is laserdisc worth the investment?

[disneyfella]

alright i know on the outside, this sounds like an easy question, they have the best collector's edition boxed sets of disney content available and it is the true collector's medium for disney history. however, it seems that most of the laserdisc material is being made readily available on dvd. if this is the case, then why waste money investing in a dying medium? laser disc players and the boxed sets themselves will run for like $100-$300 which i could gladly spend on catalog disney titles and christmas presents, but if there is a TON of stuff that i won't have access to then perhaps i should rethink my purchases. what is everyone's opinion on investing in a laserdisc collection solely for the disney animated boxed sets? (let's face it, that's all i'd be getting anyway)

[Maerj]

Well, I've had my laserdisc players for years. I loved the Disney Laserdics box sets and like The Lizard King, I wouldn't ever sell them. If you are a super hardcore Disney fan you may want to get into it. If you are satisfyed with current DVDs sets then its probably not worth your time and effort in tracking them all down and spending money on what is now a dead format. You'd probably even be disappointed in picture quality and the fact that you may have to flip the disc over, or that one movie may be on 2 seperate discs, as many of the box sets are.

[The Lizard King]

alright i know on the outside, this sounds like an easy question, they have the best collector's edition boxed sets of disney content available and it is the true collector's medium for disney history. however, it seems that most of the laserdisc material is being made readily available on dvd. if this is the case, then why waste money investing in a dying medium? laser disc players and the boxed sets themselves will run for like $100-$300 which i could gladly spend on catalog disney titles and christmas presents, but if there is a TON of stuff that i won't have access to then perhaps i should rethink my purchases. what is everyone's opinion on investing in a laserdisc collection solely for the disney animated boxed sets? (let's face it, that's all i'd be getting anyway)

Unlike DVD, there is a VERY WIDE range of perfomance of one LD player to another. What features do you want from your LD player?

1. digital sound
2. two-sided play (autoflip)
3. DD 5.1 (AC-3) -- if so, you are going to need an RF demodulator more than likely, unless your home theater receiver has one built-in (rare).

If you are willing to have none of the above (sigle-side play, analog sound), I would only recommend the Pioneer CLD-1010.

If you want both #1 and #2, I would recommend the Pioneer models (in ascending order of market price): CLD-3070, CLD-D703, CLD-95, and CLD-97.

If you want all three (#1-3), then I recommend the Pioneer models (in ascending order of market price): CLD-D704, CLD-59, CLD-79, CLD-99, CLD-R7G, LD-S9, or (for the REALLY big bucks) HLD-X9.

Remember that the video in LD is ANALOG format, so unless you get a high-end model, you should hook up your composite (yellow) video out to your TV, since your TV will most likely have a better comb filter than the player. The only models worth using the S-video output for are the CLD-99, CLD-R7G, LD-S9, and HLD-X9 models.

eBay is probably going to be your best bet in finding any of these models (and an RF demodulator if you want DD 5.1). If you do buy something, make sure that it's a Pioneer. SONY had very bad players. Some Mitsubishi players are re-badged Pioneers, so they are fine.

Before you buy any player or titles, I would highly recommend reading Josh Zyber's LaserDisc Forever web page:

http://www.mindspring.com/~laserdiscforever/

If, after reading Josh's page, you want to buy one of the three high-end models (CLD-R7G, LD-S9, or HLD-X9), all with the 2nd generation 3D adaptive comb filters, you can purchase them from Japan from Nicolas Santini:

http://home.catv.ne.jp/nn/nsa/

Good luck.

TLK