Welcome to the Laserdisc super store!
Laserdisc players, those beautiful players that we had before DVD players. While Laserdiscs are a dead technology there is still a lot of good things to be said about them. Some Laserdisc sound better than their DVD counterparts. Some Laserdiscs used full bitrate sound instead of the compressed format found on most DVDs. While the picture quality on Laserdiscs isn't as good as that found on modern DVD players the picture quality is still quite good, far better than VHS.
One of the best reasons to pick up a Laserdisc player is because there are still plenty of movies that have never been released on DVD that are available on Laserdisc. Some of these movies most likely will never be released on DVD as well.
Another great reason is cost. You can easily pick up movies on Laserdisc for dirt cheap. You are often able to buy people's entire collection of discs for a fraction of the cost that they cost new. I have bought collections of over 100 titles for less than twenty dollars.
If you are in the market to buy a Laserdisc player you have come to the right place. If you are new to the world of Laserdisc I highly suggest giving this Laserdisc guide a read. I am sure you will find the information contained within very helpful.
There are many different Laserdisc players out there. Generally speaking, the later the model was produced the better it's going to be. Some things to look for when buying a Laserdisc player are:
Autoflip Laserdiscs can only hold about an hours worth of of information per disc side. Because of this you will usually have to flip over the disc at some point to continue to watching the movie. Laserdisc players with autoflip will automatically flip the disc (actually, they just flip the laser) making it so you don't have to get up and do it manually.
AC-3 Out In order to enjoy true discreet surround sound your Laserdisc player will have to have an AC-3 out. In order to utilize this output your receiver will need to have a built in RF Demodulator (chances are your receiver will not have this unless it is quite old) or you will need an external RF Demodulator.
Digital audio out In order to listen to DTS encoded laserdiscs and to get the most out of the PCM soundtrack your player will need to have a digital out for sound. This could either be an optical or coaxial digital output which is separate from the AC-3 output.
Laserdisc players differ from DVD players in that the player can make a huge impact on the picture quality. Now I am not saying that a good DVD player doesn't look any better than a cheap one, but the difference between a great Laserdisc player and a bad one is much larger than the difference between two DVD players of different quality.
There were over 17,000 Laserdisc movies released in the US. Many of these cult movies, movies from earlier ages and music Laserdiscs have never made it to DVD and some of them may never.
Since Laserdisc is a dead technology about the only place to buy them these days is used. By far the best place to find them is on eBay which is where the products that appear on this page are from. Since these products are on eBay the inventory is constantly changing and new players are being added all the time so make sure you come back often.
Cheers |
