LaserDisc

LaserDisc (LD) is a semi-digital high-quality video format, developed in early 1970's by Philips and MCA, that hit the stores in 1978. It used to be the choice of home video freaks until late '90s when DVD killed it within two years.

LaserDisc (or LD or CDV as it was also known) evetually got fully digital audio to it in late 1980's and Dolby Surround and DTS audio in '90s. Most of the Hollywood studios released their titles for LD in '90s before the DVD revolution. At its peak, U.S. had over 1M LD players and Japan over 4M players and in U.S. there were over 5,000 LD retailers.

The picture quality beats the crap out of VCD, but loses in comparision to DVD-Video -- you could say that it is in par with SuperVCD in terms of video quality.

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dbparker 14 December, 2005 9:23
Looking for advise on how to copy my lazer disk collection of movies to DVD. My thoughts are that if I do not do this while my lazer disk player is working I may not get done if I have a service problem with it later on. I have about two hundred lazed disks movies {a considerable investment at an average cost of $30.00 each} that I would like to transfer to dvd. Thank you for your advise and help.
Riphound 17 October, 2007 12:15
While I'm obviously too late to help the OP, thought I'd offer this helpful hint: laserdiscs were not copy protected. Because the market was too small and Macrovision wanted too much to license you can transfer them over with just a standard DVD recorder. The only tricky part is dealing with the side and/or disc change, which means you have to do it on the fly: find out the exact moment it occurs and be ready to hit "pause" on the recorder when you get to that point. Then you just set up the next side (you can pause the player as well, but coordinating both to start at the same time is difficult) and release the "pause" button when the film resumes.
c1c 17 January, 2008 22:19
Can't you get a video out of LD into a computer graphics card and capture the pure uncompressed picture?

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