Great to find this forum has appeared on such an excellent site. For a while I thought the LDDB whilst being an excellent database and source of info, with the exception of the marketplace, was kind of doomed to be nothing more. Congrats on this Julien, it's been a sorely missed talking point since the alt.laserdisc at AV forums died a death. Hope it's not spoiled by some of those egotistical trolls. I certainly won't fall for their nonsense, hope others do likewise!

As it says in my profile, I've been collecting since February 1997, at a time when widescreen and special editions were the preserve of LDs, and DVDs were barely out. So whilst all around me were going ga-ga over DVD, I held firm with LD. I've since gained a bit of a reputation for backing obsolete/unpopular technologies, and I like it that way!

Still absolutely love LD even with Blu Ray's jaw-dropping quality: I bought a three-year-old Pioneer BDP-71 as I wasn't prepared to fork out full price and, whilst really impressed by the picture, when one puts it into perspective, the size of the improvement is comparable with the improvement from LD to DVD. Sound improvements like the HD surround are worthwhile too. However, loading times are laughable, fussiness of the software is laughable.

And the LD is still a really attractive and tactile format to have - picking up a card sleeve and hefting the disc in place. Lovely. My boxsets are still a wonderful thing to behold and my Signature Collection (of which I have 25) is the crowing glory. I'd never let those go. A bit depressing, though, to read the laser rot report and how long and deep it is!

I look forward to some interesting discussions on the site!

ivan_lima

Welcome to this site

Your comment below almost made choke on my dinner and nearly covered the screen
Hope it's not spoiled by some of those egotistical trolls. I certainly won't fall for their nonsense, hope others do likewise!

Now calm down already:)

I may look like a Bearded Troll but, I am not the sort that you so vividly describe in your opening message.

Now to the subject of Laserdisc yes I know exactly what you mean able the tangable experience with Laserdisc's over the DVD, HD DVD & Blu-Ray's.

I will never get rid of my Laserdisc's and am still collecting, although it's been a tough time of late, with a lack of available funds.
hopefully 2012 will be more stable on the job front and catch up on a Laserdisc order that has been reserved for some considerable time.

Patience is a virtue that's for sure.

Easy Tiger

Shall look forward to corresponding with yourself at some stage

Sincerest Regards

Like benmbe, I laughed when I read the bit about egotistical trolls!

Actually I'm not really up to speed on all this troll terminology so I had to do a bit of googling to be sure I knew what it meant!

I found the following article....they do say the internet has it all!!

http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=77042

It contains the following:

Message Boards and their Abuse: Trolls

Nowadays, anybody with and internet connection can go online and chat with a variety of peers. One of the most common places to chat is bulletin pages known as message boards. Messages written on these boards stay on the boards for everyone to view. Overtime, as people on the boards get to know each other, message boards usually end up being a part of a community.

Yet, with all the activity and chatter a message board supplies, there are nuisances as well. Adolescents who go on the computer usually want to start trouble or irritate others. These people are called trolls. Trolls are a very troublesome problem in the message board community. Trolls usually post beliefs that are not well respected within the message board community. Take a sports message board for example. A troll on a sports message board would usually say that the team that specific board supports “sucks” and the troll would go on to brag how his or her team is superior. Trolls usually do this on consistent bases to annoy the other members on the board.

Trolls also can abuse a message board by spamming or flooding the board. Some message boards have website problems where one can click the submit button a thousand times and then his or her message would be posted the amount of times the spammer clicked “submit.” Trolls can also find ways to exploit message boards into using censored words. If a message board censors out bad language, one can put message board code like [i] between the censored word and it will bypass the censor system. Smart trolls can also program scripts to post a specific message during a specific time frame (every 30 seconds, for example). Egotistical trolls usually try to imitate other members on the board by making screen names that look similar to the members being impersonated. This can be done by such methods as putting an underscore before after the person’s name or exchanging syllables with letters ( for example, exchange the letter L with the number 1). When impersonating, a troll will usually try to act like the normal person at first to fool the community and then try to wreck that person’s image by posting obscene remarks. Trolls are just trying to cause trouble on the message boards.

Trolls are the main cause of message board abuse. They do not try to work with the community, but rather try to destroy it. A troll’s activity can lead some members of a message board community to leave the message board for good. If enough people leave, the message board could end up having a lonely death. Some message boards are trying to stop trolling by banning insecure members and blocking IP addresses, but anonymous web surfing tools can wither this obstacle for trolls. Other message boards attempt to go private, but without new members, the community would fade and eventually die. Overall, the abuse of trolling is wrecking the experience of using message boards for many members and there is little to do to stop it.


Interesting stuff.....well now I know what a troll is!.....and here was me thinking it was a phrase coined by Charlie Sheen earlier in the year!

Benmbe and laserdisc fan, good to make your acquaintances and thanks for your welcome. The troll stuff (and one idiot in particular) really did for the previous forum I used to go on. He had a rightly-held belief that content was more important than format. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one should force that opinion down other peoples' throats.... The fact that LDs had gone out of production meant that fellow forum members probably felt they were on the back foot and many stopped participating and so, when it moved, few people moved with it. And so the community died. Someone who really did a lot back in the time was a really nice chap called Josh Zyber who even put together a really good site called Laserdisc Forever http://www.mindspring.com/~laserdisc-forever/

Hello Josh if you're still out there.

I really enjoy reading these postings and hope the site and forum continue to grow.

I wrote a mail in april 2011 to Josh, thanking him for his work and his website (which led to a buy of an DVDO Iscan VP50..to get the best out of my Lds...), he wrote immediately back and back then, he seemed fine .
Ops, it´s that late now, I just found out about that forum, so I´m very curious...