I recall one place, Virgin Megastore, in Dublin selling them in the early 1990s. They may well have been available elsewhere but I never saw them. I used to read an American teenage gamer/pop culture magazine around the same time and it often carried laser disc reviews. I never knew anyone who owned a player or discs. Were they more popular on the other side of the pond?
Not very. At best, they were a niche market here.
I was gonna say twelve inches, just like LPs, until I read your post closer.
They weren’t too popular that I know of; I only recall seeing one demonstrated in an audio store sometime in the late seventies, but never knew anyone who actually owned one.
I have one, but I didn’t back when they were introduced. I picked it up a few years ago because I wanted Betty Blue on something other than VHS and it hadn’t been released on DVD in the U.S. yet. (And as I said in another thread, I prefer the theatrical release to the DVD’s Director’s Cut.) I have the original Star Wars trilogy, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and some Jacques Cousteau discs too.
It was your post about Betty Blue that reminded me of them. 
My wife’s Grandfather had one, including tons of movies. He had the original Star Wars movies on Laserdisc, which was the only way to get them(unaltered) in digital quality for a long time.
I picked up the hobby in the early-to-mid-'90s, and bought them for several years until DVD seriously broke through. Probably around the time that the Criterion Collection films really started coming out on DVD. I’m a fan of Hong Kong and other import films, plus many of the aforementioned Criterion Collection, and at the time LDs were really the only way to get some of those, or to get the extras that the disc format had and VHS really didn’t.
That being said, I had to mail order LDs or buy them from a local specialty shop. They weren’t common in the US at all.
This. In Boston, there was a store devoted exclusively to laserdiscs (“Laser Craze,” I think it was called) that I went to a number of times in the mid-90s. I’m not sure exactly when it closed – probably around the debut of DVDs, but before they became massively popular.
Other than that, Tower Records had a laserdisc section.
I also bought a fair number off of eBay.
I have a pretty large (over 100) collection of laserdiscs, mostly Criterion. I don’t think I’ve watched one in at least 5 years.
Hmm. What exactly did laserdiscs (and those who marketed them) do wrong that DVDs did right? [Consulting Wikipedia] I see that the size, small storage capacity, tendency towards annoying playback errors, and high costs for both discs and players all contributed to its demise.
Those who actually bought LDs are probably more reliable sources, but my recollection is that very quickly after launch (in the early-80’s, yes?) it became clear it would be a niche format at best. Then they seemed to have something of a resurgence in the early to mid-'90’s – I even saw them at mainstream record and video stores – before being all but swallowed up by DVD a few years later.
–Cliffy
I remember seeing them featured in a 1976 magazine (specifically, the November 1976 Playboy, the one with the Jimmy Carter interview).
I had a laser disk player that could play 5 cd’s from the tray. I owned one laser disk movie. The size has been given, so I’ll comment on the weight. They weighed a lot. Drop on edge wise on your toe an you could have possibly broke your toe. When they spun up your whole entertainment center vibrated. The reason I didn’t buy laser disks instead of VHS tape was the cost. A cheap laser disk on sale was $40, while a movie could cost over $100, because the movie suppliers were greedy. Thank god DVD’s busted that high price down to $20 at one point for movies.
Yeah, just before DVDs broke out, LDs were making a small comeback. One local “media” store had a section for them. About 1 rack’s worth vs. 5-6 racks for VHS tapes. (But the LDs took up far more shelf space and tended to be displayed “face out”.)
Viewed as a luxury format for purists.
I still see LDs for sale quite often at thrift stores and such. A local used book store has a bunch right now. Must not be much of a eBay-ish market for them with DVDs around.
Once in a great while I’ll see an old LD machine in a thrift store. About as often as I see a reel-to-reel tape deck. So I mentally associate the two in terms of market penetration and ownership class.
Kirk Hammet from Metallica was a noted Laserdisc fanatic at one time, I wonder if he still has them.
One of my buddies worked at a record store in town and they also sold Laserdiscs. As we found out one bored summers day, a Laserdisc will fly much, much farther than a vinyl record or a CD. I’d like to have a few today to play some jokes with or to decorate with.
They worked well as early rental movies though. There was a store in town when I was growing up that rented LD movies and the player. I remember watching Tron that way. The way you inserted the disk in the player kept the disc pretty protected unlike DVDs. I do miss that!
What I think really broke the LD market was VHS finally winning the format wars. VHS was cheaper, lighter, and easier to use.
That LD rental store switched over the VHS rental after a few years.
Part of the problem also - this dovetails with storage capacity - is that you’d have to get up and flip the disc in the middle of the movie.
Well, it was the '80s/'90s, and ‘greed was good’. But I’m not sure it’s entirely the medium that was expensive. For example, I wanted to buy Betty Blue on VHS in the '80s. It could only be had for $99.95. You’d see some movies eventually go on sale for $40 (on VHS), but many cost a C-note. IIRC this is because the copies that were being sold were being sold to video rental stores, and much of the cost was for the license to rent them. If a private party wanted to buy one, he’d have to get a rental-licensed copy and pay the fee.
Why? I assume that distributors assumed that people wouldn’t want to buy their own VHS tapes, and the market was going to be mostly rental stores. Eventually they discovered people did want their own copies and decided to sell non-rental copies (with the notice that public display is prohibited) at a lower cost so that they would not lose money to video piracy.
The only time I ever saw a laser disk was when I was a freshman in college and I stayed over at a friend’s house during winter break. Her dad was LOADED and he had every conceivable gadget known to man. We watched a couple of movies on the laser disk player.
This was in 1996. I don’t think DVDs existed yet. I certainly hadn’t heard of them at that time, anyway.
True, but for me (I still own an LD player and many movies, though I haven’t used it in years) it was overall better picture quality with DVDs and the fact that anamorphic DVDs became ubiquitous - indispensible for widescreen TVs. I’ll also point out that most movies on LD required you to turn the disc over at some point. LD players that would automatically play both sides were few and expensive. (I see it mentioned by Ferret on preview)
And one other thing, no pause (freeze frame) function for CLV (the most common format due to higher capacity) on most players.
I think you might have confused LaserDiscs and CED discs. CED was kept in a hard plastic jacket, and the whole thing was inserted into the player, then the empty jacket was pulled back out. A LD was manually pulled out of a cardboard sleeve just like an LP and placed onto a tray like a CD.
I have a hundred or so LaserDiscs and have a few movies that have never come out on DVD. But it’s hooked up so I can rip the discs to hard drive and then burn to DVD-R.