A Laserdisc Tribute

I stumbled across an entertaining tribute to the death of the laserdisc by Mark Altman. Apparently, 2008 marks the tenth year since the end of the laserdisc.

read on…

I never actually bought a laserdisc, but I was forced to watch several at my film school library. I reeled in awe at the multitude of discs the library clerk had to scan out to me. I clearly had no idea what I was getting myself into when I asked for the Blade Runner Japanese cut. It was like 8 discs!! To purchase an eight laserdisc box set is a true commitment to the cinematics arts. And according to Altman’s column, some of these sets used to cost up to $100 bucks.

“It’s easy now to forget the impact laserdisc had on the miniscule amount of us who owned them with DVD’s being so ubiquitous. Now you can pretty much get any movie you want on disc for less than a sandwich at Quizno’s. But back then, the best of the best, could cost you well over $100 (which probably helps explain why I don’t own a house today). These were the Rolls-Royce of laserdisc: the Criterion box sets. Starting with the unparalleled Close Encounters and continuing with such superb releases as Seven and Brazil, Criterion was the benchmark for the format.”

“One of laserdiscs biggest drawbacks was they could only hold an hour of information on each side so longer movies often spanned several discs and some sets even more when they were recorded in the CAV format which allowed you to still pause and speed search. Laserdiscs felt important because of their girth, they didn’t feel disposable, but rather archival. Like members of a really geeky secret society, laserdisc owners would converge at annual sales and spend thousands of dollars enlarging their collection.”

That’s simply mind blowing. The best part about this tribute is that the columnist made an entire movie, Free Enterprise, that refused to even confirm the existence of dvds.

“Some of us attempted to fight the inevitable death of laserdisc by decrying DVD as an inferior format, but it was a silly argument. DVD was clearly better with a far more reasonable retail price, storage space and instant mainstream appeal. When Robert Burnett and I were making Free Enterprise we refused to even acknowledge the existence of DVD, instead extolling laserdiscs incessantly throughout the film which was already in its death throes, a decision which dates the movie worse than any other decision we made on that film.”

I actually liked that movie, but watching Eric McCormack wax on poetic about laserdiscs is a bit much. Still we can’t fully condemn the format since without laserdiscs there would have been no DVD.

Related posts:

1. Criterion Blu-Ray coming soon
2. Joost: Internet TV on demand
3. The Miriam Collection
4. Death Race 2008
5. Out with the Old