Laserdisc-The godfather of ALL consumer optical disc media

honestaquarian

I went to the shop today and left with one player. The original one that I've had for more than a decade. The later one that I more recently got on eBay is working better, but there were still noise issues in the picture. Not as bad as they were, but the picture was clearly better on my original player. @jdjohn I'm watching the Eagles disc now.

jdjohn

Cool...I hope you enjoy it.

honestaquarian

honestaquarian

Once he got the transport mechanism on the other player cleaned up (the old lubricant that they used turns into gum when it gets old he said) He took another look at my original player and using the new player as a template, realized whet the issue was with the older player and fixed it! He changed out the power supply as well with the one I brought him a year ago. So the player you see in the pic is the one I’ve had for over a decade. The one I bought recently is still at the shop. I expect I’ll be hearing from him sometime next year.

honestaquarian

honestaquarian

Just got this for my DVL-91
It’s NOS (New Old Stock) and so can definitely see a difference between this and the cable I had been using. Which was just an audio cable that I grabbed and used.
I was using Monster M1000sv S-Video cable out to the Onkyo previously before I got the Marantz.
Howevah
The Marantz doesn’t have S-Video ins. Just a couple of Composite video ins.
Which is fine, because unlike S-VHS VCR’s. Laserdiscs don’t lay down the Chroma (Color) and brightness (black and white) information separately-The reason why S-Video connectors were created. Laserdisc players used their color decoders to separate them out and send them down to your monitor or receiver. Sometimes they were better than the ones in the TV 📺 and sometimes not.
So maybe you could see a difference between the S-Video and Composite and maybe not, depending on what you were using.
In this case the Marantz is converting the signal to HDMI and sending it out to the monitor.

honestaquarian

These are my anamorphic widescreen titles (so far)

pitdogg2

Be very careful with those. The only RCA ends to ever pull off the outer ground ring of my RCA inputs were just like those made by Monster. They earned the name "death grip" !! They ruined more than one set of RCA inputs, I never used them ever again.

honestaquarian

Ivan
Yeah they definitely have a tight grip. Then again so do the MIT cables that I use.......................It's not like I'll be switching them out any time soon.
I'm watching T2 Anamorphic right now. It AMAZES me how many different versions of this movie have been released on home video (and how many I have myself on Laserdisc AND DVD)
I'm also rediscovering the Jog Dial and Shuttle wheel on the remote control. MAN I wish they would bring these two back again!!!

Plus there is an old feature that Blu-ray players adopted later in a slightly different form. You can hit last memory and stop the movie and go make dinner or something. When you are ready to start it back up where you left off, just hit last memory and it will go right back to that spot and start playing again. YES a Blu-ray player will remember it automatically now, but Laserdisc had it first!

pitdogg2

👍🏿👍🏿

honestaquarian

If you look at lbbd.com you will see some of the story behind the two movies at the top of the pic.
Mad Max was apparently a disc mastering error. It wasn’t supposed to be anamorphic, but it definitely is. So I got it cheap and confirmed it is anamorphic. The fugitive was one of only four USA 🇺🇸 releases intentionally mastered in anamorphic.
Toshiba was giving them away when you purchased one of their widescreen rear projection sets.
The other three were Unforgiven, Free Willy and Grumpy Old Men. The vast, overwhelming majority of the other anamorphic titles were Japan only.
Believe it or not there are three different T-2 anamorphic titles available. One was the same as the one I have, but in a black jacket (extremely rare) and the other is a THX certified title that is supposed to be better than the one I have (and also significantly more expensive even used)

honestaquarian

I just remembered the reason why they wanted to make anamorphic squeeze Laserdiscs. A standard letterbox image uses some of the available lines of resolution for the black bars. basically wasted resolution space on the screen. When it is an anamorphic squeeze more of the screen space and resolution is used for the picture and not the black bars.

They had also proposed using Component video for Laserdisc players.

Unfortunately such an idea was ahead of it's time for home theater.

When DVD came along hot on the heals of HDTV and wide screen sets, this idea finally came to see the light of day for the general public INSTEAD of just some geeky enthusiasts into the high end and home theater (which was still kinda in it's infancy)

BlueBirdMusic

I have never seen a laserdisc movie.

I wish I could say otherwise because I have heard a lot of people say they are great.

I have seen a few collections of them for sale at Goodwill when I was looking for lps a few years ago.

skipshot12

Total green person here on laser discs….
What is the interest in these?
Picture, sound, other things?

pitdogg2

skipshot12 wrote: »

Total green person here on laser discs….
What is the interest in these?
Picture, sound, other things?

Before DVD they were the epitome of video reproduction, the first to actually have AC3 ( Dolby Digital) or DTS surround sound.

honestaquarian

@skipshot12
What @pitdogg2 said above 👆🏾
Take a little time and scroll through this old ****$ thread and a lot of your questions will likely be answered.

skipshot12

Thank you.

Link said user not found?

honestaquarian

skipshot12 wrote: »

Thank you.

Link said user not found?

@skipshot12 What link?
Just look at the top or bottom of this thread page and you can see and read all of the previous posts on this thread. It goes back to 2015, so there are 23 pages and counting.

If you clicked on that multi star with the $ At the end. That wasn’t a link, it is the site bleeping out what I said which was (let’s see if I can get away with this here by doing this) old @ $ $ thread.

skipshot12

Yea, I ain’t puter smart non…..

txcoastal1

skipshot12 wrote: »

Yea, I ain’t puter smart non…..

https://youtu.be/dQhq3eJVvwU

honestaquarian

Just won this one eBay.
Now I will have a fifth title in my anamorphic squeeze collection of Laserdiscs. This will also be my third copy of this movie. I have a letterboxed Dolby Digital copy. A letterboxed DTS copy and now this anamorphic copy. It has Dolby Digital.
Someone on laserdisc database dot com said that it is too bad there were not any anamorphic DTS titles.
I echo that sentiment!

honestaquarian

This used to be a DTS demo

honestaquarian

https://youtu.be/dFUPAtgdEcE?si=_cQ4CkO3Sx3po6mF

honestaquarian

Anamorphic Squeeze titles

honestaquarian

https://youtu.be/3-eLAzWn88U?si=xExUaK3yWX6nprxk

mikejedi0619

I thought I was the only nut with two working LD players — Yamaha CDV 870 that I bought brand new in 1995. And a McIntosh MLD 7020 that I bought in 2007 — it’s a rebadged CLD-97 Elite by Pioneer. (It might have a tiny audio tweak in the power supply I believe )

The Yamaha tray mech went out last year and I had it fixed by my trusty tech here in Las Vegas — Jim at Rocky Top. Wonderful dude !! Very reasonable cost. !


Everything still works perfect

The McIntosh had a belt replaced and the Auto Mechanism tweaked. That’s it. Thankfully working as great as well.

To me there is still something special about LD Especially the sound can be Blu Ray quality beleive it !! Or as good or better in certain cases fidelity wise.

My Top Gun THX AC3 disc .. imo the DVD can’t even match it and the Blu Ray while really great sound wise still I feel doesn’t have the same fidelity of the LD. Have yet to try my 4k Top Gun (yet) I’m sure the picture will be better. Hopefully the remastered track beats my LD


Still have love for amazing sounding 4k soundtracks however! — Saving Private Ryan has an awesomeness Atmos track !!!!!!!

Just my .02 ! have fun !

skipshot12

Interesting you mention blu-ray.

I have quite a few blu-ray audio discs along with concerts recorded via blu-ray.
I find the sound from them equal to, if not better than, my SACD’s, DVD-A discs.

honestaquarian

@mikejedi0619 The McIntosh has an AC-3 RF out yes?
That and maybe the electronics are the main difference between it and the Pioneer on which it is based. Pioneer transports were used by most of the companies who made Laserdisc players.
As for audio quality. Weeeeeeellllll as much as I LOVE my Laserdiscs, they and DVD cannot compete with Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray. Even the 16bit uncompressed stereo digital soundtracks do not have the same amount of information that the Blue discs have. That is Master tape quality!(and it is lossless compression compared to the Dolby AC-3 and DTS soundtracks on Laserdiscs which is lossy compressed)
There is simply A LOT MORE INFORMATION on the Blue discs.
@skipshot12 You are right about them being equal to if not better than SACD or DVD-A discs.
(Although to start an unrelated argument SACD has a LOT more information that DVD-A discs)

honestaquarian

@mikejedi0619 A player of the caliber of your McIntosh deserves an AC-3 RF demodulator of the same caliber.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/326416170446?itmmeta=01JJJ6XR3QXVNN9ZRNR0MY15SR&hash=item4bffeb7dce:g:XZwAAOSwHU9mmaJX

I have this Meridian
It was the industry standard in RF Demodulators. It has a jitter reduction circuit built in, because Laserdiscs were known to be prone to such.

skipshot12

Want to hear what pcm can do, a really good disc is boom boom by John Lee hooker on dvd audio at 24/96.
The dynamics are sweet.