Does anyone still buy Laserdiscs?

[Wildcat]

Back in the 90s, I was buying quite a few LDs. But naturally as time went on, I gravitated towards DVD, BluRay and downloads and currently, I rarely watch video beyond a few YouTube channels I follow. Some of my favorites were ripped from DVD or BluRay to a media server several years ago, and I would say I haven't even watched most of them since that time.

Is there any LD community out there anymore?

I probably have over 100 titles I will never watch again. They're too heavy to ship, and the used record/video stores don't want them, especially older titles that were full screen and not remastered. And I certainly don't want to send them to the landfill...but we need to downsize drastically by the end of the year due to a pending relocation, and all of these need to go as soon as I can get them out of here. I really do need to list them so I know what I have.

Unfortunately due to a water heater incident, a few dozen of the jackets got water damage. I'm guessing the discs should still be OK.

There are some I would still hang onto or, if I could find a good way to convert them, would digitize and store on my server instead. I still do have a player that might work (Pioneer DVL-700), and I have one of those ancient Pioneer top loaders, which if I remember, was the LD-660.

[admin]

Love my laserdisc collection. I have around 1700 titles in my current collection. I still enjoy watching them very much. The video quality is clearly not blu-ray level but it still has excellent sound quality even for today's standards. The analog video also has that nostalgic feel that I don't often see in newer movies any more.

There is a (relatively) large and active LD community at www.lddb.com. So definitely check them out.

Sorry to hear about the water damage. The discs themselves should be fine as they are completely sealed plastic coating over the the data layer. Depending on the extent of the damage to the covers, some of the covers may need to go, especially if it looks like it's growing mold. I wouldn't throw them out immediately if they are even somewhat salvageable as many collectors want the covers (even if damaged). Listing on craigslist as an entire lot for a cheap price (like $1-2 per movie) will probably get it sold relatively quickly. If higher, then you really have to wait for a party that is specifically looking for some of the titles.

As for the conversion, you would need to buy a capture device for your computer that has RCA video inputs. Unfortunately, in my experience this often does not produce a very good picture due to the cheap analog to digital video conversion chips they have in these devices. Unlike most modern digital players (which have relatively similar output quality regardless of high end player vs low end), LD players will have a very significant effect on the output video quality so it also makes sense to try and use the best quality player you can get your hands on.

[Wildcat]

The DVL-700 did have a nice video output from what I remember (it was the first Pioneer player which also played DVDs), but I also didn't have a 4K setup like I do now to compare. I used to have a spare CLD-D406 as a backup player, but found I never used it, and sold it to someone who had a use for it. (I doubt the old LD-660 top-loader is worth much; I don't even know if it still works.) I agree on the A/D chips in some modern video cards--they're so cheap as to be commodity items.

I remember I had a few Criterion titles, but not too many. But I blame part of my former addiction on the Columbia House LD club as, once I fulfilled my agreement, they were sending me a lot of notices about these big sales they would have, incredible bargains, and I loaded up. That and when Tower Records near us had their sales, we saved a lot there also. (My first three titles with Columbia House were, of course, the old letterboxed 20th Century Fox (blue/silver border) releases of the original versions, which many of us on CompuServe bought as our first titles. )

With all the titles you have, chances are I don't have anything you would be missing. Plus I had a stack of a couple dozen titles that looked terrible once we got new "remastered" versions that were restored. Some of those looked amazing for their day!

[admin]

The two biggest factors for the encoding quality are going to be the player and then the upscaling chip in the encoder. I don't think it's going to make a significant difference whether you encode into 1080p or 4k. Even at 1080p you are increasing pixal count by 4x. Pushing it to 16x will be of questionable benefit. Now we can't really use pixel counts as the video on LD is analog but I think there is a limit on how much benefit you get from pushing the digital resolution. I would argue that a more significant factor would be trying to minimize compression artifacts by using a high bitrate encode.

One of the reasons why I still use my Onkyo Receiver from over a decade ago is that it has a very nice analog to digital chip that does justice to the analog video of LD. I've seen LD look terrible on some newer receivers that have "4K upscaling" and you can tell that it was designed to upscale digital media and was not optimized for analog inputs. Matter of fact, if you can get your hands on one for cheap, it may be worth it just for your LD sources (link to unit below).

https://www.techradar.com/reviews/audio ... 327/review

[Wildcat]

I agree about the upsampling--I don't see a need to exceed 1080p or perhaps even 720p. If I can get them copied cleanly with a minimum of artifacts, that is all I can ask for. And it's not like any of them are really important video titles either, but I would still like a way to watch them at some point in the future. (My only video component now is an NVidia Shield.)

[admin]

Also, keep in mind that some LD's are mastered with different IRE levels depending on region (PAL and Japan NTSC are set at 0 IRE and NTSC here in the US was 7.5). In other words, you may have to fiddle with the black levels to optimize the picture.

[Wildcat]

No worries there--all of mine were US/NTSC discs. Thanks for all of the info!

[admin]

Recently bought a lot of what was advertised at 630 laserdiscs. It even had the discs entered into a database so I though I could just incorporate that list directly into my collection.

Well, it turned out that a lot of the discs were not listed so I'm going through individually. And clearly it is way more than 630 titles. This is taking an incredible amount of time. I have 100's of pounds of titles sitting in my garage, dining room, and home theater room now. Boy what a mess. I also tripped over a box in the basement and cut my hand (as I'm storing duplicates down there). Who says we don't suffer for our passions?

I'm really happy to get all these new titles but didn't expect it to be so much work. I hope that over the course of the next week or two I can have this sorted out!

[Wildcat]

Our small basement, and the garage, both look like a warehouse, so I can relate. We seriously need to start downsizing in anticipation of moving/relocating within the next year or two. I did come across my couple of boxes of laserdiscs a few months ago while looking for some old records, but I really need to make a list one of these days.

[admin]

Our small basement, and the garage, both look like a warehouse, so I can relate. We seriously need to start downsizing in anticipation of moving/relocating within the next year or two. I did come across my couple of boxes of laserdiscs a few months ago while looking for some old records, but I really need to make a list one of these days.

Downsizing,... what's that?

If you want to catalog the laserdiscs, I recommend making an account on www.LDDB.com as they have a database with just about every title released.

[Wildcat]

Downsizing is what we have to do if 1) I don't ever want to move so many things in my life again like we did a dozen years ago, or 2) pay a lot to have it moved. But yeah, I totally get it. We use the term "downsizing" to describe something we *want* to do.

It would also be nice to have my basement and garage back. We essentially combined three households into one, a dozen years ago, and since we had planned to stay here only a year or two, we left a lot of our belongings boxed up. Some of those boxes I haven't even looked in for 14 or more years. And I have old "junk" that really needs to be recycled (I don't need to be saving an entire large box of old RCA cables, speaker wire, etc., that I'll never be using again, or components that are cool to own but also will never be using again).

[AnotherJohnson]

I feel your pain … literally.

[admin]

In all seriousness. I fined it really hard to throw things away. Over a 10 year period my wife and I accumulated a lot of "stuff" that was just sitting in the basement. One summer we did a big cleaning and we agreed that if there was anything down there that we have not used in the past 5 years, we would throw it out. Our thinking was that if we had not touched something in over 5 years, the chance of us ever using it was next to zero. We ended up taking three truckloads to the landfill. It's hard to throw out that perfectly good mixer, but we have one in the kitchen and you know you are never going to use the 2nd one. At the end it was cathartic and the basement looks so much nicer without things on the ground!

[Wildcat]

You know you're old when...you and your youngest are both shopping for a stove at the same time.

I don't have too many boxes of things from the kids (maybe four or five, and they can be condensed), but I was trying to rearrange some space to make room for the old refrigerator in the basement. So many boxes of things I had no use for. We'll probably give away the bulk of it online (Freecycle list, Marketplace, etc.) and send the rest to the Salvation Army. What remains, I plan on buying some of the heavier duty totes from Costco and consolidating what we want to keep into those. I thought of doing an audio "moving sale" but don't really want to deal with the local crazies. I might see if the record store around the corner might want the Laserdiscs and a few stacks of duplicate records, just as a donation to help a local business. I also have to get out of the mindset of "one day, when I set up a second system...".

[Wildcat]

I have to resist the temptation to go to this estate sale not too far from the house. One thing that caught my eye immediately was this stack:

too-many-ld-players.jpg (72.1 KiB) Viewed 3352 times

The amount of stuff at this estate sale is mind-boggling.

https://www.estatesales.net/MI/Clinton- ... 36/3536076

Many items were multiples, like the LD players. There are entire stacks of old XBOX game consoles, a box of new 25 ft. extension cords, a box of new blank cassettes, a cabinet with new blank CD-Rs, and there is also a stockpile of now-rare R12 refrigerant for older cars. All of the audio equipment is mid-fi at best, but there are so many other things there that it's tempting to go and see if there is anything I could use. Except for the LD players...as I have one already. I just wonder if any of these items work, though.

I wish I could sneak in my boxes of unwanted LDs and place them near the LD players.

[admin]

You should go, that looks like so much fun! I wonder what the story behind this was. Not just the massive laserdisc player collection but all the other goodies in that house. Those guitars look cool and it looks as if there are many "treasures" to be found. I wish that was near me!

[Wildcat]

I might toddle over there this afternoon--the opening mornings of these sales are usually crowded with a wait to get into the house. I bet any of the classic car guys out there will probably buy up all of those R12 canisters. If those were sold at street prices, they'd be worth a small fortune.

The house certainly does have a "man cave" vibe to it!