The only arcade game That I know of that used the CED technology was the Bally NFL one. Pretty sure Astron Belt was laserdisc.

My Sony MDP800 on top and Sony MDP600 on the bottom. Both are auto side changing laserdisc players. Blu-ray player in the middle for size comparison.

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I have a nice wideband amplifier, but it doesn't work with my player's RF circuit. Someone else with the same amplifier has a similar issue. This amplifier is optimized for photodiodes, so I'll have to try and locate/tap the output directly from the optical pickup. Now I'm poring over service manuals to try and solve that riddle.

I dabble in the disc as well! My modest collection. And I have a few players. My main player is a cld-99 elite. But have a few cld-702s and a Cld-501 as a portable player to bring to friends houses or backyard Laserdisc projector nights!

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Just swapped out my Kenwood model 9, for my Marantz 2252-B. 52 watt, produced from 1977-1980.
Super warm sound.
Great mid level reciever.

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Sega Astron Belt was laser disc, it was licensed to Midway because their NFL Football game which was RCA Video Disc was dropped fast and Midway wanted to move into laser discs.

Problem with the RCA video disc ( in a commercial video game ) was it's like a record with a thin layer of oil on it. In attract mode it concentrates on one spot and builds a dam on either side of the track it is using. Then when someone starts a game the needle drags across the dam and plays like crap. Skips and jumps type stuff.

LTG : )

Here's my Technics sa-700 100 watt.
Built from 1978-1979.
Great sharp clean sound and power.
It's out to the shop right now, having all the Capacitors replaced.
It sounded amazing until it crapped out, the Caps lasted 40 years, not bad for a high power reciever.
Hopefully it'll be good for another 40.

Message from the Vintage Freeeek Kingdom

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I have a laserdisc-player that I use very seldom. It is in good working condition, but I am chary about connecting the old AV-gear to electricity due to my fear of such old gear starting a fire. That's why I have put it into a storage shelf. I do not know if that makes much sense I also wonder, does the old technical gear like being stored - e.g. capacitors - would it be after all best to have them connected to the electricity after all?

There is - look up a component called a “line doubler”. There are also little boxes which take a component connection in and convert to HDMI. Quality varies wildly though

Nice Frazetta collection you have too

Interesting post. I'm on the completely opposite end of the spectrum and run a 49TB server loading with content ripped from 4K UHD disks and bluray disks with no compression.

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There was a scene in Total Recall (great LD) that blew my buddies speakers. LD sound is amazing.

Sweet! Alas my wife probably won’t be partial to any vintage Ashlyn Gere (in LD? Forgettaboutit!), but it might be time to fire up my old friend:

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By the way, I don’t know Jack shit about stuff like this anymore, and state of the art isn’t a requirement.

Can someone please recommend an affordable line doubler or upconverter that I can use to connect my old Sony LD player into my Onkyo home theatre receiver for viewing through my inexpensive 780p projector?

Not Laserdisc or home theater.... but this defiantly falls under vintage.... I just recently set up my father's Dynaco Stereo 70 tube amplifier, Dynaco PAS5 Tube Pre-amp, and Dual 1228 turntable.

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"Ripped" discs.

wow! That is even more cool! very nice

Turn it up to 11!

Nice, I am the same way, been trying to get my hands on that exact supermicro case to start my UNRAID build but they are sold out everywhere

Actually they are all ripped from disks I purchase.

This is my current rip queue of 4K disks I’m working through.

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I grabbed mine from eBay. Any luck there?

I grabbed mine from UNIXSurplusCom on eBay. I added a second processor, upped the RAM to 64GB and added a Quadro card for transcoding 4K on the fly.

Anyway, back to laserdisks. Sorry for the interruption.

Yeah just pulling your leg, hence the wink.

Whoops. Didn’t even notice that wink.

Sorry about that!

About 25 years ago I stumbled on one of the very early, huge and *heavy* laserdisc players in a junk shop where the giant lid opened up on top and it came with some discs. Like one of the very first players made I think, and it worked. I've restored a few 50s and 60s b&w and color TVs (with the round pic tubes) so it was fun to goof around with the whole setup it but the player finally gave out. Bought one slightly newer that works (still very old and huge and top-lidded) and another bigger stack of discs, maybe I'll drag it out again soon or later and mess around with it. I have a 300-lb acoustic Victrola and a ton of 78s too, I just dig old technology. Hell my main TV is still my 'old' circa 2000 Hitachi HD projection set. It refuses to conk out. I'm incurable. Found a pic of my first one, a Pioneer.

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Here's a neat video on that Pioneer player:

Nah it's fine, sarcasm doesn't translate well.

Is anyone else thinking about LaserDisc preservation? As the discs rot and more obscure stuff is lost, it's gone forever unless someone captures them and puts the captures up on archive.org or something. For example, I heard the Toy Story LaserDisc has an alternate version of a Pixar short that is more adult oriented.

Does it have Dubly?

Oh my, I can fix old tube TVs and a cap or transistor or chip in my old radios or my pinballs here and there but whew, I wouldn't even have dared to try tackling why mine went belly up! I would have broken a dozen more things in the process.

Not sure on laserdisc but I now a few people who use these for old gaming.

retrotink 2x pro line double

This is true, the Toy Story CAV laser disc has an "uncensored" version of Knick Knack, but it is FAAAAAR more tame than it sounds. Better to preserve the ironically titled Star Wars "Definitive" Laserdiscs, although these already exist in 4k via the fanedit UnSpecialized editions

https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=1883

Continuing with the discussion about Toy Story and obscure/exclusive content. There's a decent amount of Laserdisc exclusive content.

There's a lot of Disney that has been altered since it's release on Laserdisc. The Beauty and the Beast Work in Progress is the most significant. See the full comparison here:
http://stayornay.com/toons/index.php/2015/05/17/beauty-and-the-beast-work-in-progress-version/

Lion King also has a ridiculous amount of changes in addition to the infamous "SFX" scene.
https://lionking.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lion_King_series_re-release_changes

When a lot of the older Disney was "restored" for DVD/Blu-Ray, colors and details were lost. Cinderella suffered from this in very obvious ways:
https://www.boredpanda.com/disney-animated-movies-ciderella-blu-ray-restoration-ruined-detail/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

There's always Song of the South which was only released on VHS and a Japanese Laserdisc pressing. That one tends to fetch fairly good money.

The Rescuers and Who Framed Roger Rabbit both have a scene where a naked woman is present for one frame. The animators slipped it in thinking it would be never noticed in the cinema (which it wasn't). It was only noticed on CAV laserdiscs with frame by frame playback capabilities. Both titles were recalled and re-released with the frames removed.

Up until last year with the release of Disney Plus, the only widescreen version of A Goofy Movie was on Laserdisc. Everything else was pan & scan.

There's also some banned Looney Tunes and Tex Avery cartoons only present on laserdisc.

Looking at George Lucas. The most famous instance is Star Wars. As others have mentioned, laserdisc is the highest quality official release of the original trilogy in it's theatrical form (with the exception of the GOUT DVD release which is sourced directly from the laserdisc with no cleanup work). It is also the highest quality official release of the 1997 Special Edition trilogy in it's theatrical form. The 2004 DVD releases use a completely different cut, as do the Blu-Ray. Episode 1 also has an exclusive laserdisc release in Japan. Japan got the theatrical version of Episode 1 on Laserdisc with puppet Yoda. Everyone else got an extended cut. When Episode 2 came out, puppet Yoda was removed in Episode 1 and replaced with a CGI version (which is what you get on all re-releases of Episode 1).

But, it's not limited to Lucas' Star Wars. American Graffiti and THX 1138 have been altered from their original theatrical releases with laserdisc being the only way to see the original theatrical cut. American Graffiti has minor changes, but THX 1138 has a ton of changes, and suffers from the same CGI crap that Star Wars does:
https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=541751

The Matrix laserdisc release is different then the DVD release and is supposedly more true to the theatrical version. The DVD has a green tint throughout the entire picture. I've never seen the laserdisc to compare, so I can't say how different it actually is.

Scream has some laserdisc exclusive content. While it is only 20 seconds worth of additional content, it's somewhat significant.
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/07764/10499-AS/Scream:-Directors-Cut

There are some commentary tracks that are exclusive to laserdisc releases. The most famous are the banned commentary tracks for the 3 James Bond Criterion Collection releases. They were recalled and re-released without the commentaries. There are also a lot of commentaries by film historian Ronald Haver that are on Criterion laserdiscs but not always on the re-releases.

In general, laserdisc typically has a more "accurate" version when comparing to the theatrical release (not always true though- IE pan & scan). Soundmixes are typically the original theater mix and not a near-field mix that is present on DVD/BluRay. I've compared several titles over the years and almost always, the laserdisc blows anything else away soundwise.

One of the more well known laserdisc exclusive releases is Michael Mann's The Keep. There was a ton of drama with it's production, he hated the final product, and it has not ever been re-released.

There's a lot more, but this is what I can think of off the top of my head.

Thanks. So you buy one of these converters, connect your LD to it with RCA cables and then RCA cables out of the converter to your hone theatre receiver and that’s that?

Something like this?

J-Tech Digital JTD-0801 Multi-Functional HDMI Converter with 8 Inputs to 1 HDMI Output
by Amazon.com
Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008VWGLXO/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_1kccGb7DTKSJ8

Very good points - I did not know about The Keep. That is now again available via streaming thankfully. Yeah the book is better, but the movie is still pretty interesting.

Couple of notes: The Matrix DVD release with the "Extra green tint" is an urban myth to my understanding. The theatrical version *did* have this green tint apparently, but it was not as noticeable until the home release. The initial Bluray is the release that had the REALLY bad overbearing tint. The scenes in the Matrix are supposed to look green, just not as much as the Bluray transfer had applied. I believe they've dialed it back on subsequent releases. Hopefully a 4K transfer eventually.

Also, the Criterion Channel (streaming version of the Collection) rotates movies every couple of months, and some of the "lost" commentaries have resurfaced. Not the Bond ones, AFAIK, but still, pretty cool.

This is making me want to go get a new LD player! LOL

Love Laserdisc! I have a huge list of movies for sale, most $5 and $10. If anyone is interested private message me and I can send the list.

Jesus Christ, is that legal???? lol

Wow. That's interesting that The Keep is available for streaming. It looks like its a bad rip from a VHS on Amazon Prime though (according to the comments). I've never read the book. I should do that some time.

I've heard some people say that about the Matrix. I really don't know. If it is a myth, then all those people buying it for $300+ on laserdisc for the supposed lack of tint are in for a surprise.

I haven't checked out the Criterion Channel. I keep meaning to, but then I always forget about it. We don't have any smart TVs in the house and don't do a ton of streaming. That's great that the lost commentaries are starting to resurface.

I forgot about this thread. Here's my Terminator 2 test result using the raw RF signal software decoding/displaying method. This is jacking directly into the laser head pickup and doing all the heavy lifting with a Linux software program to pull out the video, audio, and other digital information stored on the disc. Unparalleled picture and sound quality!

https://www.mediafire.com/file/fgsnks1pxwotarb/terminatortest.mp4/file
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Nice! Thanks for sharing. I've always been curious about the raw capture. What is your preferred de-interlacing mode, or do you leave it interlaced?

Yeah it's definitely a new way to preserve LaserDiscs and VHS tapes. I've modified my VCR in a similar fashion. For deinterlacing I used to use Yadif with Avidemux but have found out that QTGMC with Avisynth works a lot better.

Super interesting advances. Yet another way I can get my Star Wars Definitive Collection discs backed up - hopefully permanently this time!

This reminds me of the high-def photos of vintage vinyl records which are playable by reading the pits and grooves via software scanning.

Just to be clear though, this method requires significant hardware and electronics knowledge and soldering skills. And it also requires a bit of Linux know how involving the terminal. There's this thread for Laserdisc:

https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2671

And this one for VHS:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/394168-Current-status-of-ld-decode-vhs-decode-%28true-backup-of-RF-signals%29

In defense of Laserdiscs, it is nice to watch movies as they were originally color graded. As an editor, I do understand the want to tweak things into oblivion (ahem, George Lucas). But like with T2, the color grading with the remasters definitely shifted from dark blues and blacks to more oranges and blues.

Sometimes it's like they gave the interns the keys to remaster these films and they do funky things with them that weren't originally intended.

Too much tech talk for me to understand.
I got tons of Animation on Laser Disc
but have not attempted to play any in decades.
I got 3 laser disc players, in case any decide to croak,
Hoping the discs do not deteriorate or delaminate or whatever else might/can go wrong.
Got lots of Disney, Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker/Andy Panda), MGM (Tom&Jerry, Tex Avery etc), Warner Bros (Bugs &the Gang),
Paramount (Popeye/Superman/Harveytoons), Columbia (Fox&Crow) plus UPI cartoons
that has yet to be put out onto DVDs.
Should at some point in time transfer to digital.

Just got back into CED. It's a step down from LD, but it's analog and the apex of vinyl technology.

Damn price of the discs have gone up.

Who are you using to do your recap work? I’m going to need my Kenwood amp worked on. I think it needs some transistors replaced, it’s making an awful crackling noise.

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I actually saw a CED disc at Goodwill several years ago. I had no clue what it was. Assuming I will never see another one.

May the 4th be with you! Laserdiscs are still my favorite way (and the best official way) to watch the unedited versions of the original trilogy.

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I recently got a player (Pioneer CDL V840) with some karaoke discs, and never thought about this. Now I need to have the original unedited trilogy. Is that definitive collection the unedited version of the film? Or would I have to buy each film individually? The last time I owned the unedited version was on VSH, but I got rid of that like 20 years ago 4F875F09-3EEF-43E6-8085-7A7C54EAF1DD (resized).jpeg

IMHO, you really don't want that trilogy set in the center of the pic. They are CAV pressings, which means only 30 mins of material on each side of a disc. You'll constantly be changing and switching sides of the discs. The three on the top are nice gatefold editions, CLV pressings, of the original unedited films. They are easy to find and can be purchased reasonably.

The trilogy set, pictured on the center right is really a beautiful set, but it contains the added/updated material. If you're player is AC-3 ready (and you have an rf demodulator), this set offers uncompressed dolby digital 5.1 sound.