Pioneer Discontinues Laserdisc Players
January 15, 2009 — Announcing the death of a format can be tricky business. After all, a lot of them live on in our hearts, minds, racks, and libraries—and at least one "dead" format, the LP, never really died. But if the manufacture of hardware is a major criterion, then the laserdisc format has died. Pioneer has discontinued its last three laserdisc player models, according to a brief announcement in Akihabara News.
Originally known as DiscoVision and LaserVision, the 12-inch optical videodisc format was developed by MCA and Philips. The first consumer player wore the Magnavox logo, though Pioneer eventually became the format's champion, giving it the proprietary name LaserDisc, which became the generic format name laserdisc.
Laserdisc output an analog NTSC signal, and is therefore as obsolete as the doomed analog broadcast standard. It was never a high-def format. There were two subformats, the higher-quality CAV, which held 30 minutes per side, and the more capacious and prevalent CLV, which held an hour per side. Two-hour, two-sided discs in CLV became the norm. Most discs were released with audio in a pretty decent two-channel FM-carrier format, which carried matrixed Dolby Surround, and was eventually upgraded to PCM digital. This allowed LD/CD combi players to be marketed. In the format's waning years, Dolby Digital and DTS were added.
The laserdisc won a three-way format war with two other major disc formats, both of which, incredibly, were stylus-read like an LP. CED was invented and promoted by RCA, then an independent company, and the loss of the format war—along with tens of millions of dollars—was a major factor in turning RCA from an independent company to a TV brand that got passed around like a shopping bag. There was also a VHD format from JVC, which also went nowhere, but did so less expensively. Laserdisc won because consumers perceived greater performance and value in an optical-disc format.
There was a time when having a laserdisc player and library was synonymous with being a videophile. Considering the alternatives, it was the best choice. Its more than 400 lines of horizontal resolution were better than either VHS or Beta, at 250 each, and also beat the 300 lines of broadcast TV. There was a Super VHS format boasting more than 400 lines, but it recorded only the brightness signal at that resolution, and the color signal at lower resolution, so it looked smeary compared to laserdisc.
Laserdisc was doomed when DVD made its debut. The smaller disc was—well, smaller, and it offered better resolution (even though standard-def) and accommodated Dolby Digital and DTS from day one. Even now, the DVD shows signs of holding on in the face of competition from the genuinely superior Blu-ray, which supports HD, lossless surround, and other good stuff. But no one knows how long it will take for DVD to go the way of laserdisc.
Anyway, goodbye, laserdisc. I'll always associate you with evenings spent with passionate movie-loving friends. Thanks for the memories.
Pioneer bids Adieu to the Late Great Laserdisc Player
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
It never came close to dethroning VHS, but LaserDisc survived—nay, thrived—as a proud niche format, and it paved the way for all those DVD special features that we take for granted.Frankly, I'm less surprised that Pioneer is halting LaserDisc player production than by the fact that it's still churning them out. As this Register Hardware story reports, there hasn't been a new LaserDisc title in the U.S. in eight years—seven years in Japan—and I'd assumed that manufacturers had stopped building LaserDisc decks some time ago.
But as it turns out, Pioneer still makes them—and will, indeed, crank out another 3,000 players before shutting down production lines for good, according to Register Hardware.
I have to say, I still carry a torch for LaserDisc, a 30+-year-old format that was the premier choice for videophiles (not to mention Karaoke fanatics) until the DVD format arrived in 1997.
I bought my first LaserDisc player back in 1995 or '96—I'm pretty sure it was this one, the Pioneer CLD-S104—and compared to VHS, it was a revelation. My first two LaserDiscs were the letterboxed editions of "The Empire Strikes Back" (the original, thanks very much) and "Pulp Fiction," and my collection gradually grew from there.
In addition to the improved picture quality, I found something else new on my LaserDisc movies. They were called "extras," or "supplements": Deleted scenes, trailers, documentaries, and even "commentary tracks" with the directors, writers, and actors. The first commentary track I ever heard: "The Usual Suspects," probably circa 1996, and I thought it was a brilliant idea.
And then there was (and still is) the Criterion Collection, a home video label that churned out gorgeous—and expensive—special edition versions of classic movies, old and new. (My five-disc, CAV edition of "Seven" from Criterion cost a cool $99, and I was more than happy to pay up.)
Of course, one of the biggest problems with the 12-inch LaserDisc platters was that you could only fit about 60 minutes of video per side (or only about 30 minutes for "standard" CAV LaserDiscs, which offered features like freeze frame and "variable" fast-forward/reverse), meaning you had to flip the disc at least once (or even load additional discs) for feature films.
Still, I was wary of the burgeoning DVD format, especially after seeing the muddy resolution and static backgrounds on the earliest, poorly mastered discs. I hedged my bets with Pioneer's LD/DVD combo deck, the DVL-909, which cost me a whopping $800 (or even $900??) back in 1998.
But it wasn't long before the sharper resolution (and convenience) of DVD won me over, any when I finally moved from San Francisco to New York in 2002, I left my DVL-909—and all my LaserDiscs (including my beloved Criterion editions of "Seven" and "Dead Ringers", plus two sets of "Star Wars" discs) behind. (Note to the good buddy I left my LD collection with: You've still got all those discs safely in storage, right?)
Anyway … what were we talking about? Right: LaserDisc, dead, but lived a long, fruitful life as a niche product. Who knows—maybe we'll be saying the same thing about Blu-ray one day (and hey, that's not a bad thing).
