Laseractive W modules?

Dispite my Jump to blu ray and the risk of Laserrot I'm still considering getting a laserdisc player. The Laseractive is a possibility though I have my questions.
Overall as an LD player how does it perform? Second, With all the Extras would it still be expensive? Like As Expensive as it was in 1994?

 

Laserdisc? If you want to appear cool you need CEDs.

 

I can tell you now that the Laser Active only has composite out and it's fucking awful quality. No, it really is bad. Have you ever seen a model 1 Mega Drive in composite? That's how shit it looks. Not only the game modules but also the laser discs. I had Empire Strikes Back and Planes Trains and Automobiles and both looked total ass and this was using a wide screen CRT as well.

I just don't get it. They make such a fantastic bit of hardware then render it useless with piss poor composite out.

Yakumo

 

I was a big laserdisc fan back in the day. Unfortunately I can't find my double sided player now and I only have a single sided player.

I'm tempted to pick up a nice double sided player just to have something to play my old Star Wars lasers on, the rest of my collection is on DVD/bluray now. Do you think the composite quality on all pioneers was the same like with the laseractive? I haven't played one in years so have no clue what it will look like on my hdtv?

By the way, Time Gal on laseractive alone is worth having one, too bad its crazy expensive.

 

I don't think all Pioneer Laser Disc Players have awful quality but that's because all the players I ever saw or used were back in the UK and we have better standards in video quality than NTSC systems. Every video recorder I've seen and used in Japan is worse in quality than anything I owned in the UK. As for Laser Disc, well, I've only owned the Laser Active over here and I can honestly say I was shocked at how bad it looked. Eric from Japangaming had a laserdisc system and I didn't think much of the quality on that either.

Take a look at this PAL Pioneer player. Notice the two 21pin RGB ports. I've never seen a NTSC player with these on.



Yakumo

 

From my experience laser discs only advantages are uncompressed audio and extras the dvd didn't have. Yakumo you had Planes, Trains and Automobiles? Good choice, good choice. Though on that one I would say the first dvd release wasn't that much better, though I hear the new dvd/blu ray transfer for planes, trains had better image. Btw didn't pioneer make a laserdisc/dvd combo that supported component input?

 

You know what? I considered it. But apparently they go to shit pretty fast CED was an interesting technology that's for sure.

ANYWAYS, To my knowledge all ntsc Laserdisc players were composite only. I figured I'd get a laseractive becuase I was thinking of getting a Mega Drive anyway and if I got a PC engine too then I'd more or less have every system I could want.

There's this huge vacancy under my TV right now where a Laserdisc player would look pretty sweet sitting. Only reason I'm considering an LD player is that there are alot of Criterion LDs that were released by other studioes in DVD and Blu Ray and I'm a huge fan of Criterion. Actually make that 2 reasons that and Star Wars but I hear the definitive discs are prone to laser rot.

And TimeGal on Laseractive? Tell me more...... (As it's on my saturn list)

 

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! You need a 3D capable VHD player. With Jaws 3D (Stereoscopic #D in 1986 WOOHOO!)

On topic now, I would avoid the Laseractive, crappy laserdisc player that is better used as a game console, it will also cost you more to get started than it would to buy a fully equipped NEC and Sega system set, get it if you want the LD-ROM titles, otherwise pass. I can personally recommend the CLD-D704 as having a good price to quality ratio.

 

From what I've read, Laserdiscs are encoded in either NTSC or PAL, so using RGB probably won't improve the image. However, some LD players had S-video output, and that probably would give a better output than composite. They're not hard to find. You might also want to look for a player with an AC-3 output, if you want surround sound - though you'll probably need a demodulator to make use of it. I've never owned an LD player, but I've researched them a lot.

 

The laserdisc players with S-video were for the DVD players later ones had.

 

Oh you are SO LUCKY you are the Admin/site owner SO LUCKY......

Anyways, Like I said, I'm interested in Laserdisc collecting. It's how MEN watch movies......

or so somebody on amazon said.

 

I've seen tons of regular (non-DVD) LD players on eBay with S-video output.

 

Interesting

 

Indeed. That is a classic movie. I'll have to pick it up on BluRay at some point.

Someone said the same thing to me about VHS players but they were wrong. I was brought up with 21 pin RGB as standard until my early 20's when I moved to Japan. So to me the sight of seeing a Japanese video player in action for the first time was shocking. I'm talking high end players too, not some cheap crap. I even had a 20 head, (20 bloody heads!!) Sharp video recorder but it just couldn't match the quality of my 6 head Toshiba PAL/NTSC system back in the UK or even my 4 head Ferguson PAL player all because of the composite output. Composite just fucks everything up big time no matter what the system the video signal is coming from.

 

I'm pretty sure I once watched Pokemon Mewtwo Strikes Back on Japanese VHS. Don't recall any problems, but I didn't keep that tape long either.

 

The technical reason why the the Laseractive used composite is mainly as the Mega LD and LD-ROM games generally were a mixture of the LD image and generated graphics from the Megadrie / PC Engine or Karaoke modules. The LDs were composite, so it was easier to overlay another composite signal on top then to convert to RGB to mix in the RGB from the modules. Most genlocks at the time would have only have had a composite or s-video signal.

Although you have have had LD players with component and RGB, these were generally converted from the composite signal, Laserdiscs were designed to output to TVs and back in the 70s composite was the way to go.

 

well Japan has god awful protectionist laws that make it a crime to export newer stuff
let alone they usually super cripple composite on all video recorders

just saw an article recently that just might make youtube illegal in japan and about the DVD backup tutorial software guys who face 5 years in prison

 

Japan has a million bullshit laws that nobody cares about.

 

it was more to the point that you called NTSC composite god awful and its actuialy japans vershion thats god awful
USA composite is soso