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NEWS: Pioneer Stops Making Laserdisc Players After 27 Years

Wow... I also really had no clue that they were still making laserdiscs. O.o I don't even know if I still have my RH: Men in Tights laserdic anywhere in the house. Our LD player has stopped working for years now.. Sitting in the living room dead like a rock. ^O^

Ah but you all forgot about Laser Rot. I have a TON of LDs - both original Japanese and US releases. Tons of Japanese series that never made it to the US, and many US items that never got done onto DVD. But Laser Rot has crept in, and probably 1/3 of my Laser Discs are no good anymore. It's a shame. Most of those are irreplaceable.

I will probably have to buy one of these last LD models made just to make sure it's compatable with the latest TV equipment.

Wow. I'd heard about LDs before, but I never saw one in person in my life.

Those f*ckers are HUGE! No wonder they never caught on, they'd take up way too much space and be too unwieldy for any kind of sensible usage.

they are only as big as vinyl, make a crate and you have a nice shelve space.


forgot to say, if you think about it you can put more LD's on a shelf than you can using DVD's

This makes me a sad panda, though I have to admit I thought they'd all been discontinued a few years ago. Last time I was in Tokyo I hauled back a ton of LDs of old rare stuff that never got DVD release in any country. Paid through the nose for the overweight bag I had them in... These suckers were heavy!

I should see if I can track down the old Streamline LD of Twilight of the Cockroaches and the Criterion LD of Akira. (It was bilingual!)

Don't forget that the laserdisc was the father of the audio CD, which then fathered the DVD.... Much higher quality than VHS, accoding to my dad. My dad reckons the reason LDs failed was that people were so obessed with the fact you could "record" your own videos, which you couldn't do with LDs.

Philips made LD players in Europe ~1982. My dad created a museum exhibition called "Technology of the Future" in 1983 (something like that) featuring fax machines the size of filing cabinets on each side of the gallery sending faxes to each other, an ATM dispensing genuine Bank of Toyland money, a barcode reading till and a LD player! Seems almost comical now...

I found Twilight of the Cockroaches a few months back. Pristine condition. Seller only wanted $10 for it. Can you believe that? I've got Criterion's standard Akira release too, but I've been trying to get my hands on the special edition for a while. I can never find it cheap enough though.

While you're trying to snag old Streamline LDs, Justin, it might be worth tracking down a copy of Lensman too. The 3D animation is just awful. You find yourself wondering why anyone on the production staff ever thought it was a good idea splicing traditional cel animation with that crap for the entire final battle scene.

Lensman, what a ultra lame movie (while typing this I'm looking at my Lensman movie poster and my LD copy of the movie).

The CGI was cool for its time, but yeah it aged. Man, that chick in Lensman looks too much like Princess Leia from Star Wars.

I got lucky on Lensman, I picked it up for $7.

I think the people crying about how big they were never grew up with a vinyl collection... haha. You store them the same way you did with those, in crates or boxes. 8D My family had some laserdiscs, but by the time I got into anime we were really just using VHS.

Heh, I liked the movie anyway, have both the US and Japanese LD's of it too (the CGI was not THAT bad over Golgo 13's helicopter, and it was 1984 mind you)!

Man I love the 80s and 90s, I may have seen laserdiscs at my years but I know their not that well back in the day! But those were great times anyway.

Two things...

1. Why is it that LDs don't seem to command high prices even in after markets? It's basic economics that if something becomes rarer or of limited supply, prices will rise. That's part of the "supply and demand" theory, though, so I take it "demand" was pretty damn low after DVD took off as the standard video format.

2. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't some video games/video game systems equipped for LD usage? Damn, man, imagine how huge your X360 would be and how you'd have to load it every time were this still the standard disc size!

2. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't some video games/video game systems equipped for LD usage? Damn, man, imagine how huge your X360 would be and how you'd have to load it every time were this still the standard disc size!