Since I put back on of my LDPs in service today, I thought it might be useful to join a dedicated forum, should one of them show signs of fatigue. I hope it will be fun, too :)

I got on the LD train around '94 or '95 mainly because I couldn't stand NOT to see the films I wanted because they either weren't published in France or were but with horrible transfers and on poorly duplicated VHS. Sometimes, they would even be dubbed - horror.
I had jumped on the S-VHS bandwagon slightly earlier so this was a natural step.

I bought a cheap-ish CLD-950 (?) and started buying all I could get my hands on, NTSC imports at stupendously sky-high prices : all the 1920s-1950s films and boxed sets, rare prints which haven't resurfaced since then and even some barely-legal music LDs from Japan. Amœba and BigEmma were my main sources and I even managed to get some of the really rare stuff when Amœba discounted all of its LD stocks. Ruin, really !
But it was worth it as among those were two films I had heard of but never seen and they changed my life. Saved it, actually.

When DVD came up, despite the mostly horrible quality, I understood LD was to die very rapidly so I bought a few more players, right when everybody was selling them for oh-so cheap bucks.
I chose them not for their features or prettiness but for their evident ruggedness and "everlast" mechanical quality. That's a Sony MDP-700 and a NOS LDP-2000 (both NTSC only), plus a DVL-909 for versatility and an also NOS Pioneer CLD-D750 a few years after that. The original CLD-950 died of its natural death a decade ago.
I also have a NOS in box 1978 Magnavision (don't remember the name of it) with its service manual and many service addendums and also a Philips VLP720 ; those were bought just for their looks and, previsibly, they are both as dead as can be.

I have no intention of buying, again, any of the films I have on LD so might import one of the last working LDP-900 or MDP-911/999 from Japan as they share the same basic structure (and laser) as the MDP-700. The LDP-2000 is still basically new and like all broadcast gear can withstand an earthquake without budging ! Image quality, however, isn't the strong point of it :)
The Sony and Pioneer MUSEs are way out of my league, price-wise, or even necessity.

Anyway - nice to see others, like me, aren't willing to junk everything with each consumer "revolution".

Nice to see more Europeans here. I've got a 950 - bought it last year when my old CLD-D515 died - It's a nice machine, but about 10% of my discs were pre digital sound and wouldn't play. I've just bought a CLD-D925 which can handle everything and seems to be a very nice machine.

Agree with you about not wanting to replace everything - it might make economic sense if you take the price of players into account, but there's something about the look and feel of laserdiscs that you don't get with DVDs. I'm not buying them much, but I'm certainly not selling what I've got.

Goo day axeldahl,

I have just read your post,

Thank you for sharing some of your experiences with us here on the forum as it's always a pleasure to read what others have gone through with their great fondness of the Laserdisc Format.

Kind Regards