TNL Gentlemen's Laserdisc Society

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Originally Posted by YellerDog

I occasionally see widescreen CRTs is sitting on the sidewalk in the Bay Area (huge adoption of LD and high end AV stuff in the 90s out here, the whole reason I'm in this hobby) , I haven't been lucky enough to swing back for one yet.

How do those work anyway? Do they crop the image down or do they only work with anamorphic media? Both I guess?

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I'ma move this over here.

From what I understand, most of them are similar to other HDTVs in that by default it would display the LD image in 4:3, and since laserdisc is not anamorphic that would mean the widescreen image is in the middle of the screen. However, like most HDTVs you do have a zoom function to make it fit properly, and those CRTs should do a better job than a current LCD/Plasma would. That said, I have no personal experience, I stuck with the SD Wega for vidja games.

Maybe you can answer this for me, since I can't seem to find a definitive source. Can CRTs do 720p or do they all scale it to 1080i?

I'm not totally up on the specifics, but the way I understand it a CRT doesn't really process resolution like a fixed pixel display, so the answer is probably "it does both." Hell, the games on my Raspberry pi are set to output 1500x240 on a SD set, the horizontal resolution is pretty much infinite.

Maybe IP would have a more detailed answer?

No. I knew some of that like a year ago. But my mind dumps most of what I don't use.

My last Sony widescreen CRT did both 720p & 1080i. Got rid of it like 7 years ago though.

Skip to 15:10 or so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh0Td6jXC58

I'm broke af rn, but I'd not be able to pass that all up.

Ha, I've got Mystery Disc. The double disc! Guest starring Lea Thompson and the principal from Breakfast Club.

What's a good player for archival purposes?

Pioneer Elite.

I don't really know anything about archiving, but I'd assume you'd probably want to use a player that has a clean composite signal that isn't run through a lot of internal processing like a lot of the later players. A CLD-97 would probably be ideal but that thing is really expensive now. Higher end late 80's players like a CLD-3080 would probably do the job too. A Panasonic LX-900 has a really clean output if you can find one cheap (you probably can't but you may get lucky.) On the cheaper end the industrial CLD-V2800 has a pretty clean composite video output, although it lacks any kind of digital audio output if that is important. If you were closer I'd let you borrow one of mine, but you could probably buy a V2800 cheaper than the cost of shipping mine back and forth.