How could I pass THIS up?

capecodder

Well, the usual yard sale weekend of hunting landed me with the proverbial "You'll never know what you'll find" item(s).

I was at one yard sale looking at some old beat up albums when guy walks up and tells me of another yard sale nearby that I didn't know about. He saw me looking at the albums and said the other one also had a lot more but in very good condition. He had just bought 130 of them (damn!) but there were a bunch more.

So.., I high tail it over and he was right about the albums condition but I only picked out 4 that I had any interest in (wish I had seen what he grabbed first). However, i start looking at this stack-o-videodisks that is sitting next to a 1980's vintage RCA videodisk player. Sign on top of player says "$50 for player, accesories and all disks". I start reading the title's of the movies and its a wonderful collection of '60's thru '80's movies. Classic ones like Apocolypse Now, China Town, Bullit, French Connection, Blade Runner, The Boat, Good Bad & Ugly, FistFull Dollars and Few Dollars More, Straw Dogs, Airplane etc, about 8 Bond movies, all the Mad Max movies, 3 Star Trek movies and the first 3 Star Wars, bunch of cool B-grade horror and sci-fi stuff (Swamp Thing, Escape from New York, Halloween 1, 2 and 3 etc.), music videos of the Beatles, Who, Pink Floyd. Crap, I realize he's got about 120 films, almost all of which I would keep and watch again (OK I may toss the Jane Fonda Workout since I already have it on tape:rolleyes: ). My youngest 15 year old son who came with me is jumping out of his skin at all the titles. Everything is in very good condition, some actually unopened.

So, I take it all, load it all into the trunk (damn things are heavy) and schlep the stuff into the basement to the "secondary" movie watching area where I hooked it up in about 10 minutes and everything works like a charm. Video quality maybe only a little better than VHS but who cares. Sound actually quite good. So, while this was nothing I would have EVER sought out looking for, I now have a way cool selection of movies, in a funky format, to kill some boring winter evenings.

Ya just never know what you'll find....

engtaz

Congrats

rskarvan

After you get bored with a movie, you can always convert it to a frisbee!

madmax

Cool! I've been collecting used laserdiscs with the same ideas in mind.

janmike

Congrats.

capecodder

Having never used this format, is there a difference between laser disks in general and videodisks, or is it a generic term? As I mentioned this is an RCA player and (I think) the disks are all RCA.

billbillw

capecodder wrote: »

Having never used this format, is there a difference between laser disks in general and videodisks, or is it a generic term? As I mentioned this is an RCA player and (I think) the disks are all RCA.

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/cedfaq.html

These videodiscs are a grooved media, not laser read, so they are an analog system. Laserdisc is a digital system.

I can remember my family renting these for the weekend when I was a young teen. A local video shop rented the player and 3 movies for the weekend for pretty cheap. I saw some of my first R rated movies on this format! Porkys, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Last American Virgin, Risky Business, Stripes, etc, etc. All the 80s classics it seems.

capecodder

billbillw wrote: »

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/cedfaq.html

These videodiscs are a grooved media, not laser read, so they are an analog system. Laserdisc is a digital system.

Huh, I never even thought of that. I just assumed it must be a laser/digital setup. I watched the 3rd Star Trek movie last night (Search For Spock) with my son and it did skip a few times. I thought it might be smudges on the disk so I pulled it out (also I was just curious) and looked the disk over. Didn't see anything worth cleaning, and yes these things do look just like records. He gave me a new stylus in a box so maybe I should install the new one if the other one is a little worn. I didn't even look at the stylus in the box or maybe I would have realized this was an analog medium.

Wonder how the stylus would sound on my Linn LP12 TT??:rolleyes:

cfrizz

Cool, Congrats!