8bitplus

Lasedisc is a fascinating format, and one I have become quite hooked on recently. It pioneered most of the features of home cinema entertainment that people take for granted today with DVD and Blu-Ray.
Here’s 10 things we can thank laserdisc for doing first.

1. First successful optical film format.

The first home market laserdisc player was available in late 1978. It was even out four years before CD’s. The format ran on until 2001 (in Japan at least) meaning it was a format in production for almost 23 years. Pioneer continued to make a few new players and parts until 2009.

2. First with Digital Sound.

Laserdisc had the capability to hold one or more digital audio tracks from the start, even before digital amps were widely available. Over time this became the standard for laserdisc audio. Laserdisc digital audio is exactly the same as CD’s, and in some peoples opinion can sound better on some set-ups than the heavily compressed audio on DVD’s.

3. Support for Surround Sound.

Laserdisc was the first home format to carry surround sound, and later in its life this became almost a standard for film releases on laserdisc. The surround data was stored on the multiple tracks and could contain such formats as Dolby Surround, Dolby Prologic, Dolby Digital AC3, Dolby Digital EX Surround. Films were not limited to one sound format and often contained several.
The AC3 formats support 5.1 speakers and the Dolby EX format support 6.1 with the correct amplifier. Other formats such as Prologic/Dolby surround give 4.1 surround.
Laserdisc owners were enjoying surround sound at home in the early 90′s, a long time before DVD’s were in the shops.

4. Wide-screen as Standard

Although VHS was capable of showing a wide-screen format picture, the practice of preserving the movie’s original aspect ratio on releases was first done on laserdisc.

5. Selectable Languages and commentary

With the multiple audio tracks, both analogue and digital, and the ability to switch between them at will gives the ability to have different languages on the same disc. Granted, very few films used this trick, especially as it might require dumping surround sound to make room. Plenty of Amine used this to allow selection between English and Japanese.
Directors commentary works the same way; one track would include the director or cast giving running comments throughout the film. An example of this is Golden Eye 007.

6. Subtitles

Many laserdisc’s contain the ability to display closed caption subtitles. The difference between Closed Caption (CC) subtitles and the ones you have seen on DVD is that CC subs are processed in the TV and not the player. The Data is held in a sub-carrier on the video. Not all peoples set-ups can display them though, most set-ups need a CC decoder box but some TV’s have this feature built in. Its a very useful feature for Japanese anime.

7. Special Editions

Whatever its called; Special Edition, Limited Edition, Anniversary Edition, Extended Edition or Directors Cuts, Laserdisc was there first, and when Laserdisc did a special edition, it was special. With the larger boxes it was not uncommon to include full size books and other extras as well. For example my collectors edition of “Dancing with Wolfs” contains the full film, documentary,  information book with back story and filming information, Artwork slides and the full soundtrack on CD.

8. Playback Control

Something so basic to us now, but being able to pause the video, skip chapters and slow motion in each direction was all pioneered on laserdisc first.

9.  Special Features

The inclusion of special features first stared on laserdisc. Although its not something you find on every disc in a collection as with DVD, there are plenty of examples that include a set of trailers or even a small documentary if there was space on the disc. Some even have production slides and artwork encoded into the frames for view-back with the frame step feature.

10. HD Video

Ok, this is a bit of a stretch for this list but we can thank laserdisc for being the first optical disc format to carry High Definetion video for home use. The encoding format was called MUSE High-Vision, based of an early HD broadcast format. The formatting is completely different to laserdisc and MUSE discs are not compatible with other laserdisc players, but most MUSE players could play standard laserdiscs. A Hi-Vision TV would also be needed to make the best of the 1125 lines of video.

Have I missed something? If you can think of anything I didn’t cover please leave a message below.

Thanks for reading. Neil – 8bitplus 2010.