Pioneer finally kills production of its remaining laserdisc players
By Laura June 
posted January 14th 2009 12:22PM
posted January 14th 2009 12:22PM
Yes, we're just as shocked and horrified to hear the news as you are, but it seems to be true. Pioneer, the last major electronics manufacturer to continue production of laserdisc players, has announced they'll discontinue all three of the models they currently offer, leaving dozens of hardcore fans in the dust. But cheer up: we'll always have the memories, and this poster.
No
They were, until 2003.
What's a laser Disc?
It's this thing that starts with "www" and ends with ".wikipedia.org"
Even LaserDisc outlasted HD-DVD. Wow.
Wait did Laser Disc just out live HD-DVD?
You mean, Laser Disc lasted longer than VHS? Wow. I do remember when those started coming out. Those were the days.
Does anyone know if LaserDisc ever went HD? Afterall, HD's not that new (it's just getting into normal people's home now), so the Japanese would've needed something to feed their HDTVs. I wonder how many LDs it would take to store a whole feature film in HD...
To answer my own question: yes! http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/laserdisc_archive/panasonic/panasonic_lx-hd20/panasonic_lx-hd20.htm
Who'da thunk it?
Incredible....this is probably the most shocking news! Never in a millions years could I have guessed any company was even still making Laser Disc! that technology never quite catch up in America but did relatively well in Europe & Asia !
Good night, sweet prince.
;_;
My betamax can kick your Laserdisc's ass!!
Not after the 500th play it won't.
"The record that shows pictures
LaserDisc
The new media of the light age" is what is says
LOL. Funny how we're still stuck with more of the same.
FYI, LaserDiscs were heavily used for karaoke machines in Japan.
Tip of the day.
You can trim your laser disks so they'll fit in your DVD player and....voila! You can watch the beginning credits!
Nice try, but no. :-)
Actually, very few people realize that Laserdisc are actually *analog*, and not digital. The soundtrack is encoded as a digital bitstream, but the video is actually an encoded analog signal. The length of the pit determines the wavelength, and the player recreates the signal by determining the waveform. There are no 1's and 0's on the platter.
Too bad, it was a great media format. Oh well on to future we go, slaves to the download!
"This looks like a silver record, but it's not a silver record. It's a laser disc! There is a movie on there!"
I still have my LD player with the original cuts of star wars and Scarface. Scarface took forever to come out on DVD so it really was the best way to watch it, other than that I got rid of the rest of the laser discs a while back but I still have fond memories of LD.
I suppose Pioneer *may* have also kept these in production so the laserdisc-based coin-op arcade games could be supplied with replacement parts?
Most of the classics like Dragon's Lair or Space Ace ran off a Laserdisc player inside the game system cabinet.
There were a small handful of laserdisc based arcade games in the mid 80s to early 90s, Dragon's Lair being one of the best known. These were some of the earliest uses of laserdisc and were largely obsolete by the time the format reached its peak in consumer use. The games used a few specific industrial players controlled via a serial port interface, the earliest ones even used HeNe gas lasers instead of modern laser diodes. While there's a bit of a cult following for laser games, they never were very popular in their day. Finicky and unreliable, expensive, and while the live video was a novelty, it quickly wore off and the gameplay was a simple matter of timing, like a real-time choose your own adventure book with no real control over the character. They were essentially dead by the mid 90s aside from those in home use by collectors.
In a nutshell, laser games are the last thing Pioneer was thinking of when producing recent players, the modern players won't work in the games anyway. Still plenty of videophiles out there with large movie collections on LD, just like there's still millions of people out there clinging to vinyl LPs, not to mention more esoteric formats, heck, some people still covet libraries of 8-track tapes, I remember those from when I was a kid. Showing my age I guess.
I bet hard core laser disc fans will bypass DVDs and go straight to Blu-Ray.
I actually own a LaserDisc player. I only have one disc, Ghostbusters, and it's scratched to death, and the size of a 33 1/3 record. Crazy stuff.
While DVD was the nail in the proverbial coffin, I am convinced that if not for Laserdisc enthusiasts (who demanded better resolution and, more importantly, proper aspect ratio in their home theater), DVD (or something similar) would have taken a lot longer to materialize. More than the price or the (admittably) annoying need to flip the disc on the cheaper players, what kept LDs from taking off was, ironically, the "black bars at the top and bottom of the screen" that the less enlightened of the species routinely bitched about. Nowadays, everybody digs widescreen.
It's only beent the last couple of years that some of my most prized LD have finally come out on DVD, for example: 1) El Topo, 2) Eraserhead, 3) The Short Films of David Lynch 4) Looney Tunes Box Sets, 5) The entire Twin Peaks series (including the pilot) 6) Sante Sangre, 7) Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and 8) Withnail and I (just to name a few)
Then there's three biggies that I still have and watch that may NEVER come out on DVD: 1) Original Star Wars Trilogy - in CAV, 2) The Godfather Family Album - Coppala's chronological order re-edit that contains about 45 minutes of additional footage and 3) My Japanese import of Disney's Song of the South - which goes for about $400 to 500 on EBAY.
Long live the great LD memories!
I agree. The availability of widescreen movies on Laserdisc was one of the biggest reason to adopt LD over VHS. It took years before VHS has WS releases.
One of my earliest memories of LD was putting on the WS edition of Apocalypse Now and *cranking* the volume to 11 during the Ride of the Valkyries scene. Of course, this was displayed on my massive 300 lb 35" Mitsubishi TV, the biggest tube available at the time. In widescreen, the picture was an impressive 20" high! :-) The sound was pumped through one of the first Dolby Pro Logic receivers to 5 channels. Pure home theater heaven. :-)
so where is the best place to get one shipped from japan while i still can.
I just want to know where I can pick up one of these new units on the net
I'm pretty sure the models still being manufactured were for industrial use and possibly classroom use. There hasn't been a consumer oriented LD player manufactured since around '05 when Pioneer Elite discontinued its LD/DVD combo player.
As for Jurassic Park, the DTS DVD had the same track as the DTS LD. And for Star Wars, the 2-disc special edition DVDs have the theatrical cut on the bonus disc, but in 4:3 non-anamorphic letter box and only the 2.0 soundtrack (roughly the same quality as FACES LD played back by a high-end LD player). There has NEVER been a theatrical-cut release with a surround soundtrack.
I thought Jurassic Park only had a half bitrate version (768kbps) on DVD which is less than the LD. I own the Star Wars Trilogy on LD (three copies), the 1995 version which is the theatrical version is surrounded encoded but is a PCM stereo track. The 1997 special editions are Dolby Digital encoded but Greedo shoots first!
It's been years... and I still don't get what people see in Star Wars. The acting in some of the scenes is so over the top it's down right comical. I'm a scifi fan myself but you just can't compare the likes of "Aliens" or even "iRobot" to the campy romp called Star Wars.
I recently pulled out a laserdisc in an "emergency" situation. I had purchased a DVD of the same movie, and was 95% through the movie when the damn DVD locked up! I could not skip past the bad section, so I was basically dead in the water. I was really into the movie, so I just couldn't call it quits. So, I pulled on the old laserdisc and skipped to the final chapters. Emergency avoided. :-)
Like many of you, I have a fairly decent collection of discs. I've repurchased many of them in DVD format, but many of them weren't worth re-buying.
Also, I too have the original Star Wars collection, which set me back $210. I swore that Lucas wasn't going to get another damn dime from me. However, if they ever release a Blu-Ray version of the original theatrical release, I may be tempted.
Laserdiscs may be beyond their prime, but they played an incredible role in the evolution of the home theater. My first jump from VHS to Laserdisc was bigger than the jump to DVD. Digital soundtracks, direct access to chapters, and a great picture (for its time) were the big draws.
So I'm the only one with a playmate of the year (1985ish or so) LD?
It really was ahead of it's time. I have the Criterion Collection pressing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Great fun listening to the audio commentary track and the bonus features - they took the Japanese version and literally translated the dialog as subtitles... very strange indeed.
Oh man, don't get me started. I must have been one of the lucky ones. Our nearest mom-and-pop video store actually rented laserdics. They had a great selection of adult discs (behind the red curtain of course). While my friends were buying crappy VHS tapes, I was enjoying pristine copies of all the latest adult releases. On top of that, Laserdisc's freeze-frame and frame-stepping were light years beyond the capabilities of VCRs in the quality department. Money shot!!! :-)
Wow. I didn't even realize that Pioneer was still manufacturing laser disc players. Talk about a product with a long lifespan.
I remember before 1995 in Hong Kong, LD format was pretty popular among HK home theatres. Until near 1997, the release of VCD and DVD forced LD to obsolete. The problem now is VCD format becomes the very low-end and cheap physical media against DVD and Blu-Ray.
However, with so many piracy via the Internet nowadays, people in Hong Kong and the rest of Asia have evolved to download music, games, and movies without the need of physical media. That means even those gangsta who are selling pirated cds, dvds, and games don't really have enough business.
I have two Pioneer players and over 300 discs. Laserdiscs were invented by Philips who licensed the technology to Sony who used it to develop the CD music disc format. I bought only one more LD after buying a DVD player. No copy protection on LDs. Industrial applications of LDs continued after they stopped being a niche consumer product. Most movies were $30. The Star Wars Trilogy LDs were $70 each, unless you did as I did and got them as an inducement for joining the Columbia LD Club.
I watched my first HI - quality porn on one of those bad boys.
Kicked ass.
@elBravo it's analog video, FM-encoded onto a disc. Uncompressed digital video would not only take too much space, nothing on earth would have been able to have streamed it 15 years ago - the bandwidth would be insane.
A real pity. I thought they stopped making them a good while ago, and I still play my LaserDiscs regularly. Guess they were still making players for archives and government/military installations. A most lovely format, with flair. Room for proper artwork, outstanding quality in its time and well into the first DVD-years when many DVDs looked like crap, no stupid DRM or any other sort of copy protection, no region codes, very nice to handle... spinning up a Laser is like putting on a vinyl record.
... and no way to protect the content, very expensive to make -> high price -> low consumer interest.
Over thirty years. I bow to the engineers who made it happen.
They were still making LD palyers? Why for god sake? who wants to switch a giant disc in the middle of a movie lol
So this means there will be no Pioneer Elite Blu-ray/DVD/CD/LaserDisc player?
couple useful links:
http://www.lddb.com/ - laserdisc database
http://www.daphne-emu.com - arcade laserdisc emulator