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Anyone ever see a laserdisc movie?


Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

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Laser disk was not quite as good as DVD. For widescreen releases, laser disk cropped the image, reducing resolution by close to 50%. DVD used the full frame with an anamorphic squeeze, to maximize the picture area.

laser disk was also interlaced video vs. progressive scan for DVD.

lastly, laserdisk was analog vs. compressed digital for DVD, so the advantage here was with laser disk...

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I got into laserdisc when I was a teenager literally just before DVD came out. I loved it at the time for the special features you couldn't get any other way.

Compared to VHS, laserdisc looked great. When DVD first came out they would often share a master with a laserdisc and the laser always looked better. The first DVDs seemed to look so "jagged" and the digital compression was very noticeable on CRT TVs. The last laserdisc I ever bought was a Japanese import of SCREAM 3 (so it would have been about 2000) and it look much better than the DVD. 

As Bruce said, once anamorphic video transfers became standard and HD masters became a thing then DVD really came into its own.

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I was into laserdisc as my "main" viewing medium because VHS and Betamax were both horrible. 

Laserdisc is a 425 interlaced system which means it's basically the same quality as the broadcast standard at the time. It uses the same compressed chroma signal, it uses the same carrier frequencies and because there is no head switching, the signal generally comes out much cleaner than any consumer tape format. 

DVD is a digital 480 interlaced system that uses a 4:2:0 chroma compression that actually delivers a much sharper color with less edge bleeding. Original DVD's had quite a few artifacts because they hadn't got the encode down. However, over years it's gotten a lot better with better sources, better encoding practices and MUCH better players. The biggest leap in technology came out right around the end of laserdisc in 2000 ish. 

Laserdisc was dead on arrival sadly. It released way later than intended thanks to some issues with patents and licensing. Both CED and VHD hit the market before it and because MCA owned so much content, those other formats launched with way more available media. VHD also had some features Laserdisc didn't have initially. By the time laserdisc hit the market, they had roughly 100 titles and VHS was already the default home video standard. CED and VHD both died very quickly and laserdisc took over the "optical" media format thanks to those players being able to playback CD's unlike CED and VHD. After winning the war, laserdisc took off, but at most it only held .5% of the home video market world wide, the largest market being Japan at 2%. To me that's crazy to think about because we had 3 laserdisc rental stores when I was a kid and every store sold players. People were so adverse to higher quality video with digital audio and home theaters were something for the rich! 

In the end DVD took over very fast because they had a HUGE catalog right away with Warner and Sony. Plus the disks were a lot smaller and cheaper to buy then Laserdisc. DVD took over very fast because it was more "consumer" friendly to people, even though the initial disk quality blew. By 2000 DVD's were excellent and the manufacturers of laserdisc stopped production very fast, outside of pioneer in Japan who kept making disc's for a while. 

Laserdisc was ALMOST saved by MUSE which is a highly compressed HD laserdisc system, but the technology was too expensive and it wasn't properly developed for home theater. Had it been 5.1 dolby digital with the decoders built-in, I think LD would have stuck around a lot longer because MUSE looks REALLY good, even though it's still an analog signal. 

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