LaserDisc was better than VHS right? So why didn't it catch

>So why didn't it catch on?
HMMM i wonder... maybe the unwieldy size?

>>58292213
It's thinner than a VHS, you could easly stack them up like Vinyls

Laserdisks were expensive and Laserdisks players were even more expensive
You'll still find them in places that had no fucking idea how to manage their money, like failing businesses and schools

>>58292197

>too expensive
>not enough space
>laser rot
>was too fucking big

>>58292253
>>58292232
This didn't seem like a problem for Asia

Super expensive and couldn't burn video. /thread

>>58292272

Yeah well, asians still watch movies in DVD, so go figure.

If the entire movie didn't fit on one side you would have to get up and flip the disk.

>>58292197
Hey grandma, the stone age called.

>>58292197
LD couldn't store a full length movie.

>>58292197
>why didn't it catch on?

There's this thing called "money." You should look into it.

When laserdiscs were offered, you have to convert the dollars of that era with the equivalent dollars of today after adjustment. Fucking things would be about $250-$300 each for quality that was better than VHS, but barely better than betamax.

The players were $1000+ each in 1980 dollars. Then, you also had to buy a TV that could handle the quality for it to make any difference for you, so you were also looking at $1000+ TVs.


tl;dr - laserdisc was one of the original meme technologies, in an era when people cared about what their money could buy. If you were Austin Powers setting up a groovy fuck palace on a government expense account, they were a pretty sweet deal.

>>58292197
Because expensive fuck huge discs and expensive player devices.

>>58292437
>my elementary school had one of these fucking things
WHY WOULD THEY WASTE MONEY ON THIS SHIT

>>58292437
>but barely better than betamax
So why didn't Betamax didn't catch on?

You couldn't record on them and also >>58292369

>>58292463
Because Sony didn't license the tech to other manufacturers and wasn't willing to lower the price on their own Betamax VCRs when VHS appeared.

Basically, Sony cucked itself out of VCR dominance despite superior tech.

>>58292463
>>58292711
also porn

>>58292197
It did. Most people couldn't afford it though. Video CD was MPEG1, so it was pretty terrible.

Well, it did catch on, but only in the high-end enthusiast market.
LD were never designed to go head-on against VHS. It was more akin to the early relationship between audio cassettes and CD: a support for all-around and on the go listening, with the ability to record stuff, and a higher-priced, better quality, non-writable and non-degrading (at the time) format.
It was most of the time the only to watch widescreen format movies, instead of cropped 4:3 shit. It was also very useful for non-english speaking countries, as it was almost the only solution to watch movies in the original english dub Most PAL LD players were multiformat for this purpose. You could even have subtitles with the appropriate decoder.
CAV discs were invaluable for cinema students, movie critics and enthusiasts, since you could make frame-by-frame slow motion and perfect freeze frame.
It was very big in Japan, since there wasn't must price difference with VHS.

tl;dr: it wasn't a failure. It succeeded in its designated high-end market, only to be logically replaced by its successor. It's like saying a 1080GTX is a failure because it's less common than Intel graphics.

>>58292736
what about porn?

>>58292463
Most of the early tapes couldn't hold a whole movie IIRC. Also the higher price point couldn't justify the quality gap.

>>58292299
And DVD is still fucking awesome.

>>58292798
no porno on Betamax

>>58292865
why not?

>>58292948
Sony were puritanical hypocrites.

>>58292463
>didn't Betamax didn't catch on?

>>58292984
I know I saw it too late

>>58292461
because the socialists at the school know that if they have a surplus at the end of the year the voters will cut funding next cycle. So they throw away the extra money on trash and tell the voters "SEE! SEE! This is why we need more money for schools!"

>>58292213
people collected vinyls just fine.

>>58292816
no it isn't, streaming these days is better than dvd

blu ray is as good as it gets

>>58293746
Their remasters are pretty shit though

>>58292865

What? The first porno I ever watched was on Betamax. My friends dad had a whole fucking box of them back in '92.

>>58292277
couldn't burn video

Literally this. VHS caught on because of that, and you know what was the best VHS commodity? Porn. Porn's influence has been the catalyst for many pieces of technology either catching on or failing.

>>58292272
Asia watched movies on Video-CD not Laserdisc, what are you smoking?

>>58293883
Well maybe it was just series and anime that sold well on Laserdisc

>>58292461
My high school had them. They were nice because the teacher could scan a bar code on their book and it would skip directly to the video they wanted to watch. It was pretty handy in the era before DVDs.

>>58293914
how does that work?

>>58293933
LD were chaptered, so it's not surprising some professional demonstration players could use a barcode scanner to jump chapters.

>>58293883
LD were huge in Japan, maybe not so much in the rest of Asia.It also coincided with the boom of anime OVA, hence the vast catalog.

File: 1424053537180.jpg (723KB, 2956x1958px) Image search: [Google]

723KB, 2956x1958px

>>58292197

>analog
>only supports composite output
>ungodly expensive
>Many movies had to be split on more than one disc
>vhs could record TV

>>58292463
That one is simple, porn. The VHS alliance basically went to the porn studios and made them a deal.

>>58294020
But how do you connect the bar code scanner?

>>58292197
>LaserDisc was better than VHS right?

Significantly, especially if you take into account MUSE Hi-Vision setups that are able to play HD laserdiscs. MUSE discs and the MUSE capable flagship players are still quite expensive though, even today. Try to buy a flagship HLD-X0 or X9 player, and you're looking at thousands. I'm quite lucky to own both players, mint and boxed.

>>58294069
http://www.geodatasys.com/barcode.htm#barcode

So by the look of it, IR or RF. Some industrial LD players also had rs-232 ports, so I guess they were wired serial accessories too.

LD was pretty big in the infomercial/education sectors too. Just like the godawful CD-I (I passed my theoretical driver license test on one of those players).

>>58292197
video was still analog on laserdisc

there just wasn't enough incentive for most people to "upgrade"

>>58292975
You mean like Nintendo then?

>>58294153
I wouldn't know but it doesn't surprise me.

>>58293871
Including BluRay. That's why HDDVD lost.

>>58294241
BR was also boosted by PS3 sales, just like DVD and PS2.

If HD-DVD was standard with the X360, it may have been a different story, given the popularity of the 360.

>>58293573
and what was the alternative to vinyls?
wax cylinders?

>>58294296
cassette tapes.

>>58294296
Cassette tape, reel-to-reel, 8-tracks, DCC, and a dozen of failed cassette formats.

>>58292816
>And DVD is still fucking awesome.
I'm sure that's why many animu DVDs until around early 00's when the whole production workflow went digital were essentially glorified LD-rips.

And no, fuck DVDs in the ass. It was the most mis-speficied and most mis-used format ever. It tried to account for all the different analogue format shittery at the time when technology wasn't nearly ready. It got literally everything wrong - interlaced video streams, PAL and NTSC versions, absolutely fucking retarded 3:2 pulldown that like 0.001% of people mastering DVDs knew how to flag properly so you were fucking lucky if you could watch a movie in actual 24p, non-square pixels which made everyone say fuck that and letterbox widescreen footage instead of using the full (already pitiful) vertical resolution, shitty MPEG-2 encoders causing any action scenec to look like blocky puke, less important but still contributing for overall shittyness god-fucking-awful bitmap subtitles, finally fucking useless, confusing, and abused with retarded transition animations menu systems.

Honestly, fuck that shit. I get that there had to be a bridge format between analog and full digital, but it should have came some 10 years later and lasted no more than 2-3 years before a proper format like BD (which isn't ideal in itself but fixes the majority of DVD issues) took place.

>>58293746
>Blu-Ray

kek

>>58294401
DVD is full digital moron. MPEG4 was still being worked on 10 years after DVD came out. You may not have cared, not being born yet and all, but 10 more years of analog would have been terrible. People flocked to DVD in droves because VHS was garbage and nobody liked flipping over and switching out Laser Discs every 30-60 minutes.

>>58294120
Wow, I was going to make fun of you until I saw you actually had them. Do you get all your discs off yahoo auctions japan?

I only have a normal 90s pioneer karaoke player.

>>58292197
> Video CD
MPEG-fucking-1 which was basically JPEG with B-frames and motion vectors

substandard 64kbps (sometimes even lower) MP2 sound

holy fuck it was fucking garbge, worse quality than good vhs and after 2002 it became a format for poorfags who couldn't afford dvd yet

>>58293883
VCD was decades later though. LD came out in the mid 70's if i remember right.

>>58294241
>>58294266
hd-dvd lost because the encryption was cracked first, and the industry gave up on it.
>>58294380
>reel-to-reel
that was the shit. I had 2 emerson lake and palmer albums, and a few YES albums on reel to reel, along with the doors hotel morrison, and led zepplin IV. I hunted them down after months of trying to find my dad the perfect gift, and hearing him talking about how much he loved his old reel o reel player his first wife stole when they divorced. motherfucker disregarded all of my efforts and said "It's old antique technology, fuck that shit. then listened to cassettes till he bought a fancy Bose system in the 90's with a sub and a bunch of satellite speakers.
>>58294401
>I'm sure that's why many animu DVDs until around early 00's when the whole production workflow went digital were essentially glorified LD-rips.
yeah the worst ones were nearly unwatchable. its like they gave some brain dead intern a stack of LDs and said transcode these, then walked out of the room without telling him how to do anything. its a fucking miracle most of them were even done.

>>58292232
>Laserdisks were expensive and Laserdisks players were even more expensive
Not only that, but there was CAV and CLV which muddied the waters. Also, you would have to flip discs for any movie, and a lot of movies required more than 1 disc. So, at 2 interruptions of your movie.

Also, there was a limited selection/availability of titles for laserdisc. Sometimes it was hard to find the movie you wanted.

Let's also not forget that this was the heyday of video rental stores, which were overwhelmingly VHS only.

You had to be a baller to have a laserdisc back in the day.

Video related:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv4jRDDSu1w

>>58292197
Because the porn industry chose VHS. That's why betamax failed, despite being better than VHS.

>>58294648
>DVD is full digital moron.
Never implied otherwise, nice reading comprehension right here.

>but 10 more years of analog would have been terrible
Better than the utter shitfest that the DVD format was.

>People flocked to DVD in droves because VHS was garbage
Yup, exchanging one garbage for another, magnetic tape glitches for blocky turd of shitty telecine with the image mangled and mishandled in like 5 ways at once. Rebuying your VHS shit of favourite movies on DVD shit, only to rebuy them on Blu-Ray another 8 years down the line, ohh, and did you hear you can now rebuy your favourite movies on glorious 4K now too anon?

Regardless, they should have improved on the existing formats, maybe making a Super-LD or something with higher resolution and/or capacity and/or smaller disks, until the technology was REALLY ready for a digital transition, instead of giving us this fucking abomination and selling it as the best thing ever since the Lumieres.

>>58292197
LaserDisc was between 425p and 480p, significantly higher than Video CD (240p).

>>58294894
Most of the non-poorfag models had auto-reverse, so you would just be swapping discs once (just like the LOTR DVDs, and it never bothered anyone).
Also I fail to see how CAV and CLV muddied the water. It required no user input, was clearly displayed on the back and on the player panel, and most people wouldn't even give a fuck.
Full-CAV releases were usually premium, collector editions.

>>58293746
>Feeding the Blu-ray jew

>>58294968
>Never implied otherwise, nice reading comprehension right here.
>I get that there had to be a bridge format between analog and full digital

>Better than the utter shitfest that the DVD format was.
Again, what year were you born?

>Yup, exchanging one garbage for another,
You are so underage, I'll bet you buy VHS from thrift stores to impress your hipster friends. DVD was a godsend.

>>58294814
>hd-dvd lost because it was the worse format
FTFY

Nobody on the consumer level gave a shit that it was easier for manufacturers to retool for the format. Blu-ray isn't a great format either with its lack of basic data protection that even DVD had.

>>58295023
>Blu-ray isn't a great format either with its lack of basic data protection that even DVD had.

Which data protection mechanism is Blu-ray lacking?

Is this the reason Blu-ray discs require "Durabis" anti-scratch coating?

>>58295061
Offhand, it lacks basic CRC and other things that even DVD had. There is a reason the disks were never even considered as an archive format.

>>58292197
For the same exact reason people switched from vinyl to cassette. The media was less fragile, and you could record on it.

>>58292197
because porn used VHS

/thread

>>58292463
This is well documented.

>>58295020
>>Never implied otherwise, nice reading comprehension right here.
>>I get that there had to be a bridge format between analog and full digital
How does that imply DVD wasn't full digital? If you really require everything to be spoonfed to you, then yes, it was a digital format that had to account for nearly 100% of the displays being analog and this had to include all the bullshit like PAL/NTSC in the specification.

Reading comprehension, once again.

>Again, what year were you born?
1982, and you? You seem to be very fixated on proving your maturity, are you sure you don't have a LoL match to play so you can maturely own some noobz?

>DVD was a godsend.
No kid, DVD was a stinky turd. A shiny MUH DEJITAL turd in a shiny wrapping, but still a stinky turd. I'm glad I saved my money and waited for the more sane BD after getting a couple of DVD releases and seeing how shitty they were once you looked at them without the pink marketing and new hype technology glasses.

File: C0KgG3BUcAA2-IJ.jpg (208KB, 1200x900px) Image search: [Google]

208KB, 1200x900px

Too pricey.

>>58295246
>I'm glad I saved my money and waited for the more sane BD
lol nobody did this. Are you even 18 years old?

>>58295246
Not him, but did you grow up in Asia with VCD/SVCD or a rich suburb or something?

On the US east coast for working and middle class, there was nothing better than VHS since the 80's. People thought LD died off and rich people were getting theater reels shipped to their private venues or something. When DVDs finally started hitting the market, it beat the shit out of VHS in terms of quality even if it is dogshit by today's standards.

>>58295333
Anyone who wasn't a consumerist sheep buying every shiny turd the marketers offered them did see that it was an intermediary sub-standard format with more compromises than actual improvements and did abstain from heavily (if at all) buying into it. Why don't you tell us your age if you're so heavily fixated on it?

>>58295447
Europe actually, a humble middle-class family. At first like everyone we thought it would have been great to dump all the crummy VHS cassettes in favour of the slicker new format, but by the time the players and discs were affordable to us we did have more than enough chances to find out how bad it was so we didn't get jewed. My parents didn't care because they were happy enough with what was offered on the TV, I carried over with torrents. I'm pretty content with my (slowly) growing BD collection now.

>>58292228
really?
>stack them up
unlick vhs, you cant stack them up without scratching the fuck out of them. And unlike vhs, they dont take any abuse.

>>58292197
it was expensive as shit and not as versatile since it was read-only

there's a lot of other things you could put the money towards and the quality advantage was all lost on the average shit TV people were running in the '80s anyway

I grew up in a kinda rich town, and only knew ONE person who had a laserdisc player. She was butt ugly. I remember her family had a shitload of laserdiscs that weren't even opened... just a library of Laserdisc movies.

We watched Son in Law (starring Pauly Shore) on Laserdisc one time. You had to put in a 2nd disc halfway through the movie, lel

People in their 30's might remember watching Jaque Cousteu laserdiscs at school... I think public schools got shilled into buying them the way they got shilled into buying Apples a decade earlier

my dad used to rent laser discs and he'd record them on VHS. it was better than actual VHS releases. good times.

>>58298919
>I grew up in a kinda rich town, and only knew ONE person who had a laserdisc player. She was butt ugly.
top kek

>>58298919
I'm 25 and remember one laserdisc from school. It was CAV and by some insurance underwriter, it used freeze frame extensively for lessons

>>58295304
>100 yen a pop

Shipping is killer though. Expect to end up paying 3 dollars per disc on average.

>>58299133
I live in Japan so no.

Still have zero desire to buy LDs though, even for the art. I could buy anime ones for dirt cheap off yahoo auctions and proxy them to western normies though.

>>58292197
>dogshit video quality
>age like milk
>all the drawbacks of regular vinyl
>retards trashing every single one
VHS may be the worst home video system of all time but LaserDick takes 2nd place

At least VCD was compact and Divx compression helped back in the day

I recently got jewed on only 6 titles in Ultra HD only to find that only 1 of them is a true 4K master and the others upscaled 2K DI.

http://realorfake4k.com/

Fuck this I'm going back to pirating BDrips!

>>58293573
Vinyls were the cheapest alternative at the time

>>58292679
There was a Pioneer LaserDisc recorder, for those who thought that normal LaserDisc players weren't expensive enough.

>>58293829
>back in '92
Betamax was already on life support in 92.

>>58295246
>buying vhs
>buying dvd
>buying bluray
found the complete retard, vhs was shit and dvd is 100% superior, just for the fact that it was so much easier to copy a movie and that the picture doesn't look like trash after a year.

>>58292197
Video CD isn't a legitimate format; it's caught on in Asia within the 21st century as a means of ultra cheap dvd knockoffs