TNL Gentlemen's Laserdisc Society

Formerly the TNL Horsecart Repair Club (disbanded).

Got a laserdisc player? This is the thread for that. For movie watching, shop talking, and maybe even a bit of trading.

Laserdisc is an interesting format! Pre-dating CDs, you get most of what made DVD great happening fifteen years earlier with great gatefold album art. A lot of your early Special Edition DVD supplements came directly from laserdiscs, you get dual-audio tracks for isolated scores or commentaries, proper THX editions, and nice extras like typed liner notes on nice paper stock. For studios that really wanted to show off their best movies, you get some outstanding releases. You've got to flip the discs often times, but there are caveats to that; Extended Play (CLV) discs have fewer sides but you can't freeze frame on most players, while CAV discs give you much higher quality and still frame capabilities at the trade off of having more discs (and tend to be slightly more expensive as a result). Audio is a big deal on these --on a well-mastered disc sound can be high-end CD quality, and the stereo mixes for many discs beat the hell out of the surround sound mixes on many DVDs!

Truly the format for the refined gentleman or lady. Also there's an Error Turtle.

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Breaking in my new player. Picked up a still-in-plastic Pioneer CLD-V700, which is basically a karaoke machine! Looks awesome on the Sony Trinitron, running analog-to-analog through composite cables.
I've been setting up my garage as a proper mostly-internet-free workspace this week, and I figure old media should rule there.

Inaugural watching:

Predator - First movie in the machine. Great bassy soundtrack and gunfire

True Lies - Glossy and rad action picture. That Jamie Lee Curtis scene, damn. After Strange Days, was this the last good James Cameron thing? The back label on the last disc has an "Omega Section" logo on it, nice touch.

Star Wars (Widescreen) - Goddamn right Han shot first. He was the only one doing any shooting whatsoever.

The Wild Bunch (Director's Cut) - Murder-Eyes Ernest Borgnine right before the shooting starts at the end is the scariest thing in the world.

Citizen Kane (Criterion) - Actually my first time seeing this as an adult, one of those movies that you keep hearing how important it is that you approach it like vegetables instead of the rare steak of a movie that it really is. The examination of the surface-altruistic but ultimately selfish rich liberal.
TON of extras on this one, right down to the storyboards and stills of the film's budget and an alternate-audio section. Turns out DVD extras were around in 1984!

Casablanca (Criterion) - Still great. Gonna check out the audio commentary next time I need something to listen to while drawing.

Beauty and the Beast Work-In-Progress (CAV) - I think this was included on the Blu-Ray but was on LD twenty years prior. Every stage of the movie is represented in the workprint, from storyboard thumbnails to final animation, with the final soundtrack on top of it. Really cool to see.

Aladdin (CAV) - So nice. Holds up well too --the craft of the movie is really outstanding.

Next up, Akira (Criterion)

I liked that the commentary on the Mallrats DVD was originally on the laser disc, and featured kevin smith shit talking the dvd format.

Yeller has been bitten by the bug!

I've mentioned most of this elsewhere, but earlier in the year I was talking to a bud who had picked up a cheap ld player and fixed it. I thought I'd do the same, but instead ended up with a DVL-700 player. A hardcore collector friend says it's one of the best players ever released in North America. I dunno about that but it looks nice on the pvm. I picked up a second cheapie industrial player to hook up to the hdtv, but I haven't found a deal on a scaler yet. I'd really like to do like Yeller and pick up a late model Sony CRT tv because watching movies in 20 inches kinda blows. Plus, aside from the player itself the most important part of good image quality out of a ld player is the comb filter, and those tvs had great ones.

I've slowed down now, but when I was bit by the bug I kept buying a ton of super cheap movies, I probably have around 100 now. I've only watched maybe a dozen though. I recently watched the Godfather for the first time, perfect 10/10, lived up to the hype. I had to immediately order part 2.

I've read that S-Video isn't the way to go with these unless your TV doesn't have a decent comb filter (while composite is better if it does), I wonder what configuration is gonna work best with a scaler.

I had some discs years ago, the Alien and Aliens: Special Edition CAV box sets, the theatrical cut of Blade Runner with the narration... those are at a parent's house now, going to have to scavenger hunt next time I'm visiting.

Local record stores and thrift shops tend to have great stuff. I'm trying to take a short break from buying stuff for now until I've watched them all (up to about 25 now), I caught myself checking eBay a bit too often! Not before ordering a bunch of 90s Disney and Criterion stuff though! According to an email address it looks like I'll soon own the director of the last episode of Futurama's laserdisc of King Kong, that's kind of rad.

Watched Kurosawa's Ikiru last night, story of a bureaucrat who finds out he has stomach cancer and decides to finally go out and live. Dusty room.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name

I liked that the commentary on the Mallrats DVD was originally on the laser disc, and featured kevin smith shit talking the dvd format.

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Chasing Amy, I think! I remember when the DVD came out they made a short video intro saying "uuuuuuh so I said a thing and... I was wrong, please buy dvds."

I just got Chasing Amy! :D

re: Comb filters

If you have an svideo capable player it's best to hook both up and test to see which is best. Chances are, the comb filter in the TV is better than the player. My player with my PVM was an exception, but that's just because my PVM doesn't do much processing to the image, the comb filter in my player is still pretty weak. I picked up an Extron YCS 100 from ebay for $15, which is designed to convert composite to svideo, and it just so happens to have a nice 5 line comb filter in it, cleaned up the colors on my PVM quite nicely.

As far as scalers go, I've done some research but do not have first hand experience. It seems the way to go is to have some kind of external comb filter going into one of the better iScan scalers such as a VP50, which will output to HDMI and from pics I've seen it looks great. Those things aren't cheap though, and at best, you might have something that looks as nice as your Trinitron. Maybe. I can tell you that the Framemeister, while great for games, is awful for laserdisc. Surprisingly, an XRGB2 does an acceptable job, but it doesn't scale either, and I was using it with a VGA CRT anyway.

I don't understand collecting laser discs, but I do understand that Ikiru is great even though I tend to tune out a little after he dies.

For me it's just got a lot of intangibles to it. It's a defunct semi-aristocratic video format with an abundance of thought and care put in to the releases, with great big cover art covered in essays about the films, at least in the case of the Criterion Collection LDs. They're my focus here.

And Ikiru really is amazing! Digging into an unfamiliar format put it in front of me.

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Originally Posted by GohanX

I just got Chasing Amy! :D

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Nice. I'm envious of that gatefold.

Good info, btw!

Plus, with the exception of a few rare later titles, this stuff is REALLY cheap. Out of all my discs, very few cost more than $5, many were just one American dollar.

You guys are weird.