CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[tvictordavis]

Just a quick note: The Beatles "Let It Be" looks wonderful on CED! I have a Laserdisc copy but it has a lot of speckling (laser rot). My CED plays flawlessly and sounds pretty darn good too!

[sega3dmm]

Hi.

Nice to hear that! The Laserdiscs made in the late-70's to early-80's were known for laser rot, and sometimes came from bad masters. I'd always knew RCA always had a strict purpose for SelectaVision VideoDiscs from the start, no wonder why they held up so good over time! Unfortunately, Let it Be was never re-issued in any way on Laserdisc and has never been on DVD or Blu-ray since.

[Beetlescott]

I can't thank you enough! My wife is a Beatles fan, and I found a copy of Let It Be still wrapped in the Cello!!! It is under the Christmas tree! I read somewhere that it was taped during the making of the album. She is going to love it. I also found her Give My Regads to Broad Street, by Paul McCartney brand new! I actually have 2 copies of that. Welcome to CEDmagic!!!!
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[Beetlescott]

OK I bought the "LET IT BE" disc for my wife for Christmas, it wasn't what she hoped if was and I found the "Complete Beatles" CED, and she loved it. So, I took the LET IT BE CED our of CELLO and only played about 25 minutes on side one. I am going to list it on EBAY unless someone wants it on here. shoot me an email if you are interested, Beetlescott@msn.com and be sure to put CED or BEATLES in the subject line.
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1000 titles
SGT-250
SJT-400
Montgomery Ward
SGT-100

[RT9342]

Interesting...I've never seen the Let It Be video, but I do have the Compleat Beatles on CED. That was the most expensive CED I ever bought - I was kind of mad - it was at a store with no price on it, and they told me they'd sell it for $10. I told them that all the other CEDs are $1 or $2, and they were like, "Yeah, but it's the Beatles." At the time I thought it was a ridiculous price for a CED, Beatles or not.....and I handed over the cash anyway! I almost bought it on laserdisc as well, but knowing my luck, I would have ended up with a copy with laser rot - quite typical. Seems like any movie I have on both laserdisc and CED looks better on CED. Considering how much better the later laserdiscs are, it always makes me wonder if CEDs could have also had similar picture quality if they were still being produced in the 90s.

[Beetlescott]

I'm not sure what laser rot is, I assume it affects the way a disc plays? I never owned a laser disc player. I did hear about the disc warping and causing the picture to jump. Laser rot?
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SJT-400
Montgomery Ward
SGT-100

[deantjeep]

The dreaded laser rot! A laserdisc affected with laser rot, is usually one that has had the sandwiched metal layer oxidizing over time. It is usually caused by the adhesive binder that glues the disc sandwich to fail over time, allowing air to get between the disc layers and oxidizing the metal disc. The metal disc degrades and the laser cannot read the disc. The playback will become snowy and grainy, and it will eventually leave the disc unwatchable. I had a number of laserdiscs that suffered this fate. I always kept them well stored indoors and away from extreme temperature changes. It didn't seem to matter. In the end, when it was time for me to move to Oregon, I decided to dump my laser player and discs. I kept my CED players and discs, as they seemed to provide the same quality playback as when I got them.

[RT9342]

That just about sums it up. What I usually see on my "laser rotted" discs is the grainy picture - I've never had a more serious problem than that, but still, it's annoying when you flip to side 2 (or side 3) and all of a sudden it's like using cheap, broken rabbit ears in the old days of analog television. My copy of Big Trouble In Little China is the worst - side 1 is plagued with dropouts. These problems have tempted me to dump mine too, but I do have a lot of really good quality laserdiscs, with movies that were not available on CED, and I have one of the earliest laserdisc players (manufactured April 1979), in pristine condition, and with the original box (the serial on the box matches the player's serial number), and most of the original accessories (remote, cords, etc., although my instruction disc came with another player). It's kind of hard for me to dump that, especially since I installed a NOS pickup assembly, giving it outstanding sound & picture quality with good tracking.

By the way, the term "laser rot" can be misleading - it's just a name, resembling "laser disc", that was given to the condition, but it's not actually the laser that's "rotting" the disc, although I've heard that some people assume that.

[7jlong]

On the topic of laser rot, although it was a troubling problem for LaserDiscs, it wasn't quite as widespread as you might think reading this thread. In fact, lddb.com's rot reports affect only about 1% of all the titles ever released - not a bad average. It also wasn't necessarily connected to disc age, but rather pressing plants who were a little too casual about the disc binder. If you look at lddb's laser rot reports, the top 20 titles were all fairly close to the end of LD's life - and almost all came from the same plant (DADC USA). The good news is that the general consensus seems to be: if they haven't shown signs of rot by now, they probably won't.

A similar phenomenon happened with some CD plants - Philips DuPont Optical (PDO, if you look at the matrix area of a CD) went through a rather disturbing period of CDs turning golden bronze in color on the label surface and refusing to play.

At any rate, out of 180 LaserDiscs that I had at the "peak" of my collection, only two - the old DiscoVision of The Jerk and Contact - ever showed any signs of laser rot. DiscoVision discs were notorious for this, but Contact is simply victim of a bad pressing. It has gotten progressively worse over time - at first it looked like scattered VHS dropouts, but now the digital sound channels are starting to fall apart like a badly-tuned AM station.

The rest of my discs, however, are holding up just fine.

[RT9342]

Interesting...funny how using the wrong materials can do stuff like that. Kind of reminds me of the Super Nintendos - if you see them now, a lot of them will have a yellowed top and/or bottom, or other yellowed parts - but only certain parts! They must have used different plastics from different manufacturers, with one being inferior. Usually, plastic yellows from heat and/or UV exposure, but a friend of mine always kept his in a cold, dark air conditioned room, usually hidden away in a cabinet, yet his system's top turned yellow anyway.

Getting back to CEDs, I actually had one that showed the same symptoms of laser rot. It was a copy of Poltergeist. I thought it was really strange - the disc looked fine, except that it seemed to have a little more warpage than usual. Maybe it had heat damage. But it was really bad, and that disc ended up being disposed of.

[Beetlescott]