CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[Nessus]

As a technophile I"m embarrassed to admit I didn't know there as alaserdisc competitor. So going though my great uncles stuff I was shocked to find a stacks of laserdiscs. But , they were in small plastic shell's like an 8-track. When I extracted it out it was iridescent but not gold like a laserdic WTH?

He has an RCA player and from glancing at the colloection some pretty good movies. Alien, Star Wars, Thief, Yentl, Some Playboy Centerfold discs. There was some Jackie Gleason and things I hadn't heard of but for an old guy there were a lot of contemporary 70's and 80's movies.

What do I do with these? It's just too cool a thing to toss out. I realize they are mostly of now value.

When I play one should I expect better or worse than DVD quality? (Assuming the player works) I know laser looks better than DVD.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated everyone. -- Nessus

[maskddingo]

I don't know if I would definitively say that Laserdisc looks better than DVD. I think it -can- in certain circumstances look better. Or more accurately: does certain things better while doing other things worse. But that's a whole discussion in itself. I have a Laserdisc or two that is visually better in some respects to the DVD's of the same time... But they are all releases that were both well after the death of CED, and near the end of LD.

Of the CED's I own that I also have a Laserdisc copy of in the same screen format.. It's often hard to tell the difference (Aside from knowing which player I just pressed 'play' on) unless I'm close to the screen. The CED player exhibits a certain 'blocky-ness' (no, not pixelation) when very close up that may be an effect of the upscaling and deinterlacing in my signal chain on the way to my monitor. But sitting back in the normal viewing position it's not noticable.

I would say that I actually prefer my copy of Star Wars on CED to the 4:3 laserdisc I have of it, even though the CED is noticeably sped up.

I have many CED's that are of questionable quality though, and leave me fiddling with the brightness, contrast, and color controls on my TV... never really finding a really 'great' balance that doesn't seem to drift from scene to scene. These are mostly early titles.

...

I could go on in more depth, but to answer your question: Expect somewhere around laserdisc quality or worse from disc made around the same time (early to mid 80's) depending on the title. VHS quality is a more conservative estimate. It should look at least as good as a VHS copy of the movie. A good CED on my LCD TV resembles a good standard-def analog cable channel.

The sound can be quite good. Many stereo discs are dolby-surround matrix encoded. This means any pro-logic enabled receiver should be able to reproduce a very nice 'surround sound' image from them (using a stereo CED player, of course).

[Beetlescott]