Hey! I'm new to collecting laserdiscs but I've been watching them my whole life as my dad collected them in their heyday. Started collecting myself on a whim when a local second hand shop got in a collection and I was hit with a wave of childhood nostalgia. Now I just need a player and a CRT. Very excited to be here and enjoy this really cool space. If anyone in Portland, OR has a decent player for sale I'm in the market!

Welcome from New Zealand,
You do not need a CRT to watch LDs necessarily.
What laserdiscs you looking at playing?

Agreed about not needing CRT.
Watching LD on 4K Television has me appreciating the format on a whole new level.
Utterly amazing imo !

Big Welcome to the membership !
Cheers

I think the kind of display you want depends on how, for lack of a better term, anal-retentive you are about different kinds of visual artifacts. Stuff like, do interlaced displays bother you more or less than deinterlacing artifacts, if you notice either that is? CRTs can also be a real mixed bag compared to modern TVs. And they're not as easy to find for cheap now that more people know that retro games want them, and the supply only goes down. I myself watch LDs on a CRT, but I wouldn't have gotten it on account of LDs, for me it was games. And at the end of the day, interlaced composite video is an intrinsically junky format, and no equipment can 100% cure it.

Tl;dr, make your CRT decision while taking your living room, eyes, time, money, and patience into account. The TV you already have may well be the one that's right for you.

Good luck with your player hunt!

A little Shop in the GRESHAM Dist. (Suburban PORTLAND, OR.) called "Movies 2 Go"
was where i initially purchased the founding core of my small LD collection back around 2005/2006 or so,
when they were having a 80/90% off Closing Sale.

i don't imagine there were all too many devoted LD enthusiasts in the PORTLAND area.
wouldn't it be Wild if it so turned out that i had ended up with some of your Dad's discs?