Did you love Laserdisc? Were you bonkers over Betamax? Do you cry yourself to sleep because BeOS never hit the big time? Fret no more -- superdork Captain Tech is here to travel back in time and save the format losers that should have triumphed.
2. Betamax
3. Laserdisc
4. 8-track
5. High-definition audio
7. BeOS
8. DTS
9. Atari ST
10. What life would be like
Laserdisc
What it was
Looking like a CD the size of a vinyl record, Laserdisc stored high-quality analogue video, with the potential for digital sound in the form of Dolby Digital or DTS.
Why it lost
Cost was the main factor here. While pre-recorded VHS tapes were as cheap as chips, Laserdiscs were US$50 each. The hardware was also far more expensive and only available from a few companies. Having already beaten Betamax, VHS polished off Laserdisc.
Why it should have won
Laserdisc was light years ahead of its time, pre-dating even compact disc. It was initially called DiscoVision, a truly magnificent moniker. Pioneer launched its first player in 1978, but changed the name to Laser Videodisc and then later to just Laserdisc.
The picture quality was amazing for the time, offering 440 lines of picture information in PAL and 425 lines for NTSC. That made for a picture that was twice as good as VHS, and very nearly as good as DVD. Even better, because it was a disc, not a tape, accessing scenes was as easy as pressing a button on the remote. It's disciness also meant that Laserdisc didn't wear out over time, because there was no physical contact between the read head and the surface of the media.
Later on, there was the added bonus of digital surround sound, meaning that people could have a cinema-style experience in their own home, without the sticky floors and hooligan children throwing popcorn at them.
There are some people who feel that Star Wars got its best ever home-video release on Laserdisc, before Lucas started messing about with whether Han or Greedo shot first. Some sound enthusiasts claim that the DTS surround-sound track on Jurassic Park is better than the version on DVD.
Towards the end of Laserdisc's life, Pioneer even started producing players that would play both 12-inch laserdiscs and the comparatively tiny DVD format.
Our fantasy outcome
In a fit of 80s Material Girl pique, Captain Tech would banish pre-recorded VHS tapes and ensure that every home records on Betamax and watches movies from Laserdisc. Eventually, Laserdisc would be replaced by DVD, or even better, the market would skip DVD and move straight to a high-definition format.
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canberra_photographer
30/12/2007 01:16 AM
Doesn't wear out over time? Laserdisc was netoriuous for so called "laser rot" and the size and materials used meant that discs were easily scratched. I'll take VHS anyday, though I would have prefered beta!
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canberra_photographer
30/12/2007 01:32 AM
DTS a failure, every news Special Edition DVD has DTS from the major studios. They remastered the entire James Bond series into DTS and proudly make it a selling point. DTS is a success. MiniDisc over iPod, the iPod can hold uncompressed WAV audio, MP3, AAC. MD hold... ATRAC... and... well nothing else, just heavily compressed ATRAC. DTS is the only things in this list deserving of being saved. Even high def audio isn't. The world is moving towards digital content delivery through the internet.
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abuska
30/12/2007 07:07 PM
absolutely brilliant article guys.. thankyou
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Peterk
04/01/2008 10:59 AM
Our friend from the ACT is not aware of Hi-MD introduced in 2003/4. 1 gb minidiscs that could record many hours of music (highly compressed) and be used for jpeg, word and other comptuer files. ATRAC still sounds far superior to MP3
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canberra_photographer
11/01/2008 09:56 AM
An iPod is way better than those mini disc players because u would have to carry those mini-discs everywhere, and the iPod stores everything on its hard disk.
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two-ears-good,four-ears-better
29/05/2008 06:33 PM
Comparing iPod with Mini-disc is not really the point. The two are different products for different purposes. Can you do high-quality field recordings with an iPod? I doubt it. OTOH for the convenience of carrying around a great deal of reasonable quality music just to listen to, there are many MP3 hard-disc players around (not *just* iPod, let's remember!) which offer a more compact solution than Mini-disc. There are many other issues like battery life, battery replacement, add-ons, etc, etc. Neither technology wins on all points.
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