How do Laserdiscs look on your HDTV sets? (1 Viewer)

Dean L · May 7, 2006

I'm prob gonna get a 42 inch Sony LCD in the next few months.

How do the LD's look on your HDTV's? Do they show a lot of flaws due to the lower rez?

Phil A · May 7, 2006

There are good transfers and not so good ones. The bigger the screen, the easier it is to see what is good and what is not. In the main system, I have a 100 inch screen. In the basement system, I have a 64 inch one. I have LD transfers that have as good or better quality than some DVDs. With a good DVD transfer, a std. LD won't be as good.

Chris Gerhard · May 8, 2006

I used LaserDisc from 1982 til 1998. I sold most of my LaserDiscs when I first saw DVD. With a great LD player and the best LD's, in my opinion you can get close to as good as DVD using a modest DVD player. The bigger the screen, the worse LD looks. If you have some movies that make LD necessary to continue to use, you might find the quality acceptable. Otherwise, it makes about as much sense as using a horse drawn carriage to travel from Little Rock to Dallas, rather than a car. HDTV is much better than DVD, but selection and value and acceptable performance make DVD desirable for both of my HDTVs, a 720p LCD projector with 77" screen and a Sony XBR910 CRT. LD just doesn't cut it for me on big screens.

Chris

Phil A · May 8, 2006

Don't have many LDs - about 130. I bought a bunch cheap at an estate sale several yrs. back and still have not watched about 20 of them. I bought a few of those as they were Criterion discs and for $4 what the heck, it is the price of a rental.

Vader · May 8, 2006

I still watch my LDs on a 65" screen via a CLD-59 player. The picture is more than acceptable, albeit a bit soft in the focus (I know that the CLD-59 is not the best out there, but is, IMO, still a fantastic player). Obviously, the format's limitations do come to the forefront, and some LD's that had terrible transfers to begin with (Memoirs of an Invisible Man), or are really dark or murky (The Fog, Halloween) tend to suffer the most.

Otherwise, it makes about as much sense as using a horse drawn carriage to travel from Little Rock to Dallas, rather than a car.

I think this analogy is more appropriate to the jump from VHS to DVD. I could never understand why many tend to lump LD in with VHS, since the jump in quality from LD to DVD is nowhere near the quantum improvement going from VHS to LD. I would say that the jump from VHS to LD is "horse-n-carraige to 4-door sedan", and from LD to DVD the "sedan to the coup sports car". Of course, on that scale, Hi-Def would be a supersonic jet...

Click to expand...

Phil A · May 8, 2006

I owned the CLD-59 at one point (started with a 406). As my screen size got bigger, I got Kurtis Bahr to come over my place (he lives about 40 minutes away) at one point a few yrs. with a bunch of things including his HLD-X9 and I finalized my decision based on the number of discs I own and what I deemed to be acceptable in terms of quality/price point. I have a 704 in the basement system I almost never use and a CLD-79 in the main system that does not see tons of use either. To my eyes, there were virtually identical in video quality on my 100 inch screen. I bought some spare parts (e.g. spindle motor) so between the 2 machines, I should be set for a bit. I have movies on LD that I don't feel the need to run out and get on DVD (if one is available). I might feel differently when and if hi-def takes off and there are bigger differences in video quality.

greg_t · May 8, 2006

The 704 and CLD79 are the same player video wise, so that's why the video quality difference was near identical.

I have two players, a cld79 and an hld-x9. The X9 makes a big difference over other players when viewing on a larger screen. Much better detail, black levels, color, less noise, etc. Like Phil, I stocked up on extra parts for my X9 so I'm good for a long time. With the original star wars now coming on DVD, my X9 probably won't get much use.

Phil A · May 8, 2006

greg_t said:
The 704 and CLD79 are the same player video wise, so that's why the video quality difference was near identical.
I have two players, a cld79 and an hld-x9. The X9 makes a big difference over other players when viewing on a larger screen. Much better detail, black levels, color, less noise, etc. Like Phil, I stocked up on extra parts for my X9 so I'm good for a long time. With the original star wars now coming on DVD, my X9 probably won't get much use.

Yes - they share many parts - so that was part of the reason for going with those players. The biggest benefit I saw with the X9 was no ghosting and better playback of less than perfect discs. I probably won't spring the Star Wars stuff on DVD as I have the LDs and the enhanced DVDs and might as well wait for Hi-Def before thinking about buying them again.

Jerome Grate · May 8, 2006

Picture quality from LD is also based on how well your t.v. does scaling and the use of an external scaler if needed. Now I don't have a LD, but I've seen it in action and the picture does tend to be a bit soft, and it also depends on how well is the transfer to LD. I have a Sony RPTV, and I always thought that the scaler to 480p was not the best on those materials via S-VHS or composite. Therefore I purchased a used I-Scan pro that scaled everything to 480p via S-Video or composite. You then hook the I-Scan pro to the component video input of the t.v. My JVC 7600 an S-VHS VCR looks really good as well as satellite broadcast. You can still probably find the scaler or any scaler that might even scale it to 1080i and enjoy the best picture quality you'll get out of it. The scaler that does 1080i may be very expensive, but you might be able to find an I-Scan pro that can scale to 480p for about 100 bucks.

Phil A · May 8, 2006

One of the these years, I'll have to try another scaler. I'd had a scaler to 480p built into my old Proceed PMDT DVD transport. When Kurtis and I tried various players going thru the scaler (on either composite or 'S'), we always preferred what was built into the Sharp 9000 via the 100 inch screen. Trouble is by the time I get to it, I'll likely be considering a new TV first

Matt Hough · May 8, 2006

I have been porting my favorite laserdisc musicals over to DVD for awhile now. I don't want the time to come that my laserdisc player ceases working and I can't watch some of the movies I want to watch any more. In quality, no, they don't match DVD to my eyes, but it's an acceptable substitute to make these dubs.

I've rebought dozens and dozens of laserdisc titles once they arrived on DVD, but for those films that don't appear to be on the horizon any time soon, a laser-to-DVD port is for me the most sensible solution.

Jesse Skeen · May 8, 2006

Anybody know how CED players or Cartrivision look like on an HD set?

Rachael B · May 11, 2006

MattH. said:
....for those films that don't appear to be on the horizon any time soon, a laser-to-DVD port is for me the most sensible solution.

I bet the LD's outlive the DVD-R's...? I'll just be watching the LD's till the end of time for me. I watched the the 500 Nations boxset on my 36" Sony XBR450 this week. The LD-S9 renders it so very well on that set. I tend to like colour LD's on the Sony set. It would easily pass as a DVD to most folks. I tend to like old B & W movies on my Elite RP using the HLD-X9. I'm gonna start a boxset of Gable & Crawford films soon. I have some unpened X-Files LD's that I got for $3 each on the docket too. I have so many LD's of 20's-40's films, I'll be watching them on LD till they won't play or I'm too feeble to.
Alot of HDTV de-interlacers smear colour. B & W LD's can do rather well on HDTV's even with more modest players.

Philip Hamm · May 13, 2006

I just watched "Diamonds Are Forever" on my X1. It's not an HDTV but it has fantastic scaling/deinterlacing. The LaserDisc looked quite good. Not quite as good as non-anamorphic DVD, but not bad at all. Quite enjoyable. My player is a CLD-D704. When I had my CLD-D406 hooked up it didn't look nearly as good.

Dave Moritz · May 19, 2006

I own a 50" Sony HDTV and depending on how good the transfer is LD still looks pretty good. Not as good as dvd but good enough. I have some movies that I have on LD that will not be replaced with dvd so I dedcided to keep my LD player.
One time I was at a high end store and they had a McIntosh HT hooked up to a 120" screen with a CRT projector. And the picture from laserdisc looked really good. But I would expect it because of the quality of the product being used.

Mattias_ka · May 22, 2006

I use a couple of HLD-X0 with my Sony Ruby on a 100 inch screen and LD can look really good. To me, average DVD and good LD are about the same, sometimes I prefer the LD, even if it's little softer, over crappy MPEG compression. For me, HD is a MUCH more improvement over LD/DVD than DVD over LD. I hope to get a Crystalio II soon, then I think LD will be almost as good as really good DVD's.

I also have a HLD-X9, but I hardly use it today.

Allan Jayne · May 28, 2006

I wish they had issued Laserdiscs in anamorphic 16:9 format.
Still using LD with nondescript player, also have nondescript interlaced DVD player, Lumagen HDP de-interlacer, Sanyo PLV-Z3 720p projector.
Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

ChristopherDAC · May 28, 2006

I wish they had issued Laserdiscs in anamorphic 16:9 format.

There were a few, just like there were a few High Definition LDs [unfortunately not compatible with standard players! but the 16:9s did not have this problem]. There just weren't enough. Players could have been built with a downconversion filter — it's not a big addition to a digital-memory player — but there was a 20 year installed base out there to sell to. DVD had it easier, since there were no DVD players on the street.

Click to expand...

Tony Kwong · May 29, 2006

Projector users didnt have that problem!

I never tried Cartrivision or CED on a HDTV but I have used other old tape formats like Philips VCR and VCR-LP formats, VCC, SVR, but they are mostly european type systems so other conversion in between with a video processor and or TBC/combfilters was necessary. They still look pretty bad compared to LD. But they may require additional processing I'm unfamilar with.
For pro formats, I think D1 and D2 looks pretty darn good on a HDTV.

Gary Seven · May 30, 2006

Derek Fulghum said:
I think this analogy is more appropriate to the jump from VHS to DVD. I could never understand why many tend to lump LD in with VHS, since the jump in quality from LD to DVD is nowhere near the quantum improvement going from VHS to LD. I would say that the jump from VHS to LD is "horse-n-carraige to 4-door sedan", and from LD to DVD the "sedan to the coup sports car". Of course, on that scale, Hi-Def would be a supersonic jet...

Indeed. As a matter of fact, for the MOST part (if not all), the audio of LDs BLOWS away their DVD counterpart. Having a few hundred of each and after many comparisons, I have no intention of getting rid of my LDs anytime soon.

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