How big were laser discs?

Cafe Society
21

They weren’t that rare or expensive. Side-changing machines were quite common once digital sound was introduced in the late 80s; Pioneer kept one or two single-side players in their line-up at any given time as entry-level players, but those into LD tended to drop a lot of money into the format, including on the players. I’d estimate roughly 50% of all machines are side-changing, with a majority of those sold after 1988 being side-changers.

The feature you mention afterward-- still frame-- is what tended to denote the expensive machines. The effects available on machines with digital frame memory were fun; not just still-frame on pause on CLV discs, but with a jog dial, one could spin the picture back and forth at any desired rate of speed. Side-changing machines with digital effects could even make the side change almost seamless… cheap machines would take a few seconds of black screen to stop the disc, spin up backwards, and flip the laser assembly to start side 2, while high-end machines could achieve this while playing out the last bit of side 1.

Anyway, I can’t find my last few copies of the Laser Video Guide, so all of this this comes from memory, but addressing the OP: at the peak of LD, right around 1994 or so, Pioneer announced something like 5 million LD players shipped and sold in the US. Sounds impressive until you realize that they were pretty much counting all players ever sold (possibly including even DiscoVision players from 1979 on!), that all machines sold before 1986 were unable to play digital audio and were essentially obsolete, and that the core of the LD market tended to own multiple machines. Heck, I was a poor HS drop-out, and I had three machines then.

A more realistic assessment for market penetration is cited in the Wikipedia article on LD-- around 2 million households in the US. I’ve also seen similar numbers for Japan (higher percentage market penetration, obviously), and around 500,000 for Hong Kong. Europe’s market was smaller, in the low hundreds of thousands-- LD was engineered around NTSC, and didn’t fare as well with other standards.

Individual titles really didn’t sell in numbers that would seem impressive. Again, going from memory, one of my LD magazines was jubilant at sales of ~25,000 on some title (I think it was Akira), once again at the peak of LD, before DVD was announced as forthcoming. The LD market consisted of the early adopters of DVD; once DVD came out, LD sales dropped to nearly nothing in the span of a few weeks. New titles became available only to pre-orders through Ken Crane’s (owned by Image Entertainment), and movies would be cancelled if they didn’t hit 500 orders. I’ve mentioned it before, but when a remastered Indiana Jones trilogy couldn’t manage to find 500 buyers when it wasn’t available on DVD, and it was known that it wouldn’t be for some time and got cancelled, it was obvious that LD was dead.

22

Oh, just to comment on the price of LDs vs. VHS. The $100 LDs mentioned above were “deluxe” collector’s sets, usually special-effects-heavy or animated features spread over multiple discs in CAV (for troube-free frame-by-frame browsing of said special effects of animation), in embossed cases, with special books, a soundtrack CD, and perhaps a lithograph and autographed certificate.

Normal new release LDs were ~$40, $50 for Criterion releases and longer, 2-disc films, and $20 to $30 for catalog titles. Still expensive, but (as others mentioned above), cheaper than non-sell-through VHS. It’s odd to think about now, but studios kept VHS artificially high quite late in the game, to maintain the VHS rental market; Chasing Amy, for example, was $100 on barebones VHS for its first 6 months, while the Criterion LD (with commentary track, trailer, deleted scenes, etc.) was $50 from day one.

Too, for most catalog titles on VHS, sell-through price was $20 to $30; the media price for LD was fairly competitive, especially considering the increased visual quality and extra features. VHS releases regularly < $10 didn’t happen until DVD had begun, at which time LD was also < $10.

The big price problem wasn’t the cost of disc vs. tape, really, but the cost of players. When VCRs were $300, LD players were $500 or more; when I got an entry-level VHS recorder for $100 in 1990 or so, a cheap LD player was $300.

23

Ah, yes. I used to love LazerCraze right there on Newbury Street. Anyway, I really into LDs because for a long while they were the only way to watch movies in their original aspect ratios. That was the big draw for me.

24

Another one of those things that today’s kids have no idea about - the Laser Turtle that would appear on the TV if you put a single-side LD in upside-down.

25

My cousin gave me a big box of laserdisc movies about 6 months ago, I listed them on eBay, all with an opening bid of 99 cents. The only one that sold was One Flew Through the Cuckoos Nest. I donated the other 37 to a church rummage sale.

26

Laserdiscs were analog, not digital.

27

Absolutely correct for video, although IIRC, the audio was digital.

28

Like others I dug them because the picture and sound were superb (compared to tape), the import movies were much more readily available (that’s how I got my Jackie Chan fix back in the day) and since I was living in Silicon Valley at the time they were easy to come by. There was one place near me that had a massive selection of titles on both VHS and LD. IIRC there were something like 11,000 titles available on LD.

You could get special editions of films that were just not available on VHS - for example back in 1992 I knew a guy with the super director’s cut of Aliens. I still treasure my frame-by-frame copy of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and I spent a day going through it to find all the hidden dirty bits that the animators put in (yes on what Baby Huey does, yes Bob Hoskins is a toon at one point, yes Jessica appears in the classic ‘inflatable sex doll’ pose with questionable possession of undies).

In about 1996 I bought a Pioneer LD player for about $300 and it played both sides automatically. I still have it although I haven’t used it in many years.

Tower Records carried a decent number of LD movies and they weren’t very expensive - maybe $40 tops, worth it for a quality film. Everything tended to come out in the theatrical screen ratio whereas many VHS films were fullscreen. The expensive sets people are mentioning tended to be the really nice Criterion sets or other special editions.

29

There are probably threads on this already but are there many films (of some merit) that haven’t been released on DVD yet?

30

Not really. There will always be somebody’s personal favorite that isn’t on DVD yet. But the vast majority of films of some merit have been released.

31

This list at a Laserdisc retailer isn’t very accurate (glancing through, I see Basic Instinct, as well as some which are compilations of material that is available in a different configuration on DVD), but it does list a few notable titles missing from region 1 DVD (The African Queen or Wings, for instance).

The first post on this forum is a list that is about a year old, but was accurate at that time, of LDs not on region 1 DVD as well. This one also lists titles that are only in original aspect ratio on LD, or alternate versions, which may not be of concern to some folks.

32

I remember them being the size of vinyl LPs. Is that accurate? I also remember thinking I would buy one that played CDs too. I never did, but my brother had one for a while.

I worked in a video store in college in the late 80s (and a bit into 1990) that attempted to to stock laser discs. The owner was a real visionary with no common sense or money management skills. And something about a distributor going under… Anyway, we stocked a few laser discs for rental (literally like maybe a couple dozen) and had some stock for sale. The only regular customer was a guy who rented them to copy to his hi-def betamax (I forget what that format was called) and the guy fro the newspaper who was a jerk about our level of merchandise.

33

I have Wings on DVD, and The African Queen is available as an import. One person says the latter is slated for domestic release in 2008. (Running out of time on that!)

On the other list, I bought the 3-disc Criterion Brazil when it came out. (Seems to be OOP now.) Night On Earth was released in 2007, and I ordered a copy a couple of days ago.

34

Yeah, like I said the first was inaccurate, the second outdated. I forgot Wings was released finally on DVD (this year, wasn’t it?), though.

The African Queen region 1 that’s available through import isn’t properly licensed unfortunately (It’s a Castaways release, and I’d be afraid to see how shoddy their transfer is; I’ve been dissatisfied with what I’ve seen from them, even though they’ve gotten their hands on prints of some rare stuff), and I’m still waiting like you for the remastered domestic release.

35

I have a weird fascination with obsolete video formats even though I’m too young to really remember anything other than VHS.
This has been touched on by other posters, but there were numerous different ‘video disc’ and ‘laser disc’ formats realesed over the years, none of them very succesful untill DVD came along.
This page has details on most of them, it’s worth a look if you’re interested.