(no subject)

[ibmman]

I have finally acquired a laserdisc player! I've wanted one since 4th grade, and a few months ago I bought a laserdisc (robotech vol.1) in order to force myself to get a player. It was given to me for helping somone so I didn't even have to spend any money. Its a pioneer CLD-D503 and it has auto reverse and an s-video out also. And it works too!! beautiful piece of obsolete technology. The entire 'entertainment system' down here now consists of all technology that was once the best in its class, or at least really freaking good. 21" RCA colortrack 2000 (tons of inputs, a video output, built in amp for external speakers, probably about 10 years old now), sony stereo VCR from like '95 (one of the neat ones with the backlit lcd and jog dial, picked that up for free last year, replaced the ancient mono GE vcr, toshiba SD-3006 dvd player (paid $40 for it last year, first dvd player in the house, when I realized that it was toshiba's second model made and the one that had been more aimed toward videophiles i thought hey thats kind of cool its almost a piece of history, but some discs do have problems in it but it works) and of course the laserdisc player now which has features (such as auto side change) that were expensive at the time. I just checked the date on the back, it'll be 10 years old in august. ok so yeah i know i like old stuff... but I think I have valid reasons to like laserdisc. First of all, the discs are giant. double sided 12" shiny optical discs, simply marvelous. As far as audio and video go, laserdisc was unbeatable for 20 years. No wear like magnetic VCR tapes, more lines of resolution, and eventually digital and even surround sound. Laserdisc video doesn't suffer from compression artifacts like dvd does since the video isn't compressed, and in many cases sound quality is actually better than dvd because the audio isn't compressed on stereo discs (dolby digital is actually a compression method as well as a way of reproducing surround sound). I've recently purchased some dvds that were pretty highly compressed, so much so that blocks were clearly visible, something that you dont get with laserdisc. You can also pause at any point and get a perfectly clear still frame that does not suffer from any of the shakiness or distortion you'd get on a vcr and even on most DVDs although some dvd players have integrated methods of fixing that. That still frame pause feature isnt enabled on all discs, like the robotech disc I have it will goto a blue screen that says 'pause' in friendly letters in the corner; the disc stays spinning though and once you hit play again it resumes instantly. Ah well I should probably goto sleep now...

Comments

[thepowernerd.livejournal.com]

hey, congrats! about time, isnt it? lol