And, they were analog!
CDs, DVDs, and of course BluRays are digital, but laserdisc was analog.
I didn’t know that. Always assumed it was like a big CD.
Right??? I learned that about a year ago. I’m impressed they even made it work.
Laserdisc had 4 audio tracks 2 digital and 2 analog. The digital tracks was what later became the cd. The analog tracks was often used by audio commentary along the movie and such.
I think digital audio was only added in 1985
I think true, but most discs i have, has digital audio.
Disco Stu likes DiscoVision!
Wait until you learn about SelectaVision, the vinyl record that played videos and still used a stylus.
30 cm diameter
450 rpm for NTSC, 375 rpm for PAL
Oh so it’s a helicopter
LaserDisc ran at up to 1800 RPM also in a 30cm form factor
In the Tech Connections video on them, they sound like they’re taking off when they spool up.
A very good friend of mine had one of these when I was a kid. We called it laserdisc. I couldn’t tell you how that started.
So, when I got to high school and they were using actual laserdiscs I said, “Where’s the cool outer shell? Is this just like, a school laserdisc setup?” Some kids argued with me that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
I clearly remembered watching Star Wars on them and being mesmerized by that case.
Years later I got to thinking about it and googled “laserdisc with hard casing, mechanism removes disc when played”. Nothing. I chalked it up to it being some kind of false memory. Maybe I was just remembering the sleeve and my buddy was putting the movies in the player in a way that made me think it worked like that.
It wasn’t until years later that I seen a techmoan video in my feed and I was like, “THAT!! That’s what I’ve been talking about all these years!! It’s fucking vinyl! NO WAY!”
I was always tech obsessed so it nearly drove me crazy anytime I thought about it. He’d been dead for years so I couldn’t ask him. His dad and sister had no idea what I was talking about. “He traded a lot stuff around so there’s no telling what he had. There was mismatched technology all over this place.”
Woah! Crazy that something like that existed.
ITT: people who watch technology connections and techmoan
It was weird, I wasn’t old enough to have SelectaVision and only barely knew about LaserDisc. But I love dead tech formats and learned about them later. I have a modestly big collection of Laserdisc and CEC disks and several players. About 10 years ago you could find lots of them for sale for relatively cheap, too.
So it was super gratifying to see the Techmoan/Technology Connections videos not terribly long after I got into them :)
s/o to LaserDisc for being one of the many sources of de-specialized Star Wars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg8tK1LpLS8
There’s our favourite midwestern’s take on it.
And Anders Enger Jensen made a brilliant synth song remixing the an instruction video about DiscoVision:
I sold a player on eBay last year, mfw the buyer also bought the aftermarket warranty.
Both are good
Still have my laserdisc collection. It is just collecting dust. But I do not have the heart to part with them.
Man that person in the thumbnail has really small hands. (joking.)
They’re holding a GCN disc.
at this point “discovision” is a trigger word for me, instantly my brain is consumed by that one song
