We Bought a Giant Movie CD Player and it’s AMAZING - Pioneer LaserActive CLD-A100

At 9 minutes it felt like the video was ending but wasnt even near. The writers did a good job with this one

Absolutely amazing sponsor spot by Dennis lmao. Having him do these is actually genius

I bought a Laserdisk back in the late 80's at a garage sale. I LOVED it! I could never afford to buy the movies, but the public library rented them and I watched every single one! Loved it!!

Linus, The reason that CAV discs were provided for the final part of the movie was for the trick play features present on the remotes of most of the laserdisc players. That way the grand finale could be rewinded and fast forwarded 1 frame at a time. Allowing you to trick play explosions for example.

As someone who collects these and watches them regularly, I'm so happy to see this video.

The reason removing discs from the sleeve was uncomfortable is because, like with a record, you're meant to store the thin paper and/or plastic "inner sleeve" the other way around, so that you take the disc out still inside the inner sleeve, which is infinitely easier to remove safely. It also defends against dust better.

Laserdisc was also very popular in themepark land. Pioneer would actually burn you custom discs for your attraction. When Fantasmic! opened at Disneyland in 1992, they used 4 laserdisc players to get the 8 channels of digital audio. The players were all synched together by a DOS 386 machine running a program called "LDC." (For Laser Disc Controller) The 386 computer controlled the laserdisc players via RS232 connections to the players and sent them commands to go to specific SMPTE time code frames. The 386 computer was controlled by the main show control computer running custom software done by Scientific Systems at Disney and ran under OS/2. At Star Trek the Experience, they used custom laserdiscs for the audio and video for their main ride. Laserdiscs also did the replicator audio and video for Quark's bar and all the Pepsi commercials running on all the monitors at the attraction.

Just wanted to mention the revolutionary arcade game 'Dragon's Lair' (1983) which featured interactive beautiful full motion video (or FMV) of Don Bluth animation utilized Laser Disc technology. Considering at the time the most popular games would have been games like Donkey Kong, Pac-man etc which were basically ~8bit, it was really eye catching quality. Dragon's Lair was also the first arcade game credited for costing $0.50 - $1 per play while most games were still only $0.25 cents.

Laserdisc has a very strong relationship with fansubs (groups that subtitle and share anime) around the world, as it was a way of obtaining raw films in excellent quality and with subtitles that facilitated translation (in addition to Japanese-speaking fans, there were also private payments for translators ) It was something very expensive, it usually involved an Amiga Computer, “Genlock” (connecting two devices to the television and processing these two images simultaneously), these generated VHS matrices from these sources that were spread around (known as “tapesubs”, different from fully digital fansubs pos DVD/Internet) Every time someone traveled or imported a laser disc it was synonymous with a party in this niche, much of the impact of anime around the world was born like this.

Why does this video feel different? It feels like more of a mini doc than a regular LTT video. LOVE IT!!!!!

Great insights. The Smithsonian released Laser-ROM discs which included hundreds of thousands of photographs. Just the NASA disc alone had over 100,000 photos on it. Maybe not in today's expected web quality but probably 90% of them are nowhere to be found online. The Japanese David Lynch Dune boxset had at least three different versions of the movie. The Star Wars Special Edition box had a really nice hardback book in it. Then there is the epic Syd Mead Kronolog box.The Criterion box of 2001 had some great ROM extras on it. Art, documents etc. Almost all of Kate Bush's videos came out on laserdisc, and or Video CD, none of them were ever released on Blu-Ray or DVD. Out of the hundreds of discs I have, maybe two or three got disc rot.

Thanks Linus for the great short documentary on LD! Really enjoyed this. Been waiting for a good vid on LD. Always enjoy your stuff!

One key disadvantage of CLV vs CAV discs is that with CAV, the player could, almost instantly, seek to a specific frame. This is because, as you mentioned, each frame is exactly one concentric track. So a frame number corresponds directly to a specific head position. This was popular in library document retrieval systems. Libraries would scan in printed material a-la microfilm/microfiche, with each page consuming exactly one frame. You could then very quickly jump to any page you want or step from one page to the next. With CLV, it was not nearly that straightforward, so direct frame access was typically not possible. And certain freeze-frame/slow motion effects would frequently only be supported on CAV discs. BTW, if you look at a CAV disc, you can actually see the scan lines within each frame, because the horizontal blanking intervals all align with each other. So you see several hundred "radial" lines running from center to edge, each corresponding to where one scan line ends and the next begins. With CLV, the scan lines don't all line up, so you don't get that cool visual effect. BTW, one disadvantage of LaserDisc over CD/DVD/BD is that the clear plastic is acrylic (vs. polycarbonate for CD/DVD/BD). This is why alcohol-based cleaners cloud it. It is also easier to crack and it is easier to warp in extreme temperatures. I'm not sure why LD didn't move to polycarbonate - maybe there is a technical reason I'm unaware of.

It's hard to describe but the vibe of this video feels really different to other LTT videos. And I don't mean that in a bad way at all. I would love to see more videos like this! Props to the writers as this must've taken a long time to research!

I was the proud owner of a Pioneer LD player for many years. This format presented to me for the first time, extended and deleted scenes from what still remains my all-time favorite flick, ALIEN. It was an amazing box set, as was ALIENS. In the sequel, the HUGE extra scene that showed us what happened to Newt's family in the BEGINNING of the chaos BEFORE the Sulaco (spacecraft Ripley returned to the 'scene of the crime' on), was incredible to view for the first time, especially on this format. I purchased quite a few classic titles, but my 'pride and joy' LD's were the box sets - and of course I can't forget about the debut print of the 4-hour version of 'Dances With Wolves'. Cosmetically, that was the most beautiful, well-packaged and presented box set EVER. It was a reminder of the good old "LP" record days, with the album covers big enough that their visual design was given more focus and concern, because of the larger canvas the recording and visual artists had to work with. If you're under 30 years of age reading this, trust me - you missed out on a pop culture many of us have very fond memories of. LD was definitely a good part of it for quite a long time.

I still have mine and it still works with the about 40 movies I have. Those things were expensive compared to DVDs today.

LaserDiscs were also used for Industrial/Army systems. Disney parks rides were using LaserDiscs for animations that needed to be projected and looped continuously for each ride. The fast chapter seeking + no wear of the laser light on the disc meant that only the player needed to be serviced/replaced once in a while. A VHS tape was just not an option.

Its about time we have more Dennis! He's a gem and always been my favorite! 👍

Thanks, you brought back a lot of happy memories of my Pioneer Elite Laserdisc days collecting movies on laserdisc with my brother. The late 90s when laserdisc was still hot doesn't seem that long ago. Its amazing how fast times have changed. I wish i knew you back then Linus.

freaking amazing!!! that content has an academic level, all sources there and more great stuff! THANK YOU!!