"laserdisc is dead! long live the laserdisc!" (1 Viewer)

[Vegas 1]

Yes collecting them was kinda fun but hard on the wallet as new releases usually ran $30-$40 ea and box sets often over $100 or more. Most people did not want to spend that kind of money for one movie. I still have around 500 in my collection though they don't get played very often.

 

[ambientcafe]

+1!....being a Canadian, amassing LD's was a rather pricey proposition for me. At the time, there were virtually no Cdn retailers, which meant importing from the U.S.; incurring additional expenses such as shipping, dollar exchange rates, and customs. I never paid less than $50 (Cdn) per title, with $60-70 being the norm. My box set of the first 5 Trek movies (avail for the first time in widescreen) cost $200 -- unfortunately, I remember not being too impressed w/the transfers. I guess that was the price one paid to participate in a niche format. BD consumers would balk at the prices I paid for LDs....they already gripe about paying $30 a title.

As an aside, I also recall my letter-writing campaigns (before the internet, don't forget) to the studios to push for widescreen transfers and inclusion of the original trailers; things we take for granted today. Anyhoo, "it's been swell...but the swelling's gone down !" -- anyone care to guess where this movie quote came from?.... I think it's hi-larious!....give up? -- it's from 'Tank Girl' w/Lori Petty, another guilty pleasure, to be sure.

 

[Vegas 1]

Tank Girl ah yes I have that on WS LD.
keep spinning those big discs everyone!

 

[Rob_Ray]

Tank Girl -- was that the most overpressed LD title of all time? I remember in the dying days of laserdisc when Pioneer would open their warehouse for a weekend sale there would be boxes and boxes of Tank Girl. My Tower Records would have endless copies of that title. Ditto Ken Crane's. I wonder if MGM/UA placed an order for 30,000 copies and someone added a couple of zeroes by mistake.

 

[Joe Caps]

Andrea,
my name is Joe Caporiccio

I created the Pioneer Special Editions label.

There is much I could tell you.
my contract forbade me to talk about company secrets for seven years after I left Pioneer, but the time frame is now long gone.

you can email me at

[email protected] and I'll see if I can get yu some good info for your book !!!!

 

[Vegas 1]

Joe I still have many of those Pioneer SE LDs in my collection, some great titles.

 

[Paul_Scott]

Bravo Joe!- Those were some really classy presentations. I loved the trade dress you used for the line.
Those were mainly (all?) Columbia titles, weren't they?
It was cool that Columbia had the relationship with both Criterion and Pioneer as well as putting out its own product.

 

[Rob_Ray]

Another bravo to Joe. That series had terrific sound quality. Joe's sound work on "The Ten Commandments" has yet to be equalled. The entr'acte on the DVD sounds like reprocessed mono and I know Joe can tell you lots of stories about other errors in that sound mix.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Joe did the sound for the "Oliver!" laserdisc which has also yet to be equalled. The 5.1 mix for the DVD was a bit of a botch which Sony has been repeating through multiple reissues/re-packagings.

Regards,

 

[ahollis]

I will never part with my Pioneer Special Editions. They were and are still a crown jewel, especially 1776.

 

[cineMANIAC]

My earliest memory is of visiting my uncle who had a laserdisc of Raiders of the Lost Ark playing in the living room on a 25-inch RCA TV. When the movie was over and he whips out what looked like a record but shiny metallic I was naturally dumbfounded. This was 1983. It wasn't until I got out of high school in the early 90's that I realized what I had seen in my uncle's living room was a laserdisc. Widescreen Review magazine was the only publication that covered the format (that I knew of) and that's how I furthered my knowledge of it but by then DVD was around the corner and decided not to buy into it. They were expensive indeed but I really loved that they came in such beautiful packaging. Many people dismiss artwork (or packaging) as unimportant and nitpicky but I think it's one of the most appealing things about the movie-watching (and collecting) experience and for me it is a big deal. And laserdisc supplements were actually more interesting and analytical, as I later discovered when I read Widescreen Review's best-ever laserdiscs issue in 1998. Imagine what that King Kong commentary that Criterion recorded in 1985 would be like listening to today! (and what it would fetch on the collector's market)

 

[Joe Caps]

Thanks for all of the compliments !!!

On the dvd of Oliver, 1776, ten Commandments, the studios had basically the same material I used, but especialy in the case of 1776, they don't sound as good. Oliver is really terrible.

 

[ahollis]

I also have held on to the Oliver LD all these years and it is still the best version around. Thanks for entertainment and I am glad I can actually thank someone who worked so hard on it. As for as the 1776 LD, I still bring it out every 4th of July and show it to friends.

 

[andrea]

I want only to say THANKS to all the posters and readers - 1000 views in a week is not bad for a laserdisc thread!

I think I will ask questions as separate threads, to be more focused on the laserdisc - as the laser is on its surface ;-)

Andrea

 

[ChristopherDAC]

This coming Sunday I'm going to be running a movie night for a group of friends, using my LaserDisc library as the source material. No matter how you count, I have above 400 Japanese animation LDs (somewhere above 500 considering, e.g., the individual volumes of a complete 96-episode TV series in a single boxset), about half of which have come within the past year. I recently acquired an overlay generator to permit superimposing subtitles on the Japanese ones, for the benefit of an Anglophone audience.

 

[Jay E]

I sold most of my 1400 laserdiscs, but I still have around 100 titles, many of which have not been released on DVD yet. I will miss my laser buying days...nothing will ever come close to my joy at buying the new releases each week at Tower Records.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Jay - "nothing will ever come close to my joy at buying the new releases each week at Tower Records."

I used to purchase a bunch of LDs at Media Play in the '90s. For myself, the most fun I had with Laser Disc (in terms of purchases) was scoring a rare title on Ebay. The TRON boxset and the Star Wars (new edition) boxset were two favorites.

My favorite Laser Disc remains the Criterion CAV version of Citizen Kane (purchased from Ken Cranes.)

- Walter.

 

[Jay E]

Originally Posted by Walter Kittel

Jay - "nothing will ever come close to my joy at buying the new releases each week at Tower Records."

I used to purchase a bunch of LDs at Media Play in the '90s. For myself, the most fun I had with Laser Disc (in terms of purchases) was scoring a rare title on Ebay. The TRON boxset and the Star Wars (new edition) boxset were two favorites.

My favorite Laser Disc remains the Criterion CAV version of Citizen Kane (purchased from Ken Cranes.)

- Walter.

Over the last few years of my laser buying, I did buy mostly from Ken Cranes, but getting those boxes in the mail just wasn't the same as the retail experience, although I did save more money.

As we get further and further away from the Laser era, I'm sure the discs will become more and more of a curiosity/conversation piece whenever someone visits my place.

 

[DeWilson]

We had a couple great laserdisc stores in the Boston area - "Laser Craze" was Downtown (and latter on Newburry Street) and "Sight And Sound" in Waltham.

I went to Ken Cranes twice on trips to the west coast in the mid-1990's!

 

[BroomoLDmadness]

I'm still collecting Laserdisc's and hardware, and all formats live very happily together.

Laserdisc never died for me personally..........IT'S STILL STRONG IN MY SETUP