Line #66 Platform/LaserDisc


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/laserdisc_41.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:250:A [=LaserDisc=] (left) compared to a Platform/{{DVD}} (right).]]
3
4	->''"This looks like a silver record. But it's not a silver record, it's a '''[=LaserDisc=]'''! There's a movie on there, heh."''
5	-->-- '''Mark''', ''Film/SLCPunk''
6
7	'''[=LaserDisc=]''' is an optical disc format, primarily used for playback of analog audiovisual content.[[note]]The format is not ''purely'' analog. Digital audio capability was added to the [=LaserDisc=] specification around 1985, and virtually all titles released after 1990 contain a digital soundtrack.[[/note]] It was the first laser-based storage medium to be sold as a consumer product, and is the direct ancestor of formats like [=CD=], [=DVD=], and Blu-ray. The technology first began serious development in [[TheSixties the late 1960s]]; however, it didn't debut as a retail product until 1978 (United States), 1981 (Japan) and 1982 (Europe).
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9	The format was envisioned as a high-tech audiovisual successor to LP records, and early advertisements called players a "video turntable." Though the two formats ended up having effectively nothing in common, [=LaserDisc=] still bears a few vestigial similarities to an audio LP: physically, it's a double-sided 12- or 8-inch disc made of (usually clear) vinyl, stored inside a plastic sleeve in a cardboard jacket. A [=LaserDisc=] can store up to 30 or 60 minutes per side (depending on encoding), for a maximum play time of two hours on one disc.[[note]]European (PAL-format) [=LaserDiscs=] can hold up to 36 or 64 minutes per side.[[/note]] Physically, all 12-inch [=LaserDiscs=] are double-sided, though if the program is on only one side, the side without content is called a "dead side."[[note]]Normally, a dead side would display a message on screen such as "Program material is recorded on the other side of this disc." Sometimes the dead side is made of opaque white plastic, and contains no information. The [=DiscoVision=] dead sides (1978-80) were factory rejects coated with lacquer to prevent a player from reading it, though people can remove the lacquer with rubbing alcohol.[[/note]]
10
11	[=LaserDiscs=] are strictly playback-only, but a substantial library of program material was published during the format's 23-year retail lifespan--especially in Japan, where [=LaserDiscs=] were more popular than anywhere else. The final consumer [=LaserDisc=] releases came out in 2001[[note]]in Japan. American LD releases stopped after 2000[[/note]], with industrial releases (mostly for [[KaraokeBox Japanese karaoke venues]]) winding down the following year.
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13	----
14
15	[[foldercontrol]]
16	[[folder:The disco years]]
17
18	The early years of [=LaserDisc=] were turbulent, to say the least. For the first few years of the format's existence, a ''name'' could not even be agreed upon by Philips (Dutch electronics giant) and Creator/{{MCA}} (parent company of [[Creator/{{Universal}} Universal Studios]]), the co-developers of the format; the two companies had come up with their ideas separately, then decided to team up (especially with RCA's rival Platform/{{CED}} format looming on the horizon...nobody figured magnetic tape would amount to anything at first). Philips, in charge of player manufacturing under their Magnavox brand, preferred "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Video Long Play]]." MCA, handling the software side of things, called it "[=DiscoVision=]."\
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20	[=LaserDisc=] production in the early years of the format was plagued with problems. In a stunning example of corporate naiveté, MCA had assumed that manufacturing a [=LaserDisc=]—a precision object constructed of many stacked, alternating layers of plastic, glue, and aluminum—would be hardly more complex than pressing vinyl records, allowing for a handsome profit margin on each disc sold. [=DiscoVision=] [=LaserDiscs=] were made (largely by hand) in a facility that was not equipped with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom clean rooms]], and was the former site of a furniture factory. Needless to say, the quality of early [=LaserDiscs=] was horrendous, with return rates exceeding 90 percent. MCA's profit margins on [=DiscoVision=] titles evaporated practically overnight. Corporate panic ensued, and retail prices were raised in an ultimately-futile attempt to cut their losses.\
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22	Meanwhile, Magnavox was having its own problems with player manufacturing. The machines had a nasty habit of overheating, sometimes to the point of melting the disc inside. Even worse, Magnavox was calibrating each player strictly by the book, without regard for the wild quality variations of MCA's early [=LaserDiscs=]. (Worst of ''all?'' A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRAufdE73P0 [=LaserDisc=] informercial]], produced by Magnavox around this time, which devoted an alarming amount of screen time to Creator/LeonardNimoy inexplicably talking to a rock.) \
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24	Both companies were pushing the envelope incredibly far for what was, after all, a [[TheSeventies '70s]] consumer product, and making too many critical mistakes along the way. The end result was technological chaos. Magnavox's players largely could not play MCA's [=LaserDiscs=]; when they did, the image onscreen was often covered with snow and distortion, and the audio was usually filled with static.\
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26	And let's not even get into the subject of ''laser rot'', which is discussed in detail further down this page. Suffice to say that the bane of [=LaserDisc=]'s existence first appeared here, during the [=DiscoVision=] era, and it would continue rearing its ugly head on a regular basis right up until the twilight years of [=LaserDisc=] in the late [[TheNineties 1990s]].\
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28	All of this was in spite of the fact that, at the last minute before launch, playing time per disc was temporarily slashed from two hours to just 50 minutes, making them (supposedly) much easier to manufacture and play back. (The ensuing side effect--that all early [=DiscoVision=] movies had to span across two or ''three'' [=LaserDiscs=] instead of being contained on just one--added insult to injury for those unfortunate early adopters, and helped to drain MCA's coffers even further.) To this day, watching an old [=DiscoVision=] [=LaserDisc=] is a fraught experience because you simply have no idea what you will see or hear... if the disc will even start up at all, or how long it will keep playing if it actually ''does'' start.\
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30	Barely out of the gate, [=LaserDisc=] had essentially shot itself in the foot at a critical time in history, just as home video was within reach of the average consumer at long last. As [=LaserDisc=] stumbled through its first years on the market, most buyers brought video cassette recorders into their homes instead. The entire [=DiscoVision=] debacle, and RCA's own issues with their CED disc system, ensured that videotapes, not videodiscs, would be the standard format for home video entertainment during the [[TheEighties '80s]] and [[TheNineties '90s]]. As the seventies came to a close, the [=LaserDisc=] format itself was practically dead, less than two years after its debut.
31	[[/folder]]
32
33	[[folder:A format reborn]]
34
35	Because of their disastrous experience with [=DiscoVision=], MCA lost a fortune and was eager to be rid of the format. In 1980, Pioneer Electronics bought out [=DiscoVision=]'s rights and patents, and subsequently renamed it "[=LaserVision=]," with the format introduced in Japan in 1981. (Had Pioneer not stepped in, [=LaserDisc=] as a format would have assuredly ceased to exist after 1980.) Although they would later use "[=LaserDisc=]"[[note]]This specific spelling[[/note]] as a brand name, [=LaserVision=] was the official name of the format until the early 1990s, when Pioneer finally began to use "[=LaserDisc=]" as the format's official name.\
36
37	Despite superior sound and picture quality (once Pioneer took over and began to fix many of the myriad issues that had previously affected [=DiscoVision=]), [=LaserDisc=] never caught on like [[Platform/{{VCR}} VHS]] (in large part because of MCA and Philips shooting themselves in the foot during the format's early days), but it did manage to carve out a 5% market share until it was phased out completely by Platform/{{DVD}} in the year 2000. It was [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff more popular in Japan]] with 10% of households owning a [=LaserDisc=] player (which weren't discontinued until ''2009''). It was also popular in other wealthier East Asian regions, including Singapore and Hong Kong. Its popularity there was mainly due to the humidity in that part of the world causing mold to grow on magnetic tape, and optical media didn't have that problem. The [=LaserDisc=]'s quality came with some flaws. Storage capacity was quite low, and depending on the format would range from 30 to 60 minutes per side. Any movie that was over two hours would be a MultiDiscWork. The size of the disc also required a fairly noisy mechanism.\
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39	In addition, the type of glue used to attach the two sides together was known to rot away, exposing the reflective layer inside and causing it to oxidize away, slowly turning the discs black and affecting playback and picture quality (this was called "laser rot" back in the day, and became more commonly known as "disc rot" after it was discovered to be possible in later optical disc formats as well). Perhaps more importantly, in the days before [=TiVo=] and other DVR devices, the [=LaserDisc=] couldn't tape your favorite shows.[[note]]Recordable, and even rewritable, [=LaserDiscs=] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserDisc#Recordable_formats did in fact exist]], but were marketed towards professionals and never achieved any significant penetration into the consumer market. This in addition to the fact that they were ungodly expensive and unaffordable to most people. Plus they can only record ''once'' like a Platform/{{DVD}}, assuming you're not thinking of DVD-RAM.[[/note]] That plus a steeper retail price for both the player and discs gave the VHS a decisive advantage.\
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41	That said, in the '80s, the discs were significantly cheaper to buy than VHS tapes, which were largely intended for the rental market, which made [=LaserDisc=] popular with collectors. In the heyday of the medium, the difference in quality between LD and VHS was significant enough that when LD aficionados bought a new disc, they would sometimes invite their (non-LD-owning) friends over to watch it at a "[=LaserDisc=] party" (as seen in the ''Series/{{Friends}}'' episode "[[Recap/FriendsS3E17TheOneWithoutTheSkiTrip The One Without The Ski Trip]]"). Dropping prices for VHS tapes eroded LD's advantage when Hollywood began to focus on video sales and studios targeted [=LaserDiscs=] for expensive {{Limited Special Collectors Ultimate Edition}}s aimed at film buffs. Said film buffs also enjoyed the fact that {{letterbox}}ed versions of almost every film[[note]]Only films shot natively in widescreen. That's a little over half the movies from TheFifties and nearly every movie since then[[/note]] were available on [=LaserDisc=] in TheNineties, thus preserving the widescreen frame the director intended to present, unlike VHS and Beta releases where PanAndScan was everywhere and letterbox was rare.\
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43	[=LaserDisc=] is unique among home video formats for being an effectively ''uncompressed'' medium. Of course, data compression has no application for an analog medium like [=LaserDisc=], but even VHS is notorious for its poor resolution, especially with regard to color. [=LaserDisc=], at least in theory, is capable of preserving the full bandwidth of a standard-definition master videotape, something that DVD—for all of its unflinching digital purity—can occasionally fail to do.\
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45	Indeed, a well-mastered [=LaserDisc=], played back on a high-end machine, can deliver picture quality within spitting distance of a typical Platform/{{DVD}}. Some diehards still insist, to this day, that [=LaserDisc=] is the superior format of the two. (Which isn't ''quite'' true when comparing both formats at their best, but considering the 19-year age gap between [=LaserDisc=] and DVD, it speaks to [=LaserDisc=]'s technical prowess that they can be seriously compared at all.) The audio capabilities of [=LaserDisc=] also trade blows with DVD, with excellent-quality soundtracks available on most titles released during the '90s, often transferred directly from theatrical sound mixes at full resolution. (Platform/{{DVD}}s by default use a lossy compression scheme, and often have inferior sound mixes designed for the home.)\
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47	[=LaserDisc=] data could be burned onto the disc in two different ways, Constant Angular Velocity (CAV) and Constant Linear Velocity (CLV). On CAV discs[[note]]Which have 30 NTSC minutes or 36 PAL minutes per side, and are also known as "standard play".[[/note]], once around the disc was one frame of image. The advantage of CAV was that freeze-framing, scanning forward and backward, etc., could be done by a simple mechanical variation of the motor speed. The disadvantage was that it wasted space; the data recorded towards the outside of the disc was spread out relative to the data close to the center. CLV discs[[note]]Which have 60 NTSC minutes or 64 PAL minutes per side. Also known as "extended play", these are the discs used for most movies.[[/note]], by contrast, wasted no space, but showing the picture while pausing, fast-forwarding, and such required mildly complicated math on the fly. Cheap [=LaserDisc=] players couldn't do it. Those that could were referred to as having "the chip". Note that one physical disc could have CLV data on one side and CAV data on the other. ''Film/TheFugitive'' has the first side encoded CAV, and the other two sides are CLV. Thus, if you had a cheap LD player, you could freeze-frame the movie only on the first side.
48	[[/folder]]
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50	[[folder:Notable uses]]
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52	The [=LaserDisc=] format introduced quite a few novel features that became taken for granted during the DVD era. As discussed above, the sophisticated audio capabilities of [=LaserDisc=] were refined and simplified for DVD, with almost no differences besides the necessary removal of analog audio tracks.\
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54	Just as notable, but far less well-known, is how [=LaserDisc=] brought ''anamorphic'' films into the home by way of "squeeze" discs, the term used by Pioneer in Japan. As TheNineties progressed, 16:9 widescreen televisions were already on the horizon, and companies like Pioneer knew that the days of 4:3 were numbered. To this end, they began offering films on [=LaserDisc=] in "squeeze" format, which shrank the letterbox bars above and below the picture and intentionally distorted the image, so that the film returned to its correct aspect ratio when viewed in 16:9. The net result was a dramatic 33% increase in image resolution, compared to a standard 4:3 letterbox title. In the end, only a tiny handful of films were released on Squeeze LD, and the format was never even available at retail outside Japan.[[note]]Warner Bros. released five of their films on Squeeze LD in North America, but these titles were not actually available to buy as standalone items--they were promotional items, given only to those who ''purchased'' a brand new 16:9 Toshiba television.[[/note]] As it turned out, the Squeeze LD method is, effectively, the same technique DVD later used to store anamorphic film content, on thousands upon thousands of releases. The only difference is that Squeeze LD was fully manual, requiring the viewer to ensure the film was being unsqueezed properly, whereas DVD automates the process and makes it transparent to the end-user. When viewing a film on DVD, chances are it is in "squeeze" format, just like the [=LaserDiscs=] from all those years ago.\
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57	[=LaserDisc=] also "pioneered" the idea of DVDBonusContent, such as DVDCommentary which first appeared on Creator/TheCriterionCollection [=LaserDisc=] release of ''Film/KingKong1933'' in 1984. Some of these releases had extra features that can't be found anywhere else, and some are highly sought-after by collectors. The 1993 [=LaserDisc=] boxset of the original ''Franchise/StarWars'' trilogy is still sometimes said to be the best release the series has gotten, since future DVD and Platform/BluRay releases don't have the unaltered versions of the films or the extensive extras and giant hardcover booklet that came with the set (the masters used for the original unaltered trilogy in the 2006 [=DVDs=] as extras were sourced from these discs).\
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59	[=LaserDiscs=] are also perhaps best known among the video game community for being the format used to created well known arcade games such as ''VideoGame/DragonsLair'' and ''VideoGame/SpaceAce'', which pioneered the use of full motion video in video games. There was even a [=LaserDisc=]-based console system called the "Halcyon", which was discontinued after only two games were released for it: ''VideoGame/ThayersQuest'' and ''NFL Football''.[[note]]The RDI Halcyon was never actually released in stores, it was just a prototype. Only about a dozen or so were made, likely entirely by hand (though the actual LaserDisc player itself was an off-the-shelf Pioneer unit, the "console" part was a Z80-based computer), and were given out to investors and RDI employees. The ''$2,500'' projected retail price was probably a big factor in it never seeing store shelves. As there's only 2 known working Halcyons in existence (as of 2022) it can be considered the ultimate holy grail in console collecting[[/note]] In the mid-1990s, Pioneer released the [=LaserActive=], a game console that was more of a high-end all in one solution that, aside from [=LaserDisc=]-based titles, could also play Platform/SegaGenesis, Platform/SegaCD, Platform/TurboGrafx16, and [=TurboGrafx=]-CD titles (and special titles that combined either the Sega or NEC stuff with [=LaserDiscs=]); however, two different modules were required to play them. While lasting longer than the Halcyon, the [=LaserActive=] was also short lived with only several games released for it in Japan and North America. Creator/{{Namco}} also made the [=Theater6=] arcade cabinet, which used two [=LaserDisc=] projections side by side as pre-rendered backgrounds for RailShooter video games, such as ''VideoGame/{{Galaxian}} 3: Project Dragoon''. In LaymansTerms, it's a video game layered over a movie.\
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61	In North America, [=LaserDisc=] found more acceptance in institutional settings like schools and businesses. The ability of players to connect to computers made them a popular way to implement promotional video kiosks in stores, convention booths, or interactive museum exhibits as early examples of multimedia computing. Before personal computers had video codecs, educational multimedia programs used [=LaserDiscs=] for the video portion. An innovative use of [=LaserDisc=] was Creator/TheBBC's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project Domesday Project]] which allowed users to navigate the streets of British cities, [[OlderThanTheyThink predating Google Street View by about 30 years]].
62	[[/folder]]
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64	[[folder:[=LaserDisc=] in Japan]]
65
66	One thing that contributed to the longevity of the [=LaserDisc=] player in Japan was that it was the ''preferred'' media for Karaoke in the country. While the west frowns upon Karaoke and many other countries in Asia switched to the more compact (albeit inferior image-wise) [=VideoCD=] format, Japan stuck to [=LaserDiscs=] until it was finally discontinued in 2009 for no other reason than being an analog format. [=LaserDiscs=] are capable of carrying two distinct audio tracks: an analog stereo track and a digital stream which can pretty much be used for any type of audio. In the west, this was usually used for 5.1 Dolby Surround on premium releases and sometimes Spanish SAP or Descriptive Video Service (DVS) in stereo PCM, but in Japan, Karaoke discs used them as PCM stereo tracks that carried a minus-one version of the song to be sung along to. The ability to store PCM audio tracks also allowed for the creation of "CD Video" discs in the west that either featured a full-length movie with a digital audio track or combined a CD single in Red Book audio with a small analog video track featuring either a music video or an excerpt from a concert recording. While ambitious, the format only lasted four years due to [[MisaimedMarketing its inability to find a clear audience]]; more on that can be found on the Platform/CompactDisc's own page.\
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68	The [=LaserDisc's=] popularity in Japan meant that it was the preferred home video format for anime, especially [[OriginalVideoAnimation OVAs]]. This carried over to anime's nascent popularity in the West in the '80s and '90s. A lot of localized anime was released in the format, and the U.S. and Japan using the same NTSC TV system meant that [[OccidentalOtaku dedicated fans]] could import Japanese discs and watch them without a converter, provided they were proficient in the Japanese language. PAL users would also benefit once their televisions' capability of NTSC compatibility was perfected. [=LaserDisc's=] ability to create clean freeze frames that low-end VHS machines lacked also allowed screen captures to circulate around the early internet. This feature also became an invaluable asset for early {{fansub}}bing groups: because editing on videotape, even for something as simple as adding captions, had to be done frame-by-frame, the clean freeze-frames provided by [=LaserDisc=] players made it easy to cue up each shot, with the lack of surface degradation on [=LaserDiscs=] making it easy to re-use the same disc again and again without worrying about losing picture quality along the way (provided that laser rot hadn't set in yet). What's more, the high video quality on [=LaserDisc=] releases heavily minimized the amount of generation loss sustained on the final, fansubbed VHS tape, allowing for much sharper-looking releases than tape-to-tape edits. While the writing quality of said subs... ''[[SpiceUpTheSubtitles varied]]'', to say the least... the fact that they were around at all is hugely indebted towards the flexibility [=LaserDisc=] players gave to amateur video editors. However, going back to the CAV and CLV types above, it needn't be said that movies released on CLV discs would not provide clean freeze frames (or indeed, any freeze frames at all) unless a player with "the chip" is used.\
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70	Aside from that there were also MediaNotes/HighDefinition [=LaserDisc=] players in Japan starting in the early 90s. These "Hi-Vision" discs carried 1035i video compressed in the MUSE format (a Japanese ''analog'' HD compression scheme) along with the usual 5.1 Digital Dolby Surround track and Stereo Analog track. However they required a Hi-Vision capable player, and the monitor, projector or TV must also be Hi-Vision compatible and capable of decoding the MUSE signal. Though the option to purchase an external decoder or Hi-Vision player that decodes Hi-Vision to 1080i component video does exist later in the format’s lifeline. A MUSE capable display paired with a 5.1 kit was considered to be the ultimate in home cinema experience of the time, and would be perfect if it wasn't for the fact that one had to get up and change the disc every hour or so, two hours or so if you own an uber-expensive auto-reverse Hi-Vision player.
71	[[/folder]]

Context Platform / LaserDisc