(link to picture below)
Shortly after finding some interest in the "firsts" (Discovision etc), I had to find a decent CLD-2950 and a guy living near my shop passed by pure coincidence and sold me his DVL-919 along with his collection of laserdiscs, most of which date 1978-1984 along with several later titles.
In a nutshell, he traveled over the planet several times every month and ran a US company. He bought Discovision LDs as soon as they came out and would return every defect disc.
The batch of Discovision titles has cartoons, films and music. It's missing Jaws but hey, can you ever find anything better in France instead of paying expensive shippings from abroad ?
There's Jaws 2 but with a dead side 3. Sides 1 and 2 have defects at the end (freezes and sort of accelerated motion probably due to skips).
What I noticed is that all playable sides of Jaws 2 have the same constant spekles in the same portion of the screen (about the first 1/5). Side 2 has distorded sound.
I don't know what title are hard to come by but I can always make a list. However there are other brands. There's even one discovision with one CAV side and the other looking like CLV.
I'm just back from work with the four boxes.
There's even the ABBA and the other featuring one ABBA singer alone.
What I find totally amazing is that some people in Paris already had the US laserdiscs straight from the begining. Anyhow...
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PS: Should I try to clean those dead sides ? One seems to be a General Motors video (Mint starts with GM) but I would be wrong. Let me know how to safely clean those sides. Is 90 degrees alcohol sufficient ?
The other piece I can't help taking notice of is what appears to be the older pan & scan version of "Dune", which is in the front of the other box behind the one with "Let It Be". That was one of the very first discs I ever acquired. I bought it used from a guy who worked at the store where I bought my first player in 1987. I have long since upgraded to the later letterboxed release of "Dune", but I still own the older disc too. I pulled it out a few days ago, as I was spot-checking some of the older discs that I hadn't looked at for years to see if they have aged well or not. Fortunately, I found the older "Dune" disc still looks just as good as it did the day I bought it from that gentleman! 