I know this has been brought up in the past but what is the last title or titles ever made on laserdisc before production ended?

US disc seems to be Dragon's Lair (1983) [---], dating April 2002

Japan not sure, have myself LaserJuke discs from June / July 2002, however not sure when this series stopped. Also heard karaoke discs where made up until 2004...

Hello myrtle1beach,

Please excuse my memory here, but I was there at the time when the following titles were released.

lack of funds at the time prevented myself from purchasing these titles on Laserdisc and so most have had to be purchased some time after, and quite painfully as well due the extra cost of collectibles such as they are and for what ever reason and so forth.

The US last few titles were as follows: LD PRODUCTION ENDED AND WARE HOUSES CLEARED ALL / MOST STOCKS CHEAPLY TO CLEAR AND I FOR ONE HAD MY HANDS ON A FEW DOZEN TITLES PRODUCTION ENDED JUST BEFORE OR AT THE END OF DECEMBER 1999.
1) Appropriately named: END OF DAYS.....DECEMBER 1999 RELEASE
2) SLEEPY HOLLOW......DATE NOT KNOWN WITHOUT LOOKING THIS UP.

The Japanese Titles released before production ended at the end of September 2001 were as follows:
1) STAR WARS REMASTERED BOX SET (PRODUCED IN FAIRLY LARGE NUMBERS)
2) STAR WARS EP-1 PHANTOM MENACE (PRODUCED IN LARGE NUMBERS)
3) TITAN A.E (LIMITED PRODUCTION AND I MISSED THIS BY TWO WEEKS AND NOT ENOUGH FUNDS DAMN IT, LIVE IN HOPE.
4) THE BEACH (LIMITED PRODUCTION AND I MISSED THIS BY TWO WEEKS.............//.................I NOW HAVE TWO OF.
5) X-MEN (LIMITED PRODUCTION AND MISSED AT THE TIME..........I NOW HAVE TWO OF.
6) MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 (LIMITED PRODUCTION AND MISSED AT THE TIME..............I NOW HAVE TWO OF.
7) THE SIXTH DAY (LIMITED PRODUCTION OF I BELIEVE 5000 I MISSED AT THE TIME...........ABOUT TO PURCHASE A LAST
REMAINING SEALED UNOPENED ITEM.)
8) DISNEY'S TARZAN (LIMITED PRODUCTION AND MISSED AT THE TIME..........I NOW HAVE ONE OF.
9) DISNEY'S BUGS LIFE (LIMITED PRODUCTION AND MISSED AT THE TIME..........I NOW HAVE TWO OF IN JAPANESE NOT ENGLISH

There are a number of others but for the life of me, i am unable to remember but know that I have others in my posession that were titles released during the last few months before production ended.

I hope this helps.

Also another point of note is the fact that DOLBY DIGITAL SOUND TRACTS PROGRESSED AT LEAST ON 6 TITLES, CONTAINED SOUND MIXES EX / DISCRETE 6.1...........PHANTOM MENACE / HAUNTING / SIXTH DAY and three others that escape my mind.

Kind regards to you

The last Japanese 8" plant closed it's line in 2007. And there were some US in-store and Prevue channel disks made just about when the 3M/Imation plant shut down, as well.

Thank You everyone who posted my memory has left me to go hitch hiking elsewhere these days.

US: http://www.laserdiscvault.com/index.php ... e&id=37%2F
JP: go to advanced search in LDDB, write "Japan" "from 2001 to 2001" and you'll get informations you need.

No wonder the titles remains rare if collectors keep buying duplicates

I noticed Trekkies was released on January 11, 2000 in the database.

For the US, it was "Bringing Out the Dead". Japan was "Tokyo Raiders".

"Titanic" was the file title for Spain & Italy and "Armageddon" was the final UK title.

For things like Laser Juke and Dragon's Lair, which were indeed pressed later on, they were custom pressings that were not released to the public.

I would so much like to restart a production line. Anyone got a few million dollars to invest?

It would take much less than that if we go DIY (do-it-yourself) approach. We need another 2 electrical engineers and of course, Pioneer's blessings:) The Clean room would take the most funds. Equipment we could do better than ever with microprocessors and better software of today.

I'd be curious as to when the LD related patents expire...

I think all of them have expired by now, and a lot of them expired early because Pioneer didn't pay for their upkeep.

Oh, Pioneer was VERY vigilant about the patent upkeep. They were always going after replication facilities that were not paying their required royalties. In 1989 when Pioneer acquired "DiscoVision Associates," that is all that DVA did. They still have active patents in their portfolio - some don't expire for another 7 or 8 years!

I would say Pioneer still is... Look at their website :

http://www.discovision.com/DVA/Patents

But obviously not so careful about trademarks in the USA!

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4801:m79lr9.2.5

Filled November 1980, they didn't follow up properly with the TM office and the TM was abandoned on March 1986.

Julien

I'd imagine that the very last optical disc format to be made will still be paying for using the Discovision patents. It's always amusing to see the ancient Discovision name live on through Pioneer's optical disc licensing division.

Some of the hardware necessary for restarting LD production has been seen for sale in Japan: as I recall, a while back Publius posted an auction for the device for encoding the signal to be pressed.

Does anyone know how many copies constitute a 'limited production'? How many copies of 'Titan A.E.' were ever pressed? Are we talking 5000? 1000?