Pioneer to cease making LD players (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

TOKYO (Nikkei)--Pioneer Corp. (6773) will cease production and sales
of laser disc players during the current fiscal year, company sources
said.

Sales have plummeted as consumers turn to DVD players.

As Pioneer is the only Japanese company still making the machines, its
withdrawal marks the death knell of a domestic market that saw 800,000
units sold in 1990.

In January, the company pulled the plug on a line making LD players in
Saitama Prefecture. It will also stop production of four other models
that play DVDs or CDs as well as laser discs.

Pioneer was one of the original manufacturers of laser discs and sold
about 400,000 in the peak year of 1990.

But sales have declined drastically since 1996, when DVDs were
introduced. Fiscal 2001 sales of laser disc-related equipment fell to
below 20,000 units, for a total of less than 2 billion yen.

As of this past March, Pioneer had sold about 3.6 million LDs
domestically since its first machine rolled off the line.

Dutch electronics giant Royal Philips Electronics and other big
overseas manufacturers have already pulled the plug on their laser
disc players.

(The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Thursday morning edition)
Wednesday, May 22, 2002

 

[Eric T]

Where can you still buy new LD players?

 

[Christian Behrens]

Japan

 

[alan halvorson]

I don't know what is still being sold here. I bought my LD-S9 from a fellow named Nick Santini, who is in Japan. He may have some new or used LD-S9's and HLD-X9's (Not cheap though. Shipping will set you back $150 or more. And you need a transformer to run Japanese equipment here. My total cost was about $1700.), plus he deals in rare Japanese LD's. I, and many others, can vouch for him.

 

[Scooter]

Anyone else notice the bad math in the press release???

 

[Rachael B]

Robert R U going into biz may-king Laserdisc Players? There's a market niche available.

 

[Robert A. Willis Jr.]

Audio advisor still advertises the last Pioneer unit made for the states. I forget the model.

rw

 

[RobertR]

Rachael, the spare parts business is going to be lucrative too.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Anyone else notice the bad math in the press release???

You mean 800,000 vs. 400,000 sold in 1990? I think they mean Pioneer sold only 400,000 players in 1990 and the other half of the 800,000 came from another manufacturer.

 

[Allan Jayne]

I can foresee folks with laserdisk collections buying and owning five or six players so that as players wore out they could play the disks for the rest of their lives.
The alternative is to burn DVD's from all of the LD's and end up with the limited quality of LD's composite video on top of the limited quality of DVD's MPEG compression.
Nowadays every now and then you will hear of someone (perhaps via a for sale ad) selling a collection of the long discontinued RCA Selectavision (CED) disks together with five or six players.
Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[Chris Dugger]

Well...

I must admit that I burned SONG OF THE SOUTH to dvd just last night from my laserdisc.

Overall... I am very impressed with the results...

At least I have a copy to play if the laserdisc play craps out...

Dugger

 

[Frank Bambarola]

Eric,

I can also vouch for Nicolas Santini. I believe he still has a few HLD-X9 players available.

Frank

 

[Jay Sylvester]

Nick contacted me a few days ago to let me know that his shipment of LD-S9 players came in. I would jump on one if you have the cash (about $1700 shipped with 110W transformer).

I'm keeping my CLD-79 as a backup, but I don't think it'll compare to the S9 if that ever craps out. Hopefully the S9 will go for 10 or 15 years with occasional maintenance.