Any "Tape Heads" or "Spinners?" (VHS or Laserdisc Collectors?)

Yeah I collect Laserdiscs, They are actually easier to store than DVD's and it's nice to face them out on the shelfs

I didn't even know what laserdiscs were...

Reading this thread and learning about all this stuff is very interesting tho

Laserdiscs are definitely cool to collect, you can rewind them, they haven't been altered and you get better sound out of them.


I actually just bought this






Which you can't get on DVD


And if you want to watch the "real" Star Wars...this is the best version











Plus it's pretty cool to be able to face out things like these on your shelf...

I have a CRT in my room and watching The Running Man on VHS is a total time warp... Its like peanut butter met jelly, its made for each other.

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Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage

And yes I did finally invest in a Laserdisc player. A Pioneer CLD-D503. Works great but sadly doesn’t play PAL, only NTSC.

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Maybe in the States, but the BFI released a beautiful Blu-ray transfer of that film and if you own a multi-region player, (coming from someone who lives in the States and subject to NTSC and A codes), you can play it.

I'm actually hoping to pick up this:



As far as I know Song of the South never transferred, (obviously), to the United States regions, but the Japanese had a Laserdisc version of it and the Europeans had a PAL VHS version of it, (I don't think they had a PAL Laserdisc as LD wasn't a "hot" ticket in Europe, it was more of a Japanese/American thing...), but when people like to bury history: Like Lucas with his original Star Wars trilogy, or the Star Wars: Holiday Special, or, (the way things seem to be heading now), Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation... this only further confirms my interest in collecting hard copy.

I decided to “double-dip” my VCR’s… one of them is a multi-region but since those are becoming harder to come by these days they’re also getting more expensive as a result. So, in an attempt to put less “wear” on the unit, I invested in a DVD/VCR combo. The multi-region VCR I’m only using as a means to play PAL/SECAM+ and the DVD/VCR as a means to play NTSC strictly.

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Looks like a wise investment and setup, spreading the load across two machines will certainly pay dividends in the long run. Furthermore you're bringing up all this nostalgia for me again, and I love it! Always something interesting in this thread.

I'm probably going to have to replace the DVD/VCR combo and opt for another at some point... this model is a bit "jankie" and its already caused me some admitted grief. For one there's no "eject" button on the remote, it has to be done manually, and when you do try to eject it tends to assume you want to rewind the VHS within the unit upon ejection—which any VCR person may tell you is a bit of a problem as when you rewind tapes "in-unit" this is the cause for "most" tape/VCR destruction. I've also had some issues with playback. I had a moment in time the VCR would accept the tape—and then after doing a whole reboot of the unit—it accepted the tape but the audio "clicked." It just had this white noise. I tested the same tape on the other unit—no issue, and then back again and the clicking stopped. The DVD unit works great, but the VCR unfortunately has problems. So, another hundred or so dollars dropped at some point... but this will be after I buy my region-free 4k UHD unit since, (even worse than this), my old unit of my region-free Blu-ray player of some 20 or so years seems to read discs, (then not), and then other times it seems to "eat" the disc... so got to fix that.

Eventually I want to start hitting up other formats like Betamax and HD, yeah they may have lost the war—but out of sheer historical interest they fascinate me.

Sounds familiar. I've had two of these combi machines and to be fair, both gave sterlng service, but they definitely have a service life. The last one I had, the VCR seemingly got screwed a lot earlier than the first one, so I used to do a lot of recording from a standalone VCR to the remaining DVD unit for quite a good period of time (until that also died). For what it's worth that seemingly dead VCR component actually successfully rewound a tape recently which was something of a surprise (an angel gets its wings).

Thankyou. I know that sound and I know what I'll be having nightmares about tonight.

Seriously though best of luck with the current system.

P.S.
Betamax: Hugely superior to VHS in terms of picture quality. Well worth seeing if you get the chance.

Bah! Really going to have to overhaul some things in my room right now. Not happy—

1. Region-free Blu-ray player is on the fritz and I'm afraid of putting anything in it, (as I've already mentioned). Basically it either has a hard time "reading" the disc... or it goes into this "mode" where it practically eats my films! The only cure is to unplug the damn machine and then plug the thing back in. So, I'm upgrading to a region-free 4K UHD Blu-ray unit... there goes a wad.

2. DVD/VCR Combo, (which I "may" have mentioned), is now "bricked" totally f-en useless now... but truth told when I bought it it was on the "jank" anyway so I'll be like Roman Polanski in The Tenant and "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Got to drop another wad on hopefully a better unit as now I'm afraid to put any VHS in my multi-region VCR as I'm trying on to put too much wear on it.

3. Got my Laserdisc player, it works great and I'm really happy with it, except I'm going to be dipping into PAL discs at some point so, (you guessed it), going to try and drop a $1,000+ wad on a multi-region unit and then try to "baby" that along as its old tech too.

But here's my room, and my idea:








First off, with this big wall behind the televisions and the console, I'm hoping to try and "trick" it out a bit.

On the CRT side, I'm hoping to maybe get two AV switches. One for film, (Betamax, VHS, Laserdisc players), and then another AV Switch for retro gaming, (Old RCA-based consoles like Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, etc.) Find a residence for these players in that "Hub" and wall that remains in relatively "permanent local" as w/ the switches and then BAM! Totes-awesome.

On the Flatscreen side it's been in dire-need of an upgrade... but honestly I haven't found a television that I'm in "love" with. I like the resolution, but for sometime many television went with permanent "motion smoothing" and other "perks" that made things terrible. They did at some time make this "perks" optional, but then some removed headphone jack abilities... and as someone who watches films at night this became cumbersome. Not to mention I eyeball multi-system TV's so... but!

If I find one I like, I plan on mounting that SOB and then using my little "unit" below for more recent gaming consoles.

I'm going to use the rest of my walls for storage, like art supplies, gaming, films, music, on and on.

A lot of people are into streaming, and in some cases it's unavoidable... but I've never been a fan of it. Bottomline, you don't own what you don't own and in the worst case episodes or films can be taken down or "edited" cause "god forbid" "somebody-someone" couldn't handle a differing opinion, got "offended" (dearest me), or something that happened years ago that is repulsive (like the glorification of the KKK in The Birth of a Nation), can't just be seen as "yes this is a thing, it happened." No. Give me hard copy any day.

Also I just began my "Criterion dip" in Laserdisc. Right now I have the King Kong, Casablanca, The Anniversary Edition of Citizen Kane... and I'm hoping to get the initial, (sort of), print of Citizen Kane. I also recently won at auction The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes.

Nice turntable!

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Too technologically illiterate to figure out how to "flip" the image the right way... but you get the picture. The Lady Vanishes on Criterion LaserDisc.

First day with my LaserDisc Player: "Love at first play."

Blast from the past, anyone?

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Ahhh! Blockbuster memories!



I recently bought a DVD of Game 6 written by Don DeLillo. I had high hopes for it. I even tracked down an old Disc player and bought the necessary cables. But I only played the first ten minutes of the film it annoyed me that much. Oh well, maybe my next purchase will be worthwhile.

I was thinking about posting a VHS thread here so the thread was appealing but...


Wow! Can you use a standard DVD player for these laserdiscs??

I don't necessarily go out of my way for anything but I have a modest VHS and extremely modest LD collection going. VHS is almost entirely for schlock (unless I find something that's just too weird of a find to pass up) and with LD its just slim pickings when you're not putting the work in lol.