It is amazing how many different models of Laserdisc players they made

[Calavera]

Pioneer alone made 100s of different models
http://laserdiscarchive.co.uk.lddb.com/pioneer1.htm

Laserdisc archive has models for FIFTY different brands listed! I find it interesting that so many different models of LD players were made through the 80s and 90s plus the fact that pretty much every movie up to around 1999 or so is on Laserdisc. Because pretty much anyone I talk to had never even heard of a Laserdisc.

I'm guessing back then you only really knew about them if you were a real videophile. For everyone else good ole VHS was good enough. I've probably told this but in the 90s the only time I ever saw a Laserdisc was in elementary school. We watched The Voyage of the Mimi on Laserdisc. At the time I thought Laserdisc was just something that schools and businesses had. I had no idea every movie ever made was on Laserdisc!

Sometime around 2003 I realized that tons of movies were on LD. I would search different movies on Ebay and be amazed when a Laserdisc of that movie showed up. So of course I bought a player and ended up with somewhere around 50-70 movies. Back then DVDs were kind of expensive and LDs were dirt cheap. I can remember the boxset for Beverly Hills Cop 1-3 on DVD was something insane like $70. But on LD they were like $5 a piece. I spent that summer watching tons of 80s-90s movies on Laserdisc with my brother. It was fun times.

But back to the many models of LD players. I find it pretty crazy they made so many models because when you actually look at them many of them are basically the same. Sure they eventually added dual-side play so you didn't have to flip the disc and improved audio. And there were some commercial versions. But for the most part many of them are more or less the same especially when it comes to video quality. Whether you had a Pioneer CLD-D703,Pioneer CLD-2950 or a Pioneer CLD-D503 you were going to have the same experience watching LDs! I'm not even convinced that the high end last models from 1999 (Pioneer DVL-919) are really much better than your average 90s LD player. I'd say most LDs that have S-video out are all going to look basically the same.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how many models they made when you think of how many models of VCRs and DVD players they also made. But VHS and DVD were mainstream. LD was pretty niche for how many different models they made. It is also crazy how many different VCRs they made even though they were mainstream. After a certain point they were all pretty similar. Sure a 1997 VCR is going to have a better picture than a 1984 model but a 1994 and a 1999 are going to be pretty much the same.

I'm just rambling on, sometimes I like to just type stuff. Hopefully at least one of you found it interesting.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

LD was pretty big in Japan and other parts of Asia, so that's why Pioneer made so many different players. They sold a lot of them. According to Wiki, 16.8m LD players were sold worldwide, 9.5m of those were sold by Pioneer.

Let's watch a laserdisc movie!

[ian]

There needed to be different models. And if you can't tell the difference between the LDV143MSRHJ21 with it's 8bit Dolby sound and the LDV143MSRHJ22 with its 8 bit stereo sound and the LDV143MSRHJ23 with its 10 bit Dolby stereo sound, then are you even worthwhile of watching a movie on laserdisc?

[Calavera]

There needed to be different models. And if you can't tell the difference between the LDV143MSRHJ21 with it's 8bit Dolby sound and the LDV143MSRHJ22 with its 8 bit stereo sound and the LDV143MSRHJ23 with its 10 bit Dolby stereo sound, then are you even worthwhile of watching a movie on laserdisc?

8-Bit Stereo sound? 8-bit like an NES? Why would I want my movies to sound like Castlevania? No no no, you need to spend a bunch of money to get a Laserdisc Player that is capable of AC-3 sound plus an AC-3 de-modulator and a receiver that is capable of handling AC-3. Be amazed as you listen closely and say "I think it sounds a little bit better than normal"

I was looking through different models of Laserdisc and I must say I wouldn't mind having one of these white "Lasermax" models.





I find it kind of funny Sony were calling them Lasermax since that was never a name used for the Laserdisc format. First they called it Discovision in the late 70s then switched to LaserVision in the 80s before finally just calling it Laserdisc. But Sony had to try and make up their own name. Lasermax! the sequel to the famous and super successful Betamax format!

[Calavera]

I currently own two Laserdisc players and around 20 Laserdiscs. The two models I own are an RCA LDR610 and a Pioneer CLD-S303




The RCA was $15 and the Pioneer was $10 and they both work fine. Apparently RCA only made 8 different models of Laserdisc and the LDR610 is the best one. They did make one after the LDR610 the LDR-900K but it doesn't even have S-video and was more focused on Karaoke than movies.

With all that has happened lately like many other things I used to enjoy I've also lost interest in Laserdiscs and am trying to sell both players and all my discs. Even though I don't care and am selling them I actually picked up the CLD-S303 only about a week ago. For $10 I couldn't pass it up. When I first got it home and tried it it didn't work, wouldn't even spin the disc. I took it apart and slightly loosened the screws on the metal bar that runs across the player and holds the disc in place and then it worked great!

Apparently that is a very common problem with Laserdisc players. If people had something heavy sitting on top of the player it could cause the bar to get slightly bent and put too much pressure on the disc not allowing it to spin. For $10 I should be able to easily make money on it. The problem is with bigger stuff like that I don't like to use Ebay anymore. Shipping is so damn expensive plus you get idiots who buy 30+ year old electronics and then blame you if it stops working. I test everything I sell and make sure it is working fine when I send it out but the stuff is old. It could keep working for another 30 years or quit after 2 weeks. Some people treat Ebay like it is Amazon and don't seem to realize you are buying the stuff from a person and not a company. They can be assholes and demand a refund even if nothing is wrong with the item. Then I have to pay to ship the damn thing back! So I end up losing like $50 I don't have on shipping it to them and them shipping it back.

One time I sold a Logitech Driving Force GT. There was nothing wrong with but the buyer was an ass and just decided he didn't want. First he messages me and says it doesn't work right and that all the buttons don't work when it is used on a PC. I explained to him that I had the same issue at first and you have to download the software for it and told him where to download it. He then messaged back and said oh I should have thought of that but I still want to return it because it smells like smoke..... It was a plastic steering wheel not something make of fabric. We had a woodstove going at that time so it is possible it did have a smoky smell. It would have went away eventually. I game him easy solutions to help the smell go away quicker. He says that didn't work and that it smells so bad he can't even be in the same room with it. Funny that if it was that bad he didn't mention that right away and instead chose to say the buttons didn't work. So I had to end up paying to ship the fucking thing back.

Another time some asshole in Florida bought a DVD player from me. He gets it and says it doesn't work. I knew for a fact it worked fine as I had just tested it before shipping. He insists it doesn't work and says some bullshit about how he took it to a shop and they couldn't fix it. What the hell kind of shop works on DVD players? It wasn't an expensive one so I ended up just letting him keep the damn thing as it wasn't worth the price of sending it back. I'm sure that is what he was counting on. People are such assholes.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

I own a couple of laserdiscs, which I got from a recycle shop, although I can't remember what they are. It was shock to see a box of them. Someone had picked trough them already though by the time I saw them.