For the Love of Laserdisc
Why Laserdisc?
Plenty of obsolete formats garner a following because of nostalgia (I can't fathom why else anyone would actually like 8-track cassettes), and a few of them remain popular long after the sun sets on their era because they remain superior in one way or another to the thing that replaced them.Laserdiscs kind of fit in both categories. I didn't grow up with laserdiscs. Heck, I only ever remember seeing a laserdisc player once when I was growing up. But I sure knew what it was when I saw it.
Dipping My Toe
In the late 90's when DVD was on its meteoric rise as the replacement for both Laserdisc and the vastly more popular VHS, I dabbled a little with laserdiscs. Being a 12 inch disc format just like vinyl records, the disc jackets featured a whole square foot of artwork. They were just cool to look at. So, like a lot of people, I bought a handful of laserdiscs before I even had a player to play them with.Some time in the late 90's, My wife and I stopped into a rental store that was liquidating its laserdisc stock. Most of it had been picked over by the time we arrived, but I managed to pick up the whole Ninja Turtles trilogy for about $15. Sometime later I was browsing the case at a Goodwill and found a sealed copy of the T2 special edition (it was exclusive to LD at the time).
A buddy from work was a real AV enthusiast and was constantly educating me on the virtues of Laserdisc, and DVD. With Laserdisc being replaced by DVD, people were selling their players like crazy so I picked out a player on ebay and eagerly waited for it to arrive. My buddy lent me a couple of discs to break in the new player. One of them was Con Air - I can't recall the other.
Well, the player arrived, I got it all set up, watched one movie, started a second and the player broke. After a heated discussion with the seller I sent the player back and decided not to jump into the format after all.
Six months later I had switched jobs and was recounting the experience to a co-worker who offered to sell me his barely-used Laserdisc player for $100. I took him up on it and I've had a great working player ever since.
Even so, I didn't really do a lot of collecting. I picked up a couple odds and ends. When the Transformers: The Movie was re-released by Pioneer Japan, I somehow got wind of it and ordered a copy which is still sealed to this day. When browsing the LD collection at a local used record store I found a copy of Anne of Avonlea for my wife. You get the idea.
Another Angle
About four years ago, I decided that I really wanted to try out the Pioneer LaserActive system - basically they made a Laserdisc player with an expansion port for video game hardware modules. There was a Sega Genesis/Sega CD version and a TurboGrafx/TGCD version. In addition to being able to play cartridge and CD games on the player, it was also possible to play special games on Laserdisc. Because Laserdisc is an analog format, these games haven't really been emulated, and can't really be copied so unlike just about every other video game on the planet, these games can really only be played on real hardware from retail discs. As you might imagine, these games and players are pretty rare and expensive. I only own one game.Renewed Interest
Earlier this summer a friend from work asked me if I knew where his buddy might buy a laserdisc player. The buddy had just bought a copy of the Star Wars Definitive Edition on Laserdisc and didn't have a player to play it on. I had been looking for an excuse to come over to his house and see his theater setup (140-inch screen was all I needed to know), so I offered to bring one of my players over so we could all watch some un-"fixed" Star Wars.The experience turned out to be immensely fun and educational. Firstly the deluxe box set of the Star Wars trilogy was just really really cool. Secondly the ability of modern A/V equipment to clean up and scale composite video from a Laserdisc to 1080p is surprisingly good.
The theater was equipped with a contemporary Onkyo receiver that was 1 model different from the one I use. I had never bothered to connect a LD player to mine because I assumed the picture would look like crap no matter what I did. I incorrectly assumed this because my primary hobby is video games and connecting old video games to modern AV equipment usually does result in extremely poor picture quality. I have to use a lot of specialized AV equipment to get a good picture out of old game systems on new TVs. In the back of my mind I knew this was because old game consoles took advantage of characteristics of CRT televisions that weren't necessarily part of the video specification of the time. When non-CRT televisions became the standard these tricks no longer worked because the scalers built in to modern TVs and AV receivers were not designed to process the out-of-spec signal. What never connected with that knowledge until I was sitting in my friend's theater watching Star Wars on his 140-inch screen and wondering how it could look so good, was that this is EXACTLY what those scalers are designed to handle. And boy do they do it well.
The event also opened up discussions where I was able to share my knowledge of the LD format - how it's recorded in composite and not RGB, how the CAV and CLV formats work etc... This got me onto the topic of AC-3 (also known as Dolby Digital) and DTS audio and basically where the Laserdisc technology peaked before its obsolescence. Having these facts rattling around again reminded me that I had always regretted in the tiniest way never having been able to experience everything LD had to offer. So, of course, 2016 was the perfect year to rectify that.
Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS
The LD format had a long and storied history and evolved quite a bit along the way. The fact that the designers were able to take what started as a fully analog format and add digital audio, and then later multi-channel digital audio (Dolby Digital and DTS both supported up to 6 discrete channels of audio) spoke volumes about the versatility of the technology. What was originally only able to handle less than 30 minutes per side of grainy muddy video was stretched and stretched and refined until ultimately each side could contain up to an hour of high-quality video. But this evolution was not without its price. The very first players couldn't play digital audio. While most players manufactured from the early 80's onward do support digital audio, only a handful of them support AC-3 and DTS, and there's a huge catch even with the ones that do.AC-3 is recorded on the disc on one of the analog audio tracks as a matrixed radio frequency signal. It sounds like static when played as analog audio. In order to actually get discrete 6-channel audio (so-called "5.1" because it carries 5 full frequency channels and a subwoofer channel with just the low-end frequencies) from AC-3 one was required employ a number of devices at once. Firstly the player had to recognize the AC-3 signal and output it as radio-frequency (RF) instead of analog sound. Secondly the RF signal needed to be demodulated - that is taken from matrixed RF to a digital bitstream. Because it would make the players more costly and the number of discs to actually use AC-3 was relatively low, the circuitry needed to demodulate the AC-3 RF signal was never built into the players. Instead users either had to buy an external demodulator (which weren't cheap) or buy an A/V receiver with the circuitry built in (also not cheap because it was a feature reserved for high-end receivers). And finally, the digital bitstream had to be decoded - that is turned back into multiple analog audio channels to be output from your surround speakers. Fortunately that last step is something that pretty much every digital A/V receiver ever released is capable of doing because the digital bitstream output by the decoder is the same format used by DVDs with a DD soundtrack.
To make things even stranger, competing with AC-3 was DTS. DTS was also a 5.1 channel format but a decidedly simpler one. Instead of using an RF-encoded analog audio track, DTS used both of the digital stereo tracks to carry a bitstream which could then be decoded by pretty much any A/V receiver. This had the dual advantages of much higher bandwidth than AC-3 and the player didn't need any proprietary circuitry or really even be aware of DTS to support it - it just had to provide a digital audio output. Higher bandwidth is a big deal with audio formats because less compression is needed, and less compression means wider dynamic range and higher fidelity. Because of this DTS laserdiscs are among the most sought-after and most expensive ones to find used.
In order to support both DTS and AC-3, you would have to use two distinct digital outputs from a compatible LD player - an AC-3 RF output, and a digital audio output.
Plunging In, Head First
After doing my research and shopping around, I settled on a plan to start enjoying the full digital surround sound experience on Laserdisc.First I followed this extremely helpful list of AC-3 RF Audio Gear: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/90-receivers-amps-processors/652457-list-ac-3-rf-audio-gear.html
The most cost-efficient (but least space-efficient) way to demodulate the RF signal was to buy an old AV receiver which not only had the demoduator built in, but also featured a digital audio output. Many of the higher-end models featured audio pre-outs so the receiver could be used as a preamplifier for external high-end amplifiers.
I found such an AV receiver on Ebay for a reasonable price and pulled the trigger.
Next I needed to get an LD player that supported AC-3 AND had a digital audio output. There may be a handy list out there for that combination, but if there is I couldn't find it. Instead I browsed through tons of Ebay listings and built a list of eligible models based on photos of the backs of the players.
I settled on a model, found a good deal and bought it.
My collection only had a single movie encoded with AC-3 (Braveheart), and none with DTS. The cheapest thing I could find with a DTS soundtrack was Con Air! How cool was that?
Lastly I needed to work out how to cable everything together. I dug through my boxes of old cable and scraped together just enough to connect everything up and test with (that is to say, on the floor in front of my other receiver). Then I headed over to Monoprice to order new cable in the required lengths so I could install it permanently.
About a week later, everything arrived on the same day.
Fixing Your Player Is Part of the Fun
Unsurprisingly the LD player was non-functional when it arrived. If you ever get a wild hair to get into this hobby, this is just something you need to get used to. These players are old, and while they may be sturdy, they do not ship well. The shipper had done an amazing job packing it, but the loading mechanism was stuck - probably because of a decade of sitting idle on a shelf somewhere. I dismantled the player and started down a rabbit hole that was deceptively deep. After studying the mechanism and getting a rough idea how it was supposed to work I managed to get it free, but this only led to the next failure. I'll spare the gory details and just say that I was able to get the player functioning again after about 30 minutes of tinkering.By that evening I had experienced my first AC-3 laserdisc, and it was fantastic. The Dolby Digital track on Braveheart sounded better than anything I had heard since seeing the film in the theater. When I looked into why this might be, I discovered that, in practice, the AC-3 tracks on LD are generally far less compressed than they are on DVD. The difference is amazing. As to why it sounded better than even the Blu-ray release, I have to chalk that up to mixing. My theory is that since AC-3 was a new and high-end feature during the heyday of Laserdisc, the audio was mastered with a slant towards showing off - adding a little extra reverb here or there or putting your subwoofer through its paces to remind you you're listening to "surround" sound. Whereas with Blu-ray, discrete multi-channel audio is old hat, and the format has nothing to prove. Either way, in my opinion, the audio really really shines on these babies.
All that was left, it seemed, was to collect a few choice discs and keep on enjoying. One of the best places to buy LD's is discountlaserdisc.com. The guy who runs it is great to talk to and he really goes the extra mile to make sure everything he sells is in good condition. The prices are quite good as well. The site inventory isn't always up-to-date so if you're looking for something he doesn't have listed, just ask - he might have it.
Buying laserdiscs on eBay is a bit of a mixed bag. Out of 20 or so films I've bought that way, about 5 were defective in some way. Oddly most of the "sealed" discs I've bought have turned out bad - which leads me into the next important thing about Laserdiscs. This hobby is not for the faint of heart. Getting into Laserdiscs, just like vinyl, will re-acquaint you (or acquaint you for the first time) with analog format idiosyncrasies that our all-digital lives have sheltered you from. In just the handful of collecting that I've done in the past year, I've come across about every major kind of flaw of the format. When you consider that I have about 40 films altogether, that's a pretty high failure rate.
There is no error correction for the video stream. Any dirt, smudge or scratch that will refracts the laser will show up in the image.
Crosstalk
The discs are so large that the possibility of warping is much higher than CD/DVD/BD sized discs - so much so that Laserdisc players incorporate a "tilt" mechanism that adjusts the angle of the laser to try to keep it perpendicular as the disc is playing. A small amount of warping is normal as keeping a surface area that large perfectly flat is pretty tricky, but a lot of people made the situation worse by stacking them horizontally for storage. These things are pretty heavy and stacking more than 7 or 8 of them this way will cause the ones on the bottom to warp under the weight. When a disc is too warped or the tilt mechanism drifts out of alignment it leads to a picture artifact called crosstalk. Crosstalk results in herring-bone like warps in the picture, and when it's really bad, the picture will flicker and roll - sometimes even superimposing two different images.The Dreaded "Laser Rot"
Unlike modern optical disc formats the layers of which are fused by heating the acrylic plastic until it melts together, Laserdisc layers were actually glued together. The reason this is significant is that if the disc wasn't manufactured properly, over time the glue will lose its seal, allowing tiny amounts of oxygen to leak into the edges of the disc and oxidize the aluminum reflective layer where the information is etched onto the disc. This creates little bubbles in the track that refract the laser and prevent it from properly reading the information. The result comes out in the picture as bright speckles or dots. This is known as "laser rot" and among LD enthusiasts is like the bubonic plague. The worst part of it is that it's a progressive degeneration. A disc can play fine once, but a year later be so degraded it can't be read at all.Contrary to superstition (yes, there is a lot of actual superstition about laser rot), not all bright speckles or dots are actually laser rot. Laser rot is characterized by being worse at the beginning or the end of a disc side (where the physical edges of the disc are) and usually persists for several seconds to several minutes and clears up the farther the laser is from the edges of the disc. The occasional random bright dot is not laser rot. It's usually a manufacturing impurity or a spec of dirt on the disc surface. The reason it's important to distinguish the two is that rot will usually get worse, but the occasional bright dot will not.
Hedging Your Bets
In perusing forms and ebay auctions, I didn't immediately understand why so many people kept 5 or 6 players around at any given point.After about 3 months of light use, my shiny new LD player broke down. Upon seeking support, I was surprised by how much information I was able to find online about troubleshooting and repair. The Laserdisc collector community is an unusual to say the least. The heyday of Laserdisc enthusiasm was largely pre-internet, and a lot of the information I was able to track down came from mid-90's style web pages with static html, blinking gifs and visitor counters. For some players, service and user manuals are available freely to download, and others are hoarded like the last box of twinkies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And there are still a ton of good places to go to get advice like the forums at lddb.com and www.vintage-radio.net.
I couldn't find a service manual for my particular model of player, but I did find one that was just a couple of model numbers off and it gave me some decent clues about what to look for and a general idea of how the player worked. As annoying as it was not to be able to watch all of the discs I had been buying up, the process of trying to fix the player was actually quite cathartic. At this point I've torn the thing down and put it back together so many times I could probably do it blindfolded in the dark. In all I ended up buying 3 players in various states of disrepair, and from three broken players I ended up with 2 working units. With time, patience and not a small amount of prayer, I might eventually fix the third player as well.
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