has digital audio which sounds absolutely terrible; there's a constant loud tapping that accompanies any sound in the film, almost sounding like the notorious Russian Woodpecker from the 80's, if you know what that is.
DVD had/has ONE major bugbear: REGIONAL ENCODING. This stops titles from being made available in several markets at once.
Rainer67059: Your second paragraph brings up the point I was trying to make. I'm fully aware of discs with no region-encoding, And should that I were to copy a disc(to make a back-up), the region-encoding would not transfer to the copy. If I'm transferring what I've shot and uploaded to YouTube, onto DVD, there'd be no region-encoding as the software being used does not provide such a feature. However, the movie studios(other than those making pornography) wanted the feature to restrict the marketing of their product to selected countries. With videotape this restriction was imposed by the colour system being used, PAL through Britain, Irish Republic, most of Europe(except for those countries stupid enough to choose the utterly abominable SECAM system), parts of Asia, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, NTSC in the USA, Canada, Mexico and a modified NTSC in Japan and other parts of Asia. In many VHS or Beta VCRs, where a choice of colour system had been provided, it was only ever PAL or NTSC. SECAM was, thankfully, NEVER included.
Regional encoding of DVDs isn't a must, it's optional for those who produce them. There are DVDs with no regional encoding. Many porn DVDs say this clearly on their label that they have no regional encoding. If you record a TV show with your DVD recorder or produce your own video with your own camera, and transfer it on DVD, it'll play just fine everywhere in the world. The problem lies not with the technology but with the copyright owners, the artists' industry that publishes stuff on video formats. Although it's got nothing to do with their profit, they want to publish stuff in one country and hold it back in another at the same time. Publishers in the USA feel a strong need to give their customers in the USA a privilege over customers abroad, to make their costumers in Europe customers second class behind the customers in the USA. In the process they make their customers in Australia customers 4th class behind those in East Asia. The singtress Anastacia once produced a film and felt the need to publish this film in America and make it unavailabele anywhere else in the world, forever. To remove this bug isn't a question of technology, but it would require to reeducate artists and their producers.
I love my Pioneer LaserDisc player. It plays LaserDisc, LaserActive games, Sega Genesis and Sega CD games all in one :D
WAHOO! I'll finally get to find out why DVD succeeded... YESSSS!!!! :D
I really like videos on technology old and new, breaking down the history and the workings of it. I dunno why I didn't subscribe before. I hope to see more stuff in the future. I find that even though several channels out there might have done the same formats and technologies as others, everyone has their own way of explaining things as well as sometimes some people find something or talk about something that others did not find or go over.
[more mechanical noises, with a pronounced whirring added] Story of my life.
5:09 A E S T E T H I C
22:02 I think you overclocked your laserdisc player a little too much. :P
great stuff!
In your video descriptions for a given series, could you please link to Video 1, Video 2, Video 3... etc? Thanks!
I believe this is the reason PAL LDs only had one set of soundtracks: As the rotation speed is tied to the framerate, PAL LDs start at 1500 RPM vs 1800-ish for NTSC discs, meanwhile they have to fit an additional 100 scanlines in that space as well as a higher frequency chroma subcarrier.
Brilliant video again. :-)
Films? Education? Blech! Karaoke was what LD was for.
Look for the Lion King set. Most of the wonderful material on it never made it to DVD or Blue Ray.
5:23 The creepy talking head was actually the first voice synced computer generated head from a short demo from 1974 at the University of Utah. This was done by Fredrick Parke and Ed Catmull. If that second name is familiar it's because he went on to be a founder of Pixar and currently runs Pixar as well as all Disney animation. There was also an earlier demo from 1972. It still had heads though without voice syncing. It also featured and Ed Catmull's modelled hand. That hand ended up in the movie Futureworld in 1976 as the first use of CGI in a feature length film. A poorer quality version of that "creepy head" is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPMFhcC4SvQ
Didn't the 3d model of a teapot come from the same team
Yes! Though that was the first use of 3D-model CGI (in a mainstream feature): the first CGI of any kind (again, in a mainstream feature at least) was the Gunslinger's "Terminator vision" from the film Futureworld was a sequel to, the original Westworld https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jCDQvNh85Y . Gorkab's great CGM video series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgiS6Xj7H6wn8L6K4jfwLh4sYwtEOnpRd has an episode dedicated to it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPv_7HO2QIo. (It's in French, so try the subtitles if necessary: worse, it may be copyright-blocked in your country. :/ )
When I bought my first Laserdisc player a few years ago (mainly out of curiosity) it had problems spinning up the discs. So I took a look inside (a Pioneer player under the Denon brand) and was amazed about the mechanism to play the other side. No wonder these players needed to have maintenance every few years. The most obscure Laserdiscs in my opinion are discs called "LD COM - A Pioneering Communication". These were made by Pioneer mainly for their employees and business partners. Which makes sense. Why print a boring magazine when you have a Laserdisc pressing plant? These discs had the rather rare 10" format and where a mix of CLV and CAV. The content: Introductions of new products, Pioneer commercials, reports about all kinds of stuff and even really weird things like contact advertisements (female employees in search for a man), pictures from the last business trip and even baby pictures of employee's kids that were recently born. The pictures are all in CAV mode and you can skip through them with the step function shown in this video. One discs even has an in depth introduction of the new format DVD which get's really detailed. They even explain stuff like frame types and group of pictures. Most stuff on these discs has two audio tracks for English and Japanese. If you find some of those discs be sure to pick them off. Some stuff on them is really boring though but there is always something funny, interesting or weird on them. You can find one of those discs here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0raGFFXZAN0
The first thing to fail is always the mechanism that lifts the disc up so it can start spinning. They seem to go out of alignment, so they'll keep trying and failing to lift the disc, and eventually give up and spit it out.
Your videos are excellent. Really informative, yours is the only channel I get notifications for. It does seem crazy that Pioneer couldn't find a more economic way to use 2 lasers instead of that crazy system, but the engineering in that is astounding. Also if it had two lasers and one went bad your system would still function. Makes me want to start looking for one.
What a fantastic series and blast from the past! In the early 90's I was an engineer with Dolby Laboratories and my primary assignment was working with film studios in assisting with mastering Dolby Surround soundtracks for home video and television. At first this meant working on making new Dolby Surround (matrix) soundtracks that were optimized for VHS and broadcast (as opposed to just simply transferring the film soundtrack which was optimized for recording optically onto 35mm film) but soon led to working closely with Pioneer and the movie studios to master 5.1 audio and get it through the post-production and manufacturing process to Laserdisc. Basically, I was "the guy with the Dolby Encoder in my trunk" (there was only one encoder initially that we moved between facilities to service the different movie studios' titles). I really enjoyed your description of the confusing nature of the different audio technologies used on Laserdisc, especially regarding AC-3 demodulation. If I didn't have to explain it every 10 minutes back in the day, I would have been confused myself. Fun fact, we (Dolby) lobbied really hard to get the demodulator included in the LD player itself, but accessing the RF signal to send out the back was painfully simple (I can't tell you how many RF outputs I added to pre-AC-3 LD players for various industry execs) requiring only a resistor or two and a connector and a little coax wire. And, since AC-3 was being implemented for the first time in AV Receivers - it was easier to add the more complex demodulation circuitry to the brand-new AVR designs than to stuff more circuitry into the well-established LD architecture. Of course, the interim solution while all of this was being sorted was the requirement to use an external demodulator, which was even more confusing. I ramble, but even though LD was, as you mentioned, relegated to videophiles, it really had a huge effect on mastering quality improvements throughout the industry that most wouldn't realize until the introduction of DVD (that's a whole other story for another day). It built such a tight-knit community here in Los Angeles among the engineers, studio execs and producers that those of us still around still get together every year or so to remember the passion and excitement that putting movies on LaserDisc offered us. Keep up the good work.
"Cinephiles" 1:26? Yes, such people exist. But I'm somebody who's convinced analog TV technology was superior to analog film (cinema) technology. As such a person, I find it sad, that formats like CED and Laserdisc ended up with that most published discs had movies on them, which means they had video on them that had been produced with a film camera rather than a TV camera.
Great work as always
Lincoln by They Might Be Giants? Wow. I bought that CD around 1989 or 1990 after seeing the music video on MTV for the song, "Ana Ang" I believe. Anyway that is a classic album. I really enjoyed them. I'm thinking you were very young back then if even born yet? Anyway great video. You're a genius to have all this knowledge. It blows me away and I have to admit that I often have trouble keeping up with you but I do enjoy these videos. Very interesting stuff that has always interest me as well but maybe not quite as deep as your research. And I'm assuming you might have an engineering background Which is far from any education that I have. But all the same, good job!
Did we get MUSE in the United States? I don't think we did, but hopefully we can get a sample of that :)
Love this laserdisc episodes
Hi, what kind of failure rate may I expect buying LD players second hand today?
Fantastically researched and presented! Keep up the good work! Happy to be a patron
My social studies teacher in 1998 had a laserdisc component. He had to get a grant to afford it.
You would think that DVD as about to kick the bucket. I don't know if many more people than you would think are still using old tube TVs. DVDs can hold video resolutions in the range of 720x576 pixels so they end up being capable of providing a resolution higher than your 480i/p broadcast if you are using HDMI and probably component video. It almost looks just as good as 720p so that is likely an acceptable tradeoff to a BD even though BDs are often just $5 more than a DVD. DVDs are smaller to store on a home video server. I often prefer BD if it is available in the title I want, but I find DVD to be quite acceptable. I have a 1080 TV, but I have no interest in getting 4k. My TV is under 30 inches though. To find out if you really would benefit from 4k, you have to calculate the size of your TV with how far you are viewing it, and in most cases it is likely that 4k is a waste of money for your situation.
I wonder if he'll eventually cover video cd and DivX?
Your little notification nudge worked on me exactly as intended; I had allowed part 3 to fall thru the cracks, unwatched, and it was just the reminder I needed.
A great video, and quite accurate and correct about LD and it's features and characteristics, except for one thing I can't help but to point out: At 21:16, a disc is pictured that the presenter refers to as a disc that is heavily "laser rotted". This is incorrect, what you're seeing is what most laserdisc collectors (expecially those who collect the DiscoVision-era discs) refer to as a "green slime" dead side. To explain, it's a side on an LD that's usually the other side of a single-sided LD, or the last side of the last disc of a multi-disc set that is not needed by the disc's program and (usually, with some exceptions) has no readable video information on it, usually for newer laserdiscs a side of white unplayable plastic. . Most "dead sides"of laserdiscs were also an actual playable video program with a screen instructing you to turn the disc over (the most famous being the "laserdisc turtle" on Pioneer-pressed discs, user VWestlife has a video posted of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvqzBQIVMwc). There was also DiscoVision's practice of repurposing pressed LD sides that didn't meet their QC specs (in spite of how lax they were in their early days) and applying a translucent opaque coating to make the disc side unable to play (this could be defeated by removing the coating with alcohol, which broke it down like varnish stripper, making the side playable again), and then there were the "Green Slime" dead sides discs that DiscoVision made (like the Star Trek disc for Paramount featured here). The reason for their namesake appearance is because these sides were made of clear plastic, foregoing the usual reflective plating step of the disc manufacturing process, and therefore showing the sprayed greenish adhesive used to bond both halves of the disc together. It's likely that the adhesive is the cause of the laser rot, by reacting & oxidizing the reflctive layer of the playable side (side 3) that the adhesive has direct contact with on the other disc side, as most laser rot has been attributed to.
Interesting enough, my first DVD player was a Pioneer.
PAL discs allocated more space to video due to PAL's slightly higher resolution (625 lines), so there was no room for analog and digital audio.
DVD is a total garbage, I see no reason to still keep them not meantioning what for are they even still being made? Only reason to keep DVDs is when there was absolutely no other better release (Bluray or even HD-DVD or digital). Not even the price makes sense, BDs and DVDs have more less the same price so why bother with DVDs.
Assuming it could just rotate on its own axis I don't think that's an issue.
kami because it would be reading at the wrong angle
im still on VHS
As for P.A.L., it wasn't enough that you couldn't play digital sound discs on analogical sound machines, some later machines played only digital sound. Fourteneley, my machine playes both type of sound... when I bought the machine(from a 2nd hand store) I dind't had any disc. In my country I don't think they are more then 1.000 - 2.000 LaserDisc owners at a population of about 20.000.000 (twentymilion) people. Anyway, I think P.A.L. disc could only carry just one type of sound because P.A.L. haves a bigger image rezolution the N.T.S.C., so the image takes more space. Throu all that P.A.L. offers a better image then N.T.S.C., a lot of P.A.L. discs where poorly mastered...
Good lord. I have no idea how I stumbled onto this channel, but somehow I ended up watching an hour on laserdisc history. Something about your presentation style is just mesmerizing!
Why was digital sound preferable to Analog on this medium? It's not like you had to make sure the medium was 100% dust free to make the sound perfect. As a matter of fact I'm wondering why they didn't use the analog sound of Laser discs to come up with a new Laser disc SOUND medium that was entirely analog. That would've blown everything else away potentially.
i still own a pioneer cld-s104 and 3 movies. then 6 months later they came out with dvd. at the time i was kind of pissed cause at that point i knew ld was on its way out and wasted money.
Fascinating stuff. We had a laserdisc player when I was a young kid in the 80's, and it was so rarely used that I only have memories of Jaws. You offered great insight in both of these videos, and the information was free of emotional attachment (which is extremely important for educational videos of this nature.) Subscribed. Keep it up!
where's that fourth episode?
I had to inspect your other videos to find out if that was a shadow going from your chin to your neck or a really weird beard. Just thought you should know.
The first DVD film release was Twister in 1997, and the final Hollywood film to release on VHS was A History of Violence in 2006. It took a while for VHS itself to die out in the home because VHS was universally also used for TV recording, and not everyone had a Sky Box to record shows onto. The jump in quality and convenience from VHS to DVD is massive, but the jump from DVD to BD and 4k is more subtle, and has no jump in convenience. For people without a decent enough TV to show the improvement of Blu Ray, or those who just aren't concerned enough about it, then DVD is probably still fine and OK as well as being cheaper. But - if you have even an average TV these days the difference between DVD and BD is definitely noticeable. I stopped buying DVD's roughly 6 or more years ago because frankly they look bad on my TV compared to BD, and they don't support the uncompressed audio formats or 3D. Now I also have a 4k OLED HDR 3D capable LG TV I *personally* find DVD to be a completely dead format with no reason to exist as far as I am concerned, and most of my future disk purchases will either be 3D Blu Ray or 4k HDR. I don't think DVD is a bad format at all, but I find the justification for it's continued existence slightly confusing as BD is a flat out better format which uses the same form-factor and similar media.
Regarding the still image slideshows...the Alien LD box set had a cool little easter egg in its slideshows. If you pressed "play" instead of "step", you were treated to the sound effects used for the Nostromo's computers. Very thoughtful. I loved "Aristocats" at 8:32, btw.
excellent video! I appreciated the attention to small details and insight into a format that I've never experienced firsthand.
I rip from DVDs/BDs too. I got a 4tb HDD full of ripped media. Star Trek TNG blu-rays takes up 1.4tb and that is just the episodes(1 to 1 transfer hence the huge size)..
I don't even think about a physical disk anymore: too fragile. PC's, solid state media and disk drives (to rip stuff) have become so reliable, fast, cheap and quiet, that many people are playing movies directly from specially made PC's, eliminating the need for any player at all. You're right about the projector though ;) But 4K on a Blu-Ray disc sounds like fun, but in reality, the available bitrate is ridiculously low compared to what a computer can spit out directly.
I think that if you are into movies in a big way you are going to do it proper if possible. A proper HD digital projector, a 4k Blu-Ray player and a 120 inch projection screen along with a good sound system and speakers.
I think that is the whole problem you mention: Blu-ray does not offer a significant improvement over image quality at all compared to DVD and where DVD had many advantages over VHS, Blu-ray only ups the quality a bit and enters an even bigger DRM-area.
The reason DVDs are still around when blu-ray are out there are multi-fold: 1) Given that blu-ray is the same physical size as DVD, virtually all manufacturers of the players maintain backward compatibility to DVDs as well as CDs (which still aren't obsolete either, btw); given this designed-in backward compatibility, it's more proper to view blu-ray as a capacity evolution rather than a competing design, in precisely that same way DVD was a capacity evolution of CD. 2) DVD blanks remain substantially cheaper than blu-ray blanks, and, so long as most people do not need to regularly "burn" massive piles of data larger than 4.7gb, they will keep buying cheap volume-packs of DVD blanks rather than more expensive blu-ray blanks. 3) For anything important, it's better to have multiple DVD backups kept in different locations than it is to have it all squirreled away on a single disk. 4) For any data that is large enough to require a blu-ray disk to accommodate it, the write-time duration is irksome, and most people would rather spend the extra money to pick up an external hard-drive with several terabytes capacity. 5) An external drive also permits installing an external operating system capable of launching the owner's computer should its internal drive develop problems. DVD will be around until flash-sticks are sufficiently cheap and have write-speeds approaching conventional hard-drives. (This event will drive blu-ray into extinction as well; the signs are already on the wall with the proliferation of lightweight laptops that no longer feature optical drives. Arguably blu-ray is kept in business by the necessity of Hollywood to sell its movies to the home market.)
Unfortunately, almost all copies of The Beatles Let It Be suffer from laser rot, and, to date, they have refused to release the title on DVD or Blu-Ray.
wait dvd isnt dead?
peoples laptops have disc players? WTF?
Won't Video on demand kill DVD & Blurry?
You might want to order a book www.amazon.co.uk/Research-Philips-Natuurkundig-Laboratorium-1914-1994/dp/9085550513/ref=sr_1_1/258-2771289-6214350?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520684473&sr=1-1&keywords=9789085550518 Then you should the history of both the VLP and CD. Not every thing is invented in the US.
this is better then watching the history channel
dvd not dying? have you tried selling used dvds? haha
you're allowed to do things in one take. make mistakes, say things wrong, its what makes your channel good. please stop pointing out your mistakes, i would never even have caught them.
This has been so fascinating thank you so much.
KuraIthys It's because the market for home media was dead by the time Blu-ray player we're affordable. plus outside of game console Blu-ray is prepritary to home video while DVD was dirt cheap software distro and standard DVD drives use on PC now have upscale for cheap as well as standard RW DVD now using the same high compacity technology as Blu-ray. Even thou Blu-ray drives cost less then super DVD drives the home media industry is mostly on PC and software will be distributed on DVD even if Blu-ray we free.
Ahh man, hearing that disc spin up brings back memories of my LD viewing days. Love it!
On a CAV LD each frame takes up one disc revolution, so the disc has to spin faster as it travels in an outwardly direction. This is because space each frame is progressively longer on the disc. On a CLV LD each frame is the same length, so more frames fit on each revolution.
Heard the end of you Star Trek laser-rot demonstration and thought "Crap! Here comes the BSoD..."
Great video, just joined. Will look back to see the rest. Buying a compatible receiver and disk player would sink a company nowadays!!! We had to deal with a lot back then!!! “Ain’t nobody got time for that!!”
FM modulated? Do you mean Frequency Modulation modulated? On a separate note, I'm worried about my RAM memory (Random Acess Memory memory).
yuyiboy what you do is turn off the TV and go outside
I personally don’t like the way old (bw) movies are remastered to blueRay, I like getting those on DVD. Some blue rays give you the option on playback to do dvdq or brq (quality) but I find myself changing settings on my TV. #techhead
True. Right now USB sticks are already very cheap: you can buy a 32 GB one for only 10 €! That's about 0.32 €/GB! Sure, DVDs are still the winner against flash memory, about 0.05 €/GB, but HDDs are already at 0.035 €/GB or 35 €/TB if you buy at least 3 TB. Anyways, for long-term storage, the best isn't optical media, which degrade over time, nor HDDs, nor flash memory, but magnetic tape (concretely, LTO, which on its 8th revision, it can store 12 TB of uncompressed data! And 1 LTO-8 tape costs 165 €, or 0.015 €/GB, less than half what HDDs would cost). Of course, tape requires an expensive drive, is slow to write and random read is very slow. But for archival purposes, it's still used.
do i see some green-screening glitches or is that my computer somehow?
I had no idea I was interested in this. and yet, here I am, over an hour later, staring at the light reflected off a CD like holy scripture.
22:02 StarTrek.exe has stopped working.
Fantastic presentation, if you I would say you must be a professor, if not you deserve an honorary professorship! thank you
I'm stubborn and I I don't really want to buy a new player for a new format. It feels like I only recently begrudgingly switched from VHS to DVD and I don't care to make a switch again. Besides used DVDs are dirt cheap.
nice video, congrats it was totally amazing to hear all this story just one thing to add, it's not exactly dual cd or dual dvd, i remember looking at a sony catalog and seeing dvd's with sacd on the other side. lookig at that i just found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DualDisc it's just for your info, i really enjoyed your video, thanks
I'm sorry, but I'm just a sucker for designs like that laser flipper.
0:40 if you wonder how he could place that string so perfectly circular on the LD: the sequence is played backwards, he is actually picking up the string, not placing it down.
Just discovered this channel, and specifically this series on Laser Disc. Really great work. I'm enjoying it a lot. And learning a lot. I still recall my blood boiling with envy seeing all the rich people in line ahead of me at Suncoast Video, with their arms full of Laser Discs (always inept films like "Beethoven"- the dog movie- or "Sister Act 2" or something...), while I had to suffer with my sad stack of pan-and-scan (ie, butchered) versions of "The Deer Hunter" and "Pulp Fiction" on VHS, lol...Bastards. It would be a few years before the deliverance that was dvd. So Laser Disc has always remained this mysterious, esoteric thing to me...Well done, sir.
For me there are 3 reasons. - Overprized Bluerays - Overprized Players - Not enough gain Before I switched to my 60" TV I didnt even notice the difference between BlueRay and DVD. Even now Blueray gives me only a "meh why not" feeling which is a feeling that wont sell well for a higher prize.
I have a space ace disc which I got for cheap because of for on the roller scates maze scene which now plays properly.....really. My other discs with got are dead.
Fantastic ! I learnt a lot. God you're good.
In middle school science class my teacher pulled out a laserdisc and used the remote to input which frame he wanted to go to. It immediately jumped to that part and we were all amazed that he didn't have to fast forward to it, it just automatically jumped to where he wanted.
Nice to see you here LGR!
I can validate that YouTube unsubscribed me some time in the last 30 days. What’s going on? Yours is not the only channel I was unsubscribed from. Just thought you should know this is happening to some people.
Wow. The content is really interesting, and then there are the comments!! There are some really knowledgeable people out there.
I love your videos. I had a laserdisc way back and I never really (although suspected) what went on inside it. Also your sassy, funny, witty, clear and logical delivery style is amazing. Keep it up, please.
This is very educational. As this is the kind of history that gets swept under the rug. As it is technology that kind of failed and all failed technological is always forgotten.
In regards to the CG disc, I kind of wonder if you’re feignin ignorance. Pretty obviously that was the height of CG at the time, and that video was simply a showcase. I was insanely excited when it came out and bought my LD copy right away. It was mind blowing, and IT LOOKED SO GOOD on my 27” TV. That’s right, I wasn’t a 19” chump, I was a videophile with my 27”. Suck it retroers, I LIVED IT. :D
No joke. At 21:57 that's like my number one fear. Being alone and it's dead silent then audio skips like that. Goes with music too. Scares the heck outta me.
Why didnt my parents use this
Gross weight 10 kg...............
FAN-TASTIC! and I do mean FAN :)
The SNR actually means a lot for a digital signal: it's crucial for the error probability.
0.75 speed recommended for following this mans info accurately. Sorry, I'm slow.
How did you ever learn so much about this?
Steven Green Sir I disagree with you that it had anything to do with the cost of DVDs. You see Blu-ray technology was Dead on Arrival and obsolete as far as the PC industry was concerned. During the development of Blu-ray another technology called the super multi Drive was also developed which is common in any pre-built PC you buy today outside of game consoles. The super multi Drive might not support Blu-ray quality as far as home video that has a similar upscale technology that was supported by Microsoft software-wise. Because most people buy pre-built PC from department stores which only carry Intel computers optimize for Windows. Blu-ray might have a second life with Samsung and ZTE if they decide to start making Android desktop computers as public companies have almost as much reputation in the business world as Windows PC manufacturers like a Acer and HP.
ttjoshtt a few years ago, every laptop had a DVD player. Then the chrome book came out without a hard drive or disc tray and somehow people thought it was a good idea. I'm still pissed.
There are a lot of factors that keep DVDs around. They're cheap. Most, if not all Blu-ray players also support DVDs so there really isn't a need to replace your entire collection. Given the chance, I usually buy Blu-ray, but it also depends on the movie. If I wanna watch a visual spectacle like Tron Legacy, I'll watch the Blu-ray since I want the best possible image, but why the hell would anyone need a Blu-ray of Ace Ventura? VHS was replaced rather quickly because not only was it incompatible with DVDs for obvious reasons, but they also deteriorated with each viewing. I still keep some around cause I enjoy them, but they're useless. DVDs on the other hand, while obsolete, are still very useful. I still have an old DVD player hooked up to a CRT with component cables, and trust me, That Lord of the Rings DVD still looks amazing with the right setup. It's obsolete, but it's putting up one hell of a fight and they'll stick around for a lot longer. It goes to show you just how great of a format DVD really was.
Let me add to your "digital encoding" stuff at 18:00. The digital audio on a CD has a Reed-Solomon and additional RLL error correction encoding, which means that you can lose a lot of pits and lands before you start losing decoded bits. It's so strong that your CD player is going to be skipping and stalling on your sandpapered CD to the point of unusability because it can't find and keep the groove long before it starts losing the bits within the groove. Edit: Got to it at 19:47, seems a bit distant to make the point, lol!
Ac3 and dts on ld? Wow
of course a factory in Terre Haute IN was the worst at producing laserdiscs... ahh Terre Haute your poor air quality and high crime rates are just great
A prominent user of LaserDiscs in the late 80's and early 90's was the United Video Satellite Group of Tulsa, OK. The video previews for movies and TV shows for its "Prevue Guide" electronic program guide TV barker channel were played out from LaserDiscs.
The Laserdisc sounds like a freaking jet engine when it's starting up. Terrifying!
To me I feel the 4K tv's and videos (Blu-ray) is oversharpen, and the brightness levels are too high giving the content a fake look to them
Mike Wasylkewicz Your absolutely right sir . Computers don't get better forever. Tec specs are deminishing after some point and woman don't like you magnifing them and showing there age so 4k is marketed mostly at gay porn.
I really appreciate what you did. Thanks
Your videos are interesting
Old school CG is awesome.
Candy on discs? That’s good for lasers? ;)
Wonderfully informative, literate, and even funny! Something I didn't hear mentioned is that laserdiscs were not copy-protected which made it possible to dub them onto videocassette with results that were as good as pro tapes.
Honestly i think its because of things like video streaming services and the like as well as now we have cheap hard drives big enough to store hundreds of movie files For people who arent using something like the above DVD tends to be "good enough" for their movie watching purposes Another thing is for older movie releases video quality can only get so good because of the kind of cameras used to film the movie itself. Unless its a new movie that was filmed with HD in mind you can hardly notice much of a difference between DVD and blu ray and for newer movies theyre available readily on streaming services so why bother with blu ray? A true "videophile" or whatever youd call someone that wants the best picture/sound quality at home and is willing to spend more money to get it (the kind of person that would have had laserdisc back in the day) probably has their movies as files on a hard disk or maybe several. Video files can exceed Bluray in image/sound quality as well as having things like commentary etc really its limitless depending on the video file format as long as you have a hard drive big enough. Also theres use as a computer storage medium that DVDs can be used for. Now i dont know the specifics of how blu rays can be used in this way but i know ive never seen a computer with a blu ray drive in it and have only seen blu ray drives for PC for sale online but i have no idea if they can be used to hold files or just play movies. Ive never seen spindles of blank blu rays around either (but you hardly see dvd-rws these days either). When DVDs were in widespread use as computer storage it helped push down the price of DVDs as well as associated tech players etc a lot. So TL;DR i think Bluray isnt surpassing DVD because of a combination of people choosing purely digital video (either streaming or playing back full video files) DVD being good enough for most people who still use physical media/for older movies and blu ray not being in widespread use as a computer storage format like DVD
just found ur channel, this some pimp shit u be tellin folks, joking accent aside, i really enjoyed your video and will be watching more form you
I had a Sony MDP-850D both-sides-play LD player from 1994 that used a different approach. When a side change was activated, the laser assembly moved laterally on a track that was shaped like a U on its side. The laser would travel round the curve in the U at which point it would be facing the opposite side of the disc.
SNR matters for both digital and analog signals. Digital is simply an all or nothing game. It does matter much less in between for digital as insinuated though.
The biggest problem I have with Bluray is that they don't always play in a given player. Some work in my Xbox One, others only in a PS4, some both, some neither but only in a set top Bluray player.
I can fix damn near anything mechanical but seriously suck at electronic/won't even try. Any idea why the 1st CD player I ever got (JVC i think, CD-2 Tape Decks-AM/FM-Remote-got it over 20yrs ago! I think I was 13, am 36 now) still works great & will play anything-no matter how scratched-but every single player I've bought since then won't play anything even remotely dirty or scratched and dies super fast-especially 5 disc players?
There are people who will argue all day that the quality of a digital signal DOES matter before it reaches the DAC. Hi Fi forums are interesting places.
speaking of rotting movies, the old fashioned movie film also rots quite badly, but in a more disgusting manner.
Holy crap at -4:35 its Vapor Wave Art Music !!
I’m that dedicated. I’ve got the pioneer amplifiers and the pioneer laser desk and I’ve been doing that for years. I’m old-school but it works. Not that I don’t burn Netflix up now but I still enjoy my old format
The probable reason for PAL only having one audio track is its higher bandwidth. It needs another MHz for its video. https://www.diffen.com/difference/NTSC_vs_PAL
Here's an example of an educational disc that is controlled by a computer. A project I wrote code for back in 1988-89. We used mostly Pioneer players. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNahQrOMMBI
P77777777 I have a bluray drive in my PC, and you can definitely burn Blurays... No idea why you would, given a single blank blu-ray can cost as much as a stack of 25 blank DVD's but they do exist. As for film playback on PC... The official software I got with the drive is unreliable and stutters. VLC media player can play bluray, but only if the encryption code is available online or locally, which it often isn't. One of my blurays resulted in me having to use about 3 programs and some obscure command line tools plus manual editing of some files to extract the key from the disk just so that VLC could play it since the software that the drive included was unbearable and had video playback that stuttered. Then I ran into disks which have an embedded Java runtime, for which the convoluted encryption key extraction method is insufficient. Meanwhile standalone bluray players require an internet connection or various films won't play. That's right. Bluray players require online updates for the sole purpose of updating the DRM features. So in short I have got a bluray drive for PC, and that's part of the reason I know how much of a headache it is. I've never had a problem with DVD playback aside from region codes, but fully 70% of every bluray I've ever tried to play has given me grief of some kind, especially when you attempt to play it through a PC... As for old films, you'd be surprised most stuff created and edited on film stock is of higher quality than even things creared on modern HD digital equipment. Both of those are better than anything filmed or edited on magnetic media. You can see this with Star Trek TNG which got a 1080p bluray release. Why was it possible when the original masters were SD quality? Because while all the effects shots and compositing was done on video tape, the actual shots of scenes and effects that everything was edited together from are on film stock. So at the cost of redoing all compositing, editing and some effects shots entirely, they could release the series in HD. This is possible because film negatives have relatively high quality. (not sure about movie film, but 35 mm phototographic film rates equivalent to about 25 megapixels in digital terms) Stuff that only exists on magnetic media or very early digital recordings though... That can never be improved. If it's on film stock you can rescan the film at higher resolution and likely get at least a 4k master out of any film stock used in the last 50 years...
I love those old computer animation demos. I think the newness of the medium, combined with the fact that many of the people working in it didn't have a background in traditional animation led them to imagine a lot of weird, fantastical scenes that you don't see anywhere else, before or since. The limitations of the technology probably played a role too; you got characters made of cylinders, spheres, and cones because those shapes were easier to render. Watching them today, they have a kind of funky retro-future vibe that instantly transports me back to my childhood.
19:58 and starring Daniel Day Lewis
Unfamiliar-errrrrrrr
The surge of stills cracked me up it’s like ‘WOAH’
You should have specifically mentioned Dragon's Lair. For Dirk the Daring! Left-forward-left-back-jump-right. It took a LOT of tokens to develop that muscle memory and save the princess.
that duplex unit ... to rotate the laser head !!!
The problem with your player appears to be that the motor is missing the pulley that the belt rides on. As a repair tech, I have never, ever seen a belt attach directly to a motor's armature.
(First of all sorry for my poor English, I'm learning it) WOW, i think i want to have one laserdisc player now haha. And, I would love to see an VideoNow review with all kind of explanations of how it works, is like an dvd player from Hasbro that uses an smal CD encoded with an propetary format, if you put one of that cds on your computer cd/dvd reader you have some audio files that have a rare noise on it. I have one and it's in good condiction, and i have an original CD and i recorded a few discs with an plugin for an audio editorthat i found on internet. If you want to do a review i will be grateful to send it to you if you couldn't find one. Have a nice day and keep it the good work!
DVD shows no signs of dying!?
No idea why but to me the shadow on your chin to the bottom of your neck looks like black spray paint.
hey now 13 year old me loved casper... well mainly christina ricci
A CAV disc makes a complete revolution for each and every video frame and this is what makes "trick play" functions possible. Re: 3:20 Apparently and unfortunately, many YouTubers do this sort of thing with impunity because the site doesn't take it down without being asked by the copyright holder. What they do devalues purchase of (physical) copies of music albums. Re: 9:09 So this meant there was cross-talk on newer players but not older ones.:( Regarding 19:49 DVDs also have error correction. In fact error correction is always applied to digital data stored on mechanical media.
idk if that animation anthology is the best example of an educational laserdisc. in my very limited experience with such laserdiscs, the biggest advantage was the ability to choose specific frames; you could put all sorts of computer generated charts and diagrams onto a single disc. aside from that was the ability to play short video clips on demand, both of which are amazing features in the days before the internet (I mean I guess you could have that on a cd-rom, but that's hard to show to an entire class). I guess entire presentation videos were also a thing, but I can't imagine that was too popular if a VHS tape could do the same.
Small wiggly things being a technical term, of course
22:00 "That plus your unfamiliarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...."
Is a movie on LD hard-telecined to force it to 30p? What happens with the 29.97 weirdness?
HEY! Casper was my favorite movie in 7th grade!
wow, so glad I stumbled on to this channel. great quality and content.
My father worked at a video/Hi-fi shop back in the 70's and 80's. They had set up one of those large Advent projector televisions pointing out the storefront window, and had a Laserdisc player hooked up to it. At night they'd leave it on, with the still-step freeze frame of Jaws eating Quint.
Whoever came up with "constant angular acceleration" needs to repent for his/her sins. Also they need to read a physics book.
12:30 FM modulated huh? ;) love these videos! I’ve watched most of your videos multiple times, they are so entertaining and informative at the same time!
1:54 - that's why there is a warning on the Devo dvd of The Complete Truth About Devolution. there are extras that fly through all sorts of cool collector stuff - looks just like this at 3:39
You are very gifted. Thank you for making these videos. Very impressive. God bless.
I'm so happy I discovered this channel!
Back in the 90s, teachers at my school had a laserdisc player that had an external barcode reader. You could use the reader to scan codes from a textbook and the player would immediately play that part of the disc. Pretty amazing in a time before mainstream computers and apps.
Late to the party but great doc/retrospective! I can't even begin to imagine how much work you put in to this series.
I had that 3d animation video - on VHS :).
Ah Laserdisc! Loved it as a youth, for the superior picture, sound, and most of all, audio commentaries! Better than film schools in some cases (My favorite is still PT Anderson's for the Boogie Nights picture). What are some of yours?
I wish there would have been more than a passing reference to LD-i, or any mention at all of Pioneer's LaserActive line of players that could play these discs. Other than letting the home gaming side of Laserdisc fall by the wayside, this was an interesting and informative video.
Laserdisc was so useful to educators I remember watching it in highschool, and that was back in 2010.
We need a video about error correction
You and Techmoan are my most watched over the last few weeks. Damn.
I like Laser disc because it has that old video fuzz coupled with the clarity of DVD's, but without the dodgeyness of DVD's with old shows on them, they just get pixelated, can't get pixilated if it's analogue.
Laser pickup mechanism: Both use a FM signal (Frequency Modulated) to read the discs. The difference between LDs and all other digital optical disc formats: for digital the pits and lands are all the same size either 1 or 0. For analog, they are of varying size, thus the more complicated pickup mechanism.
4:30 I had this LD!! Some of what it contained I’d seen in computer animation film festivals in the 1980s, (they were all short films). I had another one that had early Pixar stuff on it…the lamp…“State of the Art of Computer Animation (1988)” I think. These were the development and state of the art in computer animation for the 1980s.
That *both side* mechanism is very impressive. Although it was so slow, I think most users would probably prefer to take the disc out and flip it themselves. What I don't understand though, is why the other side would be reversed. They could simply print side B in reverse immediately?
the vaporware sequence was so good I need a cigarette now
Imagine how big a Both Side Play machine would be with a helium-neon laser.
22:54 I don't think it looks that bad actually
ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ
im confused . how can the audio not be digital if it is being read off of the disc? maybe i dont know what the actual differnce is. is it more like a signal intensity? THanks. Amazing videos man