Just found out that Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and Voyager where released on LD for the Japanese market only. That made me curious. DS9, and VOY were never released in HD, so the LD should at least match the DVD, and maybe even surpass it. The LaserDisc is not going to suffer from compression, and the DTS bandwidth is almost twice as high. Plus while the DVD was mass market stuff, the Laserdisc was for a niche market, so maybe more care was taken with its execution. Does anyone have any experience with these discs?
They weren't (all) Japanese exclusive. I own some American TNG and DS9 laserdiscs. I did some visual comparisons a long while back and they are better than the DVDs, but only by a little. If they had released all of DS9 and I had a way to transfer them without losing quality, I probably would have. The compression on the DS9 DVDs bums me out.
In general - I never saw DS9 on LD but I did see some TNG movies on both LD and DVD... I used to do LD, like how some do meth. Now, I eventually went all-in on DVD, as buying used players was a gamble and disc/bit rot was worse on LD than DVD. LD was superior to VHS for sure, but didn't have quite as much detail as DVD. (LD was still analogue and had a lower 'resolution', equivalent of 425i (DVD is 480i or 480p)). Laserdisc didn't have compression as such, but it did have two playback modes (CAV and CLV.) CAV had better picture quality due to higher 'bandwidth' and smoother fast forward but was about 30 minutes per side (maybe 40, I'd need to look it up), CLV had much more episode time per side and allowed a full episode to be recorded on one side. At the cost of 50% bandwidth reduction. So CLV, while still looking good, wasn't as good as CAV. CAV also had better luma and chroma resolution... but both looked good. Apart from line noise inherent in the playback process. I compared LD and DVD when the latter came out and some DVDs looked worse than LD due to poor compression algorithms (e.g. color bleed, jaggied lines, etc) - which improved a ton since then. The original DVD release of "Star Trek Insurrection" is a great example of DVD looking worse than LD (ditto for STFC), especially with those vent grilles on the bridge of 1701-E. Later re-releases fixed those issues. Poor mastering and color grading also lent to early DVDs being muted instead of their full palette - like the movie "Contact'. As the issues got ironed out, it didn't take much for DVD to outrun LD in all forms, not just space.) "The Matrix" was an example of early-DVD done right. The movie may be derivative at spots but the characters are awesome and the DVD quality pretty much got everything right and it won me over back in the day. Side note tangent: Spoiler: About the future standard of 4K and a general whine about color grading Am waiting for 4K to take off, as it too is deemed niche - and not wrongly so. Ghostbusters (1984) and Beetlejuice (1987) are both positively first rate examples of re-scanning films that were originally composited in film and thus translate above 1080p with greater result. Compared to previous releases, reviewers are praising so much and that's a great sign. When I saw the comparisons, I was floored by how much more detail is in 4K compared to 1080P, even on a smaller screen. It's truly jaw-dropping. Sadly, the Star Wars movies are almost as stellar as the other two movies mentioned except they regraded blues into teals (sigh), TESB being a prime example in the Carbonite freezing room, which is supposed to be a bold royal blue and bold orange. 4K distorts this into muted teal and muted orange. YT channels showcasing both 4K and previous transfers reveal this. Of course, so do kleenex boxes and other goodies from 1980 that show the correct color grading. There is no reason for any movie < 2005 to be re-graded to such dour hues. (With luck the Reeve Superman movies will have their proper palette restored as the blu-ray release screwed that up for II-IV. He is not "The Man of Teal" and his father didn't wear "acid-wash teal jeans".)
DS9 on LD compares well to DS9 on DVD because the source material is locked in such a low resolution. DS9 on DVD occasionally has areas of the image shift out of alignment with others due (I assume) to the compression. The LDs did not appear to do this from my limited collection/comparison.
I encountered LD's as a kid. Think my family has some in storage. Do they still make machines that play them?
I don't think so. I consider myself fortunate to have a working LD player. You might have to try a thrift store to find a player.
No. That said, (like some VHS players) - a lot of the LD players were built pretty well and survive today. You might still be able to get a hold of a refurbished one. My Pioneer LD player still worked as of two years ago (that was the last time I powered it up to use it).
how susceptible to laser rot are the star trek releases? i know it tends to very by earlier vs later pressings, as well as the factory and company that made them.
I so badly want a LaserDisc player, but I simply don't have the room for it or the collecting that would come along with it.
Wikipedia says the last LD players were made in 2009. That being said, I would venture a guess that there are probably enough spare parts out on the market that you could keep one in good working condition for quite some time if there is a decent A/V equipment repair shop in your area that you could take the player to when parts wear out and break down. Kor
I have some of season 5 episodes of Babylon 5 on LD. Where they really shine is the computer graphics scenes in space that were only done in 4:3 format, and modified to 16:9 for DVDs. I haven't checked my Pioneer CLD-D709 player in years though. My AC3 RF input receiver for the audio is sitting up on the shelf in a store room gathering dust.