When I was a kid in the early 90s I used to hang out in hi-fi stores watching the LD HT setups. I had no hope of buying the equipment then but dreamed about it. It had this luxury cache that DVD never had. The elite older guys in my anime club all had LD gear too. I went on exchange to study in Japan 2001 and a lot of LDs were discounted there then because DVD had started to establish itself. So being poor and a Macross fan I bought one LD. Macross the Movie Perfect Edition for Y1000 and watched it over and over again on one of my university library's LD players. I'd seen fansubs of it in the '90s at my anime club back in Australia but watching on CAV LD was the ultimate to me.
When I went back to Australia I didn't eat for almost a week and bought a player in a pawn store for all the money I had at the time (about $200). Without knowing much, asked the staff if it could do NTSC discs and they were like yeah of course, got it home and it wouldn't play my Macross LD, PAL only player! I took it back, got my money and gave up on LD for the rest of my poverty stricken university existence..
When I started to actually earn enough money about 7 years back I started to get back into it and started to get players from pawn stores and gumtree/ebay. I also built up about 100 discs through stores on LDDB.com and ebay/rakuten. Been through 5 players in that time, 3 Pioneers and 2 Sonys. All have failed within a year or two. I've amateurishly tried to repair them and made them worse, then junked them. Last year I got my holy grail, my Christmas and birthday presents to myself combined, an LD-S9. It worked so beautifully for 3 months then started messing up. Broke my heart. I've posted a help thread here if anyone can help:
laserdude @ Pioneer LD-S9 having problems - help please!
From searching for help with my S9 I've been led to the LDDB forums for the first time since I joined in 2011. From what I've read here most of you have multiple backup players and are servicing veterans.
I said if my S9 died then I would finally give up on LD but then I look through some of my beloved discs and can't do it, and now I've been inspired again by reading through the LDDB forums. I'll NEVER give up on LD, just keep struggling with it. LD forever!
