I post a lot on the blu-ray.com forum dedicated to laserdiscs, but thought I'd introduce myself over here now that theres a forum up and running.

I'm 23 years old, and I've been interested in Laserdiscs for as long as I can remember. When I was young my aunt had the only home theatre I'd ever seen, recliners and popcorn machine and everything. She had a big ceiling mounted CRT projector and hooked up to it was a CLD-D701. Seeing it for the first time as a kid I was so fascinated by the technology. A CD as big as those big black records my parents still had kicking around, but it had a movie on it! I couldn't believe it.

Over the years, I always looked forward to going to my aunts to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster on Laserdisc. I still remember watching Cliffhanger when it came out and my parents turning it off for us kids after all the blood and swearing.

After DVDs came out, I remember my aunt hooking up her DVD player, and the Laserdisc player just sat there unused. A little while later my uncle was talking about just throwing out the player and their collection of discs! Being interested older technology, and not wanting to see their player end up in the garbage, I told my uncle I'd be more than happy to put it to good use if they were going to throw it out anyways. This was in about 2001, and I got their CLD-D701 and about 30 movies a few weeks later. Being only 13, this was awesome! A higher end LD player for use in my bedroom, which was cool as I wouldn't have my own DVD player for another few years yet.

It served me well for a few years, but maybe in about 2005 it gave up the ghost. For the next few years I'd still buy discs if I found them at thrift or pawn shops, but had no player, and at only 17 with a part time job, getting another one was not in the cards.

After a few more years of getting a couple of really cool movies, I decided it was time to get another player. Sadly, not having done my research, I got a Sony MDP-455 just because it had a toslink port and remote. Needless to say, this player was lacking and had a very noisy picture.

Soon after I got a Panasonic LX-101, which was ok, but didn't thrill me. It was cheap and was just to be a backup player.

A few months later I got a CLD-909 and about 30 movies off of Kijiji for a great price, and that became my main player for a while.

After that I started doing my research and knew what to look for. I was able to get a CLD-D502 for only $5 at a thrift store, which I had to tweak a bit to get to work, but having a dual side player again was nice.

Just last year I finally got a CLD-D704 locally and am happy to say unless I win the lottery, this will be my player for as long as it lasts. I also now have a Sony Demodulator as well as a Sony Processor as a backup demodulator.

Sorry for such a long story there, but it's nice to be able to chat and share with other fans of this really cool technology and let you guys know that there is a younger generation interested in Laserdiscs as well. I'm going to keep collecting for as long as I have the spare money and the space to store them.

Thanks to all of you out there who have kept interest in this technology alive so that people like me have a resource to find out more about something that's hard to find out about locally.

im also 23 years old, but i grew up in a totally different evironment, my family was cheap cheap cheap, my dad bought small tvs and everything we had to watch were taped of the tv vhs tapes... needless to say i followed in his footsteps up until a couple of years ago when i started hanging with dudes who collect records and movies, and then i realized how nice it is to actually own music and movies

my freinds all say ive done a 180, its funny cuz i got more hardware then any of them now!

and my dad laughs when i tell him all these things that i buy, he hasnt changed, only difference today is that he downloads movies off bittorent and burns them onto dvd lol

Hi Phil, and welcome.

I too post on Bluray.com, as I suspect many of us here do also. In some ways your story is similar to mine. I have several players and they are fantastic for me...but I would always be happy to upgrage to a better one at some point.

I too, also have spares...machines, demodulators. You just have to really. Well you do in the UK at least. I am not an electrical engineer of any description, and authorised repair centres don't exist for LDs in England like they used to so a 'break for spares' machine or two for me, has been a must.

great story, thanks