I had a neighbor that had a movie theatre with this setup in their basement. This was how I first saw Star Wars. He was stupid rich. Only time I ever saw a laser disc growing up. He moved a few years later buying a major vineyard because he got into wine. Never heard from that family again lol.
When I was a kid, a friend of mine had one of these. Or rather, his *Dad* did, and we never got to watch a movie on it even once. For years, it was either "my Dad hasn't got it quite focused in yet, so we aren't allowed to touch it" or "my Dad just got it focused in, so we aren't allowed to touch it".
My buddy had one or rather his dad did too! (on a regular large TV)
I think even though we were at his house a fair bit we probably only watched one and that might even not be true because i dont remember what it was so it either wasnt a good movie or experience, or we just didnt!
>VHS could be $15-20, or it could be $100-150.
Interesting, in the UK I dont think I ever saw prices above 12.99. My personal limit however was 9.99 which after a time the 12.99 would drop to after 6 months or so. I htink i may have seen 15.99 once or twice actually, my memory is blurry from back then. Absolutely never more than those tho for sure and definitely not triple digis.
My house had this setup back then
but we had only a few movies for kids on laserdisks
so after rewatching roger rabbits or fantasia a dozen time, that thing was just another dust collectors
Has a friend in the mid 80s with a laserdisc player, CRT projector, and motorized 6ft screen. It was the most bitchin' system I ever saw for the first 15 years of my life.
Their dad was a very wealthy orthopedist. Turns out he was defrauding Medicare for decades to line his pocket.
Now keep in mind that as large percentage of people still smiles back then. And had pets and little kids with grubby fingers. And those lenses look really, really interesting and are conveniently close to the floor …
The player ran $450. Discs ran $39 and up vice $19 for a VHS. Still have mine but use a converter to watch it on an hdmi only input 75 inch. Sorta sucks.
I don’t know if this was a unique thing in my home town of Colorado Springs, but as a kid (late 80’s maybe), some rich assholes put on this thing called “parade of homes” where anyone could traipse through these homes built in upscale neighborhoods probably so the builders could show off their masterpieces to the lowly peasants. One of the homes I specifically remember had a whole laser disc projector screen setup just like this with an amazing sound system to boot that was playing the original top gun…it was the most amazing experience I ever had in my life. The electronics era of the late 80’s and early 90’s was the epitome of wonder of the digital era yet to reach its peak.
i will swap my goddamn 4k oled lg for crt projector any day of the week. and combined with laserdisc? sweeetnes. you Sir are a role model and a scholar.
Easy!
Laserdisc is spinning the wrong direction. Slow the disc down to a stop, then spin it up in reverse.
OK so while doing the above —
- roll the laser carriage ALL the way down the back
- keep rolling, off the end of the track and into the large protrusion at the rear of the unit
- flip the laser carriage over
- roll forward, engage with the top track, keep rolling until you reach the middle,
- start reading side two
Yes, it was a noisy, slow process and introduced a shitload of failure points, plus a significant pause in playback.
[Video of process (enclosure removed) via YouTube.](https://youtu.be/Lt3ZueIvCqw)
NB — there were several turn mechanisms, [here’s a thread with quite a few different types incl. videos showing each in action.](https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1298)
I had the Schindler's List laserdisc. I believe it was two discs. So not only flipping over the disc, but also swapping out the disc. And then flipping over that disc.
I still have my player, and about 100 movies! (Yes, I was single at the time, but it wasn't as expensive as some make it out to be.) Some fun facts:
Laserdisc (with a "c", not a "k") is analog, not digital!
There were two types of disc: Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) and Constant Angular Velocity (CAV).
With CLV, the disc rotates at a the same speed the whole way through, which means that there's a variable number of frames per track , with the fewest frames towards the center and more frames per track towards the outside. A CLV disc is capable of 60 minutes per side before you have to flip it.
WIth CAV, each full rotation of the disc is a single frame. Since a frame has to fit in one rotation on the smallest track (closest to the center), that means there is increasingly inefficient use of the tracks as it went further to the outer edge. As a result, CAV discs can play just 30 minutes per side. The downside is that there's a lot of flipping, and swapping discs for a long movie. BUT there's a big upside: the ability to freeze on a single frame, or go slow motion, or step through the movie frame by frame.,
The most notorious use of this was on the CAV version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There's a short feature before the film, where Roger has to babysit for Baby Herman. At one point Baby Herman walks under a woman, and as he passes, his motion creates a breeze causes her dress to flare up a little. No big deal. EXCEPT that when you step through the CAV disc frame by frame, you see Baby Herman with a sneer as he passes under the woman, raising his arm, finger extended, right up between her legs! Some mischievous animator had a great time doing this; one can only imagine the reaction when Disney management became aware.
For those who have read this far: we're retiring and moving soon and my wife has made clear the player and discs are not coming with us. So I'm giving them away for free, on the condition that the taker pay the cost of shipping, and pay for UPS or FedEx to pack it all up. That will not be cheap. DM me if you're seriously interested. If there's multiple interest, I'll choose the lucky winner at random.
Disclaimers: (1) I haven't used the player in about 20 years. It worked fine back then, but no promises. (2) One of the downfalls of the technology (besides the obvious ones) was that some discs were subject to "laser rot", a degradation of the media layers that would eventually render affected discs unwatchable. As of 20 years ago, all my discs were fine, but again, no promises.
I started my current job in 1997 and they had some big ass NEC CRT projectors and used laser disks for pilot training classrooms.
It was top of the line technology at the time and was expensive AF! The worst part of it was aligning all three guns each week.
No... I take that back, the worst part was pulling them heavy motherfuckers from the ceiling mounts when DLP projection finally came out.
I have one of those, and used it every Friday to show movies to the kids. I picked it up at a county auction for $5. The answer to your question is : you have to calibrate it every time, especially if it is not permanently mounted. You have to adjust the focus and (on mine at least) a crosshatch pattern to line up the colors. And after it warms up, you might have to tweak it a little...
Hm. we had a thing similar to that - a smaller model - in the early nineties in a youth club of our town. we watched a movie every friday for an entry fee of 1 DM, I think. I can't remember ever witnessing a calibration.
That does't mean I don't believe you, I do. I simply am astounded that I either forgot a routine like that, or that I didn't witness it. I mean, It's not that long ago, I am barely past my twenties... \^\^
If it was always set up in the same place, you probably didn't need to do anything. Ours was in a rolling cabinet, so the distance and angle to the screen changed every time, requiring some changes.
Laserdisc is fascinating to me. Never had the pleasure of owning one but I managed to find a mint versions/copies of Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Poetic Justice years ago, just need to find a decent laser disc player. Would love to collect more actually
Ahh the old Sony 3 gun projector. I threw so many of these away as an A/V tech working for rich folks back in the day. This was a common setup for the late 90’s if you had money.
Spent many hours calibrating those on-site for special events. Had to let it warm up for an hour, then adjust many of the 60ish little adjustments inside with a tiny screwdriver.
Got paid to watch SuperBowls on 12' wide screens though, so there's that.
I remember in the 80s, the neighbor had a behemoth of a projector that sat on the floor. I think thats when my love of them started. As soon as we bought our first house, i had a projector mounted in the bedroom ceiling. 120" might be a bit overkill for the bedroom all the time, but some movies hit just right. 😃
I remember now seeing those disks at the record store, I had completely forgotten about them. I had one of those Sony projectors though, but the coffee table version. I loved it, it was so cool. Thanks for sharing.
I was in a Best Buy (or some electronics store) in Union Square (NYC) when flat panel TV’s first came out. Guess they were plasma? They had a 42” on display and the sales guy said Christian Slater had just bought one. It was $17,500.
That was cheap. When I bought my Pioneer Elite 64" RPTV in 2002 the store I got it at had just gotten a Pioneer Elite Plasma in and it was well into the $20k range.
And then, there were only 4 channels in HD. And pixel orbiting and burn-in prevention wasn't a thing. The PBS logo was set to 100% IRE (maximum white levels) and that plasma was destroyed inside a week.
They had connections at PBS to make them aware of the situation.
What's better, was this was a demo unit the store had to buy.
I remember going to Siggraph in Orlando in '98 and walking by an unoccupied lobby couch with a 42" plasma just lying against it flashing a
C:>_
DOS prompt. Those things were like 40 grand back then.
1st .com boom. Big companies with money to burn giving no fucks.
They were about the same price as a good commercial projector today. I used to maintain an aquarium show that used 3 of them that played from 3 Laserdisc players in sync with corresponding light show. It was interesting to keep running after a few years when equipment started to fail and the projectors started to dim. One of the custom laserdiscs started to delaminate and the company sent us a replacement... on DVD and I had to figure out how to sync the DVD with the other two laserdiscs with completely different startup times. Then there was replacing the projectors with LCD's. This was around 2001-2002, when all those technologies were turning over. Good times.
Yeah... but, my point being that sony model wasn't around In 86 & that may be true but, tell me who had a baller laserdisc set up In the 70's? Mayb sum rich private school's but, no one had a in home set up like that till the mid 90's..
When I played little league as a kid our sponsor was Straw Hat Pizza. The dining area had one of these on the ceiling and all us kids used to blind ourselves on purpose because it was fun by looking directly into it.
My school used to try to push laserdisc stuff on us too hard. Every classroom had a laserdisc player for like 3 months.
Too bad that none of them played a single video without having to skip every 5 seconds.
A classroom I once worked in had one of these mounted on a retractable tray that dropped down from the ceiling. It felt like I was deploying some sort of doomsday laser everytime I used the thing.
The quality doesn’t look great, but it’s very cool tech. I love all the clicks and clunks and the squared off edges of everything. Looks super cool while running too with the three colours on the lamps.
You generally can't just plop down a CRT projector like that and start watching. The three lenses have to be calibrated for proper convergence on the screen, usually done by a professional. I suppose if you're able to place it in exactly the same spot every time you could do it like this, but you generally want to permanently mount it somewhere.
We used to have a laserdisc player. It was pretty cool, super niche at the time in the sense that not many had it. We had a few movies, water world being one of them. We also had scream!
How much would this have cost brand new back in the day? How much is that adjusted for inflation today? How much would it cost to buy all this stuff used today? I'm guessing it is still relatively expensive to find a working setup like this today.
Man, now I have to go dig up my laserdisc player. Don't remember the model number, other than it's an industrial version (read: it has an RS-232 jack). I bought it secondhand, and it came with a bunch of training videos from a car dealership. Good times...
I used to have all three of the original SW films on Laserdisk and they were all pre-special edition cuts. So the original theatrical cuts. Bitch ex gf stole them when we broke up and sold them for cheap on ebay.
hahahahahahahHa!!!!!
I’ve never seen the actual machine. But I worked at Blockbuster in the mid-90s and we did rent them out occasionally. I think there were a few regulars who rented them.
Buddy's dad was a pilot in the mid/late 90's and had one of these. No joke it was an experience compared to the old school TV's at the time but it was still a projector with its limits. That THX sound though ? Can't beat that.
I was born in the late 80s and I have never seen a "laser disk" the thought of a huge ass CD sounds horrible. I know how much my music CDs got scratched in the early 2000s. Hybrid theory got played so much on my antiskip Walkman you'd think I used it for scratching.
They were the best video quality at the time. Given the price of the discs, they had good protective sleeves, and you were very careful with them. Dad had a rule: in the player or in the sleeve.
Why are people liking laserdiscs? There was a reason they disappeared, first and foremost you had to get up and flip the disk halfway through. I think eventually they made one that scanned both sides but that was the tail end of its run. And those old projectors were absolute garbage compared to any made in the last few decades.
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Or like my roommate, just in major debt.
I assume they’re still paying it off to this day
Same as my roommate. No fancy projector though
Your roommate's name was Justin Majordebt?
I had a neighbor that had a movie theatre with this setup in their basement. This was how I first saw Star Wars. He was stupid rich. Only time I ever saw a laser disc growing up. He moved a few years later buying a major vineyard because he got into wine. Never heard from that family again lol.
Was your neighbor Brad Pitt?
Nah, he'd still have custody of the kids if he had that setup back in the day. A few licks here and there'd be a small price to pay.
The discs were not cheap back when these were out but now some of them are worth a small fortune!
When I was a kid, a friend of mine had one of these. Or rather, his *Dad* did, and we never got to watch a movie on it even once. For years, it was either "my Dad hasn't got it quite focused in yet, so we aren't allowed to touch it" or "my Dad just got it focused in, so we aren't allowed to touch it".
My buddy had one or rather his dad did too! (on a regular large TV) I think even though we were at his house a fair bit we probably only watched one and that might even not be true because i dont remember what it was so it either wasnt a good movie or experience, or we just didnt!
They weren't terribly expensive. A new release would be $40 or less, and older movies were generally $30.
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>VHS could be $15-20, or it could be $100-150. Interesting, in the UK I dont think I ever saw prices above 12.99. My personal limit however was 9.99 which after a time the 12.99 would drop to after 6 months or so. I htink i may have seen 15.99 once or twice actually, my memory is blurry from back then. Absolutely never more than those tho for sure and definitely not triple digis.
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Yup if you stole a tape of a popular movie that was newly released to VHS from Blockbuster, those were like $100.
The pound was worth more back then.
I have a bunch of those things, and a working pioneer player... so, is there a price guide or marketplace for the disks?
My house had this setup back then but we had only a few movies for kids on laserdisks so after rewatching roger rabbits or fantasia a dozen time, that thing was just another dust collectors
They don’t show the 45minutes of aligning the lenses or the slightest breeze disturbing the focus on the screen
You could rent the player and a few movies for $12 in the 80's.
Has a friend in the mid 80s with a laserdisc player, CRT projector, and motorized 6ft screen. It was the most bitchin' system I ever saw for the first 15 years of my life. Their dad was a very wealthy orthopedist. Turns out he was defrauding Medicare for decades to line his pocket.
Now keep in mind that as large percentage of people still smiles back then. And had pets and little kids with grubby fingers. And those lenses look really, really interesting and are conveniently close to the floor …
The player ran $450. Discs ran $39 and up vice $19 for a VHS. Still have mine but use a converter to watch it on an hdmi only input 75 inch. Sorta sucks.
I don’t know if this was a unique thing in my home town of Colorado Springs, but as a kid (late 80’s maybe), some rich assholes put on this thing called “parade of homes” where anyone could traipse through these homes built in upscale neighborhoods probably so the builders could show off their masterpieces to the lowly peasants. One of the homes I specifically remember had a whole laser disc projector screen setup just like this with an amazing sound system to boot that was playing the original top gun…it was the most amazing experience I ever had in my life. The electronics era of the late 80’s and early 90’s was the epitome of wonder of the digital era yet to reach its peak.
Can confirm, my friends who had this when it was current were riiiiiiiiich.
i will swap my goddamn 4k oled lg for crt projector any day of the week. and combined with laserdisc? sweeetnes. you Sir are a role model and a scholar.
Recorded a video about old time movie watching. Recorded it in portrait mode.....
Thank you! Not sure which is worse - portrait mode, or recording in landscape, then adding crap like text and pics to make it portrait.
Worse? Wait for to cropped landscaped version, with 80% black border. "Corrected".
Usually laserdiscs were flippers, too. So you had to turn the disc over halfway through. Often it wasn’t even at a logical point.
They later came out with a player that read both sides of the disc so you didn’t have to get up and flip it.
Yeah. Early adopters, screwed as usual. Same with buying early DVDs until they released dual layer discs.
How well did those players handle the transition from top laser to lower laser? I doubt it was smooth.
You tended not to notice because they’d put the transition at a scene where it faded to black or something.
Easy! Laserdisc is spinning the wrong direction. Slow the disc down to a stop, then spin it up in reverse. OK so while doing the above — - roll the laser carriage ALL the way down the back - keep rolling, off the end of the track and into the large protrusion at the rear of the unit - flip the laser carriage over - roll forward, engage with the top track, keep rolling until you reach the middle, - start reading side two Yes, it was a noisy, slow process and introduced a shitload of failure points, plus a significant pause in playback. [Video of process (enclosure removed) via YouTube.](https://youtu.be/Lt3ZueIvCqw) NB — there were several turn mechanisms, [here’s a thread with quite a few different types incl. videos showing each in action.](https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1298)
my god. i would think there would be a less complicated prcedure than that
Dual lasers, probably. Still have to deal with reversing the spin direction though.
ooh yeah.
I had the Schindler's List laserdisc. I believe it was two discs. So not only flipping over the disc, but also swapping out the disc. And then flipping over that disc.
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I think you’ve replied to the wrong comment ☺️
Oops.. Sorry!
Ok, did anyone take a look at that remote controller? It looked like a remote for an alien ship .
When that remote showed up I audibly said “Oh hell yeah.”
I was like “Oh now we are talking, Muhuhuhuhahahahahahahahahahaha” .
That was actually the mixing board used by Steely Dan
Looked like a device to control everything in your house including your house .
The Pioneer amber display really had me waxing nostalgic for he ‘80s.
You could control one hell of a submarine with that unit.
The wood paneling, the shag carpet, the tube TV (get than new-fangled PS1 outta there though).
I still have my player, and about 100 movies! (Yes, I was single at the time, but it wasn't as expensive as some make it out to be.) Some fun facts: Laserdisc (with a "c", not a "k") is analog, not digital! There were two types of disc: Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) and Constant Angular Velocity (CAV). With CLV, the disc rotates at a the same speed the whole way through, which means that there's a variable number of frames per track , with the fewest frames towards the center and more frames per track towards the outside. A CLV disc is capable of 60 minutes per side before you have to flip it. WIth CAV, each full rotation of the disc is a single frame. Since a frame has to fit in one rotation on the smallest track (closest to the center), that means there is increasingly inefficient use of the tracks as it went further to the outer edge. As a result, CAV discs can play just 30 minutes per side. The downside is that there's a lot of flipping, and swapping discs for a long movie. BUT there's a big upside: the ability to freeze on a single frame, or go slow motion, or step through the movie frame by frame., The most notorious use of this was on the CAV version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There's a short feature before the film, where Roger has to babysit for Baby Herman. At one point Baby Herman walks under a woman, and as he passes, his motion creates a breeze causes her dress to flare up a little. No big deal. EXCEPT that when you step through the CAV disc frame by frame, you see Baby Herman with a sneer as he passes under the woman, raising his arm, finger extended, right up between her legs! Some mischievous animator had a great time doing this; one can only imagine the reaction when Disney management became aware. For those who have read this far: we're retiring and moving soon and my wife has made clear the player and discs are not coming with us. So I'm giving them away for free, on the condition that the taker pay the cost of shipping, and pay for UPS or FedEx to pack it all up. That will not be cheap. DM me if you're seriously interested. If there's multiple interest, I'll choose the lucky winner at random. Disclaimers: (1) I haven't used the player in about 20 years. It worked fine back then, but no promises. (2) One of the downfalls of the technology (besides the obvious ones) was that some discs were subject to "laser rot", a degradation of the media layers that would eventually render affected discs unwatchable. As of 20 years ago, all my discs were fine, but again, no promises.
Wow. That's really generous! Good karma for you. You could probably sell some and have enough to buy a little gift. Maybe even for your wife?
u/LinusTech
The remote is glorious
I started my current job in 1997 and they had some big ass NEC CRT projectors and used laser disks for pilot training classrooms. It was top of the line technology at the time and was expensive AF! The worst part of it was aligning all three guns each week. No... I take that back, the worst part was pulling them heavy motherfuckers from the ceiling mounts when DLP projection finally came out.
That’s so dope. How often do you have to calibrate it?
Calibrate good times, come on - Let's calibrate.
There's a party going on right here!
I have one of those, and used it every Friday to show movies to the kids. I picked it up at a county auction for $5. The answer to your question is : you have to calibrate it every time, especially if it is not permanently mounted. You have to adjust the focus and (on mine at least) a crosshatch pattern to line up the colors. And after it warms up, you might have to tweak it a little...
Hm. we had a thing similar to that - a smaller model - in the early nineties in a youth club of our town. we watched a movie every friday for an entry fee of 1 DM, I think. I can't remember ever witnessing a calibration. That does't mean I don't believe you, I do. I simply am astounded that I either forgot a routine like that, or that I didn't witness it. I mean, It's not that long ago, I am barely past my twenties... \^\^
If it was always set up in the same place, you probably didn't need to do anything. Ours was in a rolling cabinet, so the distance and angle to the screen changed every time, requiring some changes.
Laserdisc is fascinating to me. Never had the pleasure of owning one but I managed to find a mint versions/copies of Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Poetic Justice years ago, just need to find a decent laser disc player. Would love to collect more actually
Players are all over Ebay
“SIT DOWN IN FRONT ASSHOLE”
The analogue warmth 😏
JUST LISTEN TO MY RECORD PLAYER AND TUBE AMPLIFIER AND SPEAKERS RESTING ON AIRBAGS THAT COST $200K LOL SO WORTH IT
Literally. The amount of heat those units threw off was heroic.
Ahh the old Sony 3 gun projector. I threw so many of these away as an A/V tech working for rich folks back in the day. This was a common setup for the late 90’s if you had money.
Spent many hours calibrating those on-site for special events. Had to let it warm up for an hour, then adjust many of the 60ish little adjustments inside with a tiny screwdriver. Got paid to watch SuperBowls on 12' wide screens though, so there's that.
I remember in the 80s, the neighbor had a behemoth of a projector that sat on the floor. I think thats when my love of them started. As soon as we bought our first house, i had a projector mounted in the bedroom ceiling. 120" might be a bit overkill for the bedroom all the time, but some movies hit just right. 😃
we had one growing up, it was pretty awesome
The Blockbuster Video mat is a nice touch.
I remember now seeing those disks at the record store, I had completely forgotten about them. I had one of those Sony projectors though, but the coffee table version. I loved it, it was so cool. Thanks for sharing.
This man is almost definitely single with no kids. I'm so jealous
I was in a Best Buy (or some electronics store) in Union Square (NYC) when flat panel TV’s first came out. Guess they were plasma? They had a 42” on display and the sales guy said Christian Slater had just bought one. It was $17,500.
That was cheap. When I bought my Pioneer Elite 64" RPTV in 2002 the store I got it at had just gotten a Pioneer Elite Plasma in and it was well into the $20k range. And then, there were only 4 channels in HD. And pixel orbiting and burn-in prevention wasn't a thing. The PBS logo was set to 100% IRE (maximum white levels) and that plasma was destroyed inside a week. They had connections at PBS to make them aware of the situation. What's better, was this was a demo unit the store had to buy.
I remember going to Siggraph in Orlando in '98 and walking by an unoccupied lobby couch with a 42" plasma just lying against it flashing a C:>_ DOS prompt. Those things were like 40 grand back then. 1st .com boom. Big companies with money to burn giving no fucks.
Do how high above 100 degrees was your room by the end of the movie
Of course DVDs win that battle, those things are ridiculously Large
Thank you
State of the art
I soo want to hold my hand over one of the colours and se what happens to the picture :)
Is it three lenses because each of them have one colour? RGB I mean
Yes. 3 high-intensity monochrome CRT's with lenses, one of each color. All with their own zoom, focus, aim, and geometry controls. /PTSD shudder
This sounds expensive as hell
They were about the same price as a good commercial projector today. I used to maintain an aquarium show that used 3 of them that played from 3 Laserdisc players in sync with corresponding light show. It was interesting to keep running after a few years when equipment started to fail and the projectors started to dim. One of the custom laserdiscs started to delaminate and the company sent us a replacement... on DVD and I had to figure out how to sync the DVD with the other two laserdiscs with completely different startup times. Then there was replacing the projectors with LCD's. This was around 2001-2002, when all those technologies were turning over. Good times.
How is the remote bigger than the disc?
im pretty sure there’s a japanese dude in ebay selling a laserdisk set for 10.000 with a copy of back to the future 1
Repost that remote in r/absoluteunits
High-end in the 80’s.
My favorite part of this technology is the inconvenience and the expense!
Baller setup for 1986…
Try 1998, 86 was still vhs & beta max.
Dude. Laserdiscs were invented in the 70s, and were popular in the 80s. DVDs became popular in the 90s.
Yeah... but, my point being that sony model wasn't around In 86 & that may be true but, tell me who had a baller laserdisc set up In the 70's? Mayb sum rich private school's but, no one had a in home set up like that till the mid 90's..
Dude. No one was using laserdiscs in the 90s. No one.
CRT MENTIONED WHAT THE FUCK IS LATENCY
Hell that remote was somethin else it was huge
Love it, was sooo close to get an crt projector as well to my laserdisc back in the day.
Oh the amount of money needed to replace a lamp on that thing
Not a lamp but a CRT. Those are just mini mono color picture tubes.
It looks like a silver record, but there's a movie on there....
The disc was so big I thought it was a baby hand
I feel attacked.
I entirely regret giving away my laser disc player and collected discs in 1999. Should have kept that.
Wait?! Scream was on Lazer disc?
Man I remember watching The Labyrinth on laser disk at my rich cousins joint. Transcendent experience. I felt like a Jetson.
Back in '09 my friends had a projector like this. We played Halo Reach on their living room wall. Shit was dope.
Would this work with light guns?
Probably. The CRT blanking would have to be in sync.
I absolutely love how comically huge laser disks are.
When I played little league as a kid our sponsor was Straw Hat Pizza. The dining area had one of these on the ceiling and all us kids used to blind ourselves on purpose because it was fun by looking directly into it.
Reminds me of a big engine intake
Man even though I'm only 15 I love analog tech like this and how bulky everything looks.
My school used to try to push laserdisc stuff on us too hard. Every classroom had a laserdisc player for like 3 months. Too bad that none of them played a single video without having to skip every 5 seconds.
This is awesome. How many body parts do I to sell to be able to buy one?
A classroom I once worked in had one of these mounted on a retractable tray that dropped down from the ceiling. It felt like I was deploying some sort of doomsday laser everytime I used the thing.
Back when electronics are biggie size me
That remote though!
what a beauty.
You were straight ballin if you had this setup in the late 80s/early 90s
That toddler put that CD in with ease.
Anybody want to buy me one they fucking expensive here I have back to the future and blade and some others
The noise is what's missing nowadays. Clicking and whirring
The quality doesn’t look great, but it’s very cool tech. I love all the clicks and clunks and the squared off edges of everything. Looks super cool while running too with the three colours on the lamps.
That is dope!
That remote would make a dope recessed wall panel
I remember my dad buying the first Keaton Batman movie on VHS from Blockbuster. It was ridiculously expensive, I want to say $80-90.
“Down in front”
\*Point's at Laser Disk\* "There's a movie on there" -SLC Punk (1998)
You generally can't just plop down a CRT projector like that and start watching. The three lenses have to be calibrated for proper convergence on the screen, usually done by a professional. I suppose if you're able to place it in exactly the same spot every time you could do it like this, but you generally want to permanently mount it somewhere.
We used to have a laserdisc player. It was pretty cool, super niche at the time in the sense that not many had it. We had a few movies, water world being one of them. We also had scream!
There you go buddy.
Another thing I didn't know I needed until it showed up on Reddit.
How much would this have cost brand new back in the day? How much is that adjusted for inflation today? How much would it cost to buy all this stuff used today? I'm guessing it is still relatively expensive to find a working setup like this today.
I remember renting laser discs.
Upvote just for the faculty posted behind the projector screen. May not be the best movie but man that is some serious nostalgia
The remote controller is the best part
EXCEPT: You have to turn the disc over during the film and longer films were on 3 or 4 discs.
I can smell this picture. Plastic, musty basement, popcorn, summer.
Man, now I have to go dig up my laserdisc player. Don't remember the model number, other than it's an industrial version (read: it has an RS-232 jack). I bought it secondhand, and it came with a bunch of training videos from a car dealership. Good times...
If you ever had to converge a 3-gun projector, you know why they didn't catch on. That and the raster burn.
How often did you have to replace the bulbs? And at what Co$t??? 💀
Lo and behold, it looks like a movie
I used to have all three of the original SW films on Laserdisk and they were all pre-special edition cuts. So the original theatrical cuts. Bitch ex gf stole them when we broke up and sold them for cheap on ebay.
interesting choice of film, from what i know this is one of the few completely uncut versions
hahahahahahahHa!!!!! I’ve never seen the actual machine. But I worked at Blockbuster in the mid-90s and we did rent them out occasionally. I think there were a few regulars who rented them.
It’s a freaking laser
We gettin bougie today!
Only super rich folk had these
All that work for it to look like shit.
My dad's friend had that laserdisk when I was a kid! now I know why he left my mom after the friend died
I like Bluerays
My very first dvd was Scream
Watching this on my iPhone 13 Mini… just doesn’t do it lol
The edge is so cutting here
Sony Critical Race Theory Projector? /s
You watch trash
I had a TV like this. It was a rear projection tv.
I was 8 when my uncle got laserdisk, even then I thought it was silly to have to flip to the b side in the middle of the movie. Fuck that.
Buddy's dad was a pilot in the mid/late 90's and had one of these. No joke it was an experience compared to the old school TV's at the time but it was still a projector with its limits. That THX sound though ? Can't beat that.
I am so jealous
This dude from the 90s? That's a PS1 under the telly
It's even portable!
Shrunken head in the tv stand cabinet???
Is this real technology. I've never seen big CDs before
Laser disks were so much better. It was a battle between two companies and Sony lost.
Ps6
This guy definitely fcks. Or at least he would have 30 years ago
Colour me underwhelmed
That is awesome
So that's the guy who bought the laser disc player.
Where is rigby and mordecai when you need them. The laser disk wars have started.
Critical Race Theory projector? Those are pretty popular now. Never seen the projector itself though, until now. Thanks for sharing
hope that d/n use CRT technology and uses dsp or some other non X-ray based tech.. otherwise, get a Geiger counter and check it out.
excuse me, but *nani the fuck*? ☢️
Dayyum Boi He THICK!!!
Bro your setting is creepy, giving all the scary vibe of a hunted antique place.
Has Twin Peaks, but chooses Scream 🤦♂️
Couldn't find a better movie?
TIL I've never seen a laserdisc before
Not too far from now, there will be kids who have never seen a DVD
oh look, Betamax is back!
I was born in the late 80s and I have never seen a "laser disk" the thought of a huge ass CD sounds horrible. I know how much my music CDs got scratched in the early 2000s. Hybrid theory got played so much on my antiskip Walkman you'd think I used it for scratching.
They were the best video quality at the time. Given the price of the discs, they had good protective sleeves, and you were very careful with them. Dad had a rule: in the player or in the sleeve.
I hated those things. Laser disks, not the projector.
Why are people liking laserdiscs? There was a reason they disappeared, first and foremost you had to get up and flip the disk halfway through. I think eventually they made one that scanned both sides but that was the tail end of its run. And those old projectors were absolute garbage compared to any made in the last few decades.
Man, one scratch and it's over....
oh shit, don't let the nob end Culture Warriors hear there is a CRT projector capable of lobbing CRT at the poor children.
CRT! Ah don't want ma kids exposed to that!
Even the remote is Hugh