Home Alone
Always
Weeds
Everybody Wins
Glory
Good Morning Vietnam
The Chocolate War
Unforgiven (this is a 2 disc movie and I only have disc 1 eheu)
Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Diamonds Are Forever
The Living Daylights
Goldeneye
Enter the Dragon
Treasure Island (Disney 1950)
Back to the Future
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (I have two copies, one is widescreen and one is not)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek: Generations (the first seven Star Trek movies are in a limited box set: Star Trek: The Movie Votages; only 8000 made and I have #5460)
Star Trek: First Contact
A Clockwork Orange
Escape From New York
The Time Machine (1960)
Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
Alien (I have two copies, one is widescreen and one is not)
Aliens
Alien 3
The Right Stuff
Blade Runner
2001: A Space Odyssey
Independence Day
Deliverance
Groundhog Day
Apocalypse Now
The Fly (with Jeff Goldblum)
Jurassic Park (2 editions, one CAV and one CLV)
Spartacus
Size-wise, your collection of discs is about average IMO. Mostly solid films, though no real rarities. Is your Blade Runner the Criterion edition?
I’d upgrade the player to a double-sided unit, though, and keep the V2400 as a backup. With careful shopping, you can get gems for cheap; I bought this model for $35 or so (plus hefty shipping for almost as much… the thing is massive). Double-sided, digital frame memory for still frame and smooth multi-speed playback. It relegated to backup this bare-bones model, which only did single side play and had no digital field memory (but only cost me $10!).
My collection is at 293 titles right now according to my account at the LaserDisc Database. However, I have 30 or so industrial and educational titles that aren’t listed in the database, so I’m over 300. Four players (the best is the Pioneer CLD D-604 mentioned above, the CLD-980 is a backup, and then I have two pre-digital models for novelty value; this Pioneer LD 600 top-loader with a gas tube laser, and an RDI Halcyon).
I have a few duplicate discs that I’d be willing to send to someone who actually uses LD; would you have any use for Pulp Fiction, Die Hard, Top Gun, and some Playboy title that escapes me at the moment?
How does the double sided one work? Does it take time for it to switch from one side to another? I have been wanting to get another player for backup, I just haven’t seen any for sale. I have bought discs online, but never a player. I got my current player at a college surplus sale about a year ago for $15. I got a lot of movies at the flea market. If I ever see a player for sale at the flea market, I will pick it up.
I would cherish those laserdiscs as my own. Those titles would be a welcome addition to the collection.
Also let me ask, what do you use to store your laserdiscs? As my collection grows I am having trouble finding a place to keep them. Now I am using some plastic cube storage things I got from Target.
I never got real familiar with Laserdiscs. Did they hold any advantages over DVD technology as far as quality or what not? Or are they the equivalent of collecting 8-track cassettes?
DVD players are weak and puny. When you turn on a laserdisc player, you can hear the motor purring away. 12 inch discs are better than the tiny DVD discs.
I don’t have Predator because I have never found it for sale. But I have it on VHS anyway.
The disc flips and changes with laserdiscs help me time out my bathroom breaks. If I am watching a DVD, I have to decide if it is a good time to pause, or just wait it out.
Takes a second or three for a double-sided player to switch sides; the player has to spin down the disc and spin it back up in the opposite direction, while the laser assembly moves along a track which flips it upside down to read the other side. It takes slightly longer than a normal start to playback. Players with digital frame memory will freeze on the final frame during the process (which is why proper LD authoring became a big deal-- put the side break at a scene break and the process is pretty painless); players without memory will usually show a blue screen with A>B or something similar to indicate the side is changing.
I spent ten years using a single-sided player before finally upgrading… well worth the cost.
I store my LDs in these closet-organizer shelves. Hope that link works. Remove one of the shelves, and adjust the remainder to form two niches that hold ~40 discs each, leaving an inch or two of clearance at the top for taller boxsets, or keep the shelf in and move the shelves close together to provide two niches for laserdiscs and most boxsets, and a niche between to hold 8" LDs. The narrowness of the unit is good-- LDs are heavy, and longer shelves will bow or break under their weight. I have four of them, stacked two high and placed side by side to form a tower about 5 feet high and 2 feet wide. I’ll soon be adding two more for more discs. You’ll notice that the specs show the depth is only 11.625 inches; the discs stick out slightly, but it looks fine.
Dug through my discs and found six that I’d be willing to send along; in addition to the above listed, I have single-disc versions of Toy Story and The Aristocats… PM me and we can figure something out.
Probably more like collecting reel-to-reel. It was a high-quality, high-cost connoisseur format that never really went mainstream, but stuck around for eons.
Their primary advantage over DVD was being on the scene about 20 years prior. The LD market disappeared within months of the introduction of DVD, as most of the early DVD adopters were LD users. It started in the late 1970s and held on until 2000 in the US, a little later (2001?) in Japan. Things like alternate audio tracks, DTS and/or AC-3 surround sound, commentary tracks, including trailers/outtakes/extras for a film were pioneered on LD; widescreen presentation was pioneered on CED but taken up wholeheartedly on LD.
That said… a properly mastered late-era LD is probably the pinnacle of analog NTSC video, andit took years for DVD studios to figure out how to do compressed video correctly, so for quite a while, there were titles on LD that still outperformed their newer DVD counterparts. The bitrate of digital sound on LD is also higher than on DVD, so audiophiles liked to gush about that.
I have a couple hundred LDs, and while most of them have been replaced by DVDs, there are some titles that still have not been released on DVD like The Pirates of Penzance. Also, there were a lot of art laser discs - I’d love to get the Japanese “Visual Pathfinders” series that featured Oskar Fishinger and John Whitney.
You’re clearly a big SF fan. I’m surprised by the absence of Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original, of course). Were these not available on LD, or do you not care for them, for some reason?
There are others I’d put on a list of SF, Bond, and Classics, but I’m not sure which appeared on LD and were readily available.
The LD market disappeared within months of the introduction of DVD, as most of the early DVD adopters were LD users. It started in the late 1970s and held on until 2000 in the US, a little later (2001?) in Japan. Things like alternate audio tracks, DTS and/or AC-3 surround sound, commentary tracks, including trailers/outtakes/extras for a film were pioneered on LD; widescreen presentation was pioneered on CED but taken up wholeheartedly on LD.