Hello, recently i was looking @ some website's and i found alot of cool anime LD , including my favorite series Saint Seiya ^^, so i decided to buy them and a LD player, but the thing is, i dont really know which player to buy, i've been on ebay and they go for less than 50 bucks, so could anyone answer my questions? Do they have region lock? are they mpeg1 or mpeg2? which model is the best :smt033 ? can i still get brandnew ones? where? thx :smt027 btw: what about that LD player in which you can play pc engine and megadrive games..... how much does it go for? and , is it good playing LD?
The one that plays PC-Engine and MegaLD's is pretty steep. Couple hundred bucks plus shipping from Japan. I personally don't think it's worth it. Just get a Pioneer LD player -- they make the best. And they're not mpeg1 or mpeg2. They were invented way before video compression for computers was thought of.
in fact, Laserdisc uses analog video encoding (although there may be digital sound on a disc). I think Laserdiscs look cool as hell, I remember walking in a Virgin store years ago and seeing a huge face of Darth Vader staring me in the face... it was the Star Wars laserdisc sleeve :smt023
DVD isn't superior,the main reason is that DVD was made for a mass market by really replacing VHS but LD wasn't that popular in western countries because of bad marketing.It was a videophile format and because of that many many movies on LD are much better than the DVD versions.
DVD uses a compressed video stream, LD doesnt, it uses an analogue video stream, so its superior despite being sooooooooo much older.
No seriously, DVD is better. PS. How hell does something being analog make it better? You can't argue with this, digital light-switches are far superior. You can have an XDVD with any bitrate, this way you can achieve a quality standard essentially identical to some lossless video format. You might have seen some blemishes in DVDs because of shitty encoding and the damn "NTSC Film" standard, this obviously isn't the format's fault. DVD's standard resolution is way higher than LD's and you can have native progressive video. Analog formats such as LD are exposed to bitrot with little parity so they can easily degrade over time, not that you'd notice the difference. LDs not far off from SVHS quality. Also recordings of LD can be highly crappy as composite video is a victim of colorbleeding etc. Try comparing a DVD-9 movie with a LD on a big TV. Heres the bottom line: whats "better"? Composite or component video? (If you like the ambiance of composite video, thats a different issue.)
Such a statement as "LD is better than DVD" is pretty stupid, rumors get spread this way. I'm a pretty serious about that Also if someone didn't know, LD stores video in composite format while DVD holds color-difference (YUV/component) I have nothing against LDs if it seemed like it did, I own a Pioneer LD. Evangelion, if you get one, get one with the dealy that auto-switches sides. Its a pain in the ass to switch every few minutes.
Like Vinyl which really sounds better (warmer) than CDs. As I said most LDs were really well made.Crappy transfers to DVDs are often usual which makes LD the better choice for many older movies. Videophiles know what I'm talking about ;-) for everybody else it doesn't matter cause with a small TV a crappy 5.1 and a cheap DVD player you won't notice any difference anyway and VHS with dolby surround what look as good as the DVD. But anyway,no need for a fight I should have expressed myself more clearly,LD resolution isn't at DVD level and LDs aren't produced anymore so no matter how much you like LDs you have to buy DVDs,I recomment Criterion stuff,they really try to get the best out of every movie they release.
While I will agree that audio formats peaked with vinyl, I have to stick w/ DVDs. When DVD first came out, there was some tearing and whatnot, but those wrinkles are pretty much ironed out. I've not looked at tech-specs in a while, but from what I remember, DVD is a superior format (and WAY far superior media -- no laser rot).
I'm a collector of both LD and DVD's, and my opinion is that of pretty much most LD owners. Picture wise, you cannot beat DVD (although its close) and sound wise, LD 'can' wipe the floor with DVD. As mentioned before, LD's do not have the horrible compression on the audio like DVD's do, so a well encoded AC3 or DTS Laserdisc sounds stunning next to its DVD counterpart. With ref to the earlier questions, Laserdisc does not suffer like DVD with region encoding, only PAL or NTSC discs are the two types you will find (Along with some old Pal Analogue Laservision discs occasionally), and you just need a player that handles both. Most players that were released late in LD's life will handle both types. I have 2 Pioneer CLD-925's which play PAL and NTSC, both side play, AC3 output. These are three things you might want to look for when buying a player.
