Hi everyone,

Ever since I started Home Cinema in April of 1998 I had a vague plan, a destination ''as it were'' of where I wanted to be.

Firstly I knew that Laserdisc was on the decline, so I invested in the hardware and obviously the software.
During this process I was in private accomodation, and apart from rent I did'nt pay any bills, of which helped me to spend most of my available funds on my AV Pastime.

The last seven years 2001 to April 2008 before I moved out and into my first home, the room where I stayed had become a store room of boxes with all of my equipment, and roughly the last year I was sharing the bed with an HLD X9 in it's box.

By the end I could hardly move in this room.

Then in the second half of January 2008 after being on the housing waiting list for 7 1/2 years, I received a phone call from the housing Association offering myself to view 6 x new build apartment's the next morning from 9am to 12noon.

I was the first to arrive with only one rep there, decided on the one i wanted, but then I didn't move in until April 07th.

I went through a lot of worry with my mother who had gone into Hospital, then a BUPA care Home and then Finally into a permanent Home on the 09th Jan 2008.

From the 07th of April 2008 until now I have been busy & gradually furnishing and fitting out my home.
From May 2010 to October late 2011 went through many up's & downs with work, travelling to many locations and so on.

The unsteady work situation just added to the restrictions with not getting things done at home.

Since late October 2011 I now have a permenant site, close to home and walk to work, of which saves myself around £90+ a month on Petrol costs.

I am finally settling up a friend who serviced my car 15month's ago this coming Sunday 22nd Jan, I shall be taking Him and his family out for a Sunday roast, to say thank you for his friendship, patience & understanding.

From then on I will be concentrating on the purchase of the Equipment stands, that I have reserved with a retailer of which should be completed by the end of April 2012.

I shall then take some annual leave in order to set all of my equipment up.

Then by about mid June I shall be decorating my bedroom, fitting speakers and placing the cable behind coving.
I shall also be fitting coving and decorating the hallway and cloakroom.

by December 2012 at the latest I shall have completed the purchase of two bookcases, 2 x pictures, a study desk with matching two drawer file cabinet, exec chair & a flat bamboo mat to go under the chair so as not to damage the carpet.

By the time all of this will be done it would have taken 14 3/4 years to complete.

I am sure many others have their project's & ongoing plans ect,

Sincere Regards to all.

Nice story.

For my video setup I've been able to reduce the total amount of equipment to connect together by not requiring specific items.
I mostly watch music laserdiscs with a small number of films. Very few of the music laserdiscs ever came with anything other than analog and/or digital sound.
So in my case it is not necessary to purchase an RF demodulator.
Whilst I recently purchased an HLD-X9 LD player I did this for the improved NTSC playback rather than its MUSE capability so have no need for a MUSE decoder either.

My focus on music LDs which rarely have dolby digital also means I don't need an elaborate speaker setup so that has helped to simplify the wiring.
My lounge is effectively my main video room and I wanted to preserve the look of a conventional lounge as far as possible.

As regards the sound acoustics I used conventional carpeting throughout. Whilst wooden floors are beautiful they are generally terrible for the acoustics in a room.
This can often be the main reason why so many other things need altered in a room if the base isn't right to begin with. My floors are solid concrete with very high grade underfelt and carpeting. I sampled this for myself as I had my audio equipment setup at a very early stage when I moved into my house long before it was ever furnished and was able to test the impact of adding different items bit by bit. It is also quite therapeutic listening to music when decorating! I really didn't need to make any dramatic modifications to the room other than furnish it with carpets, curtains and seating to totally alter the sound. The receiver was then automatically calibrated to match the environment created. I'm still using a set of Wharfedale speakers I bought over 25 years ago which I've always loved the sound of.

I have broken my rule about separating video/audio equipment slightly in that I have one LD player linked to the audio only setup with a tiny little B/W monitor screen about 4 inches wide! This I use for listening to music laserdiscs often via just headphones. The only reason for the monitor is to more easily identify the correct starting point for a track where there are no obvious chapter breaks as is the case on many early music LDs.

Whilst I've a large stockpile of laserdisc players, I see no reason to have these all wired up at once. At any given time I have about 3 in use. All the others are carefully boxed away as backups for the future so my house looks quite normal and not very cluttered even though I have over 5000 laserdiscs shelved and an extensive music collection within easy reach.

Good day laserdisc_fan,

I have been reading your post with interest, and could genuinely relate to how you have furnished, underlayed, ect and have essentially kept your main room as normal as possible.

Thank you for sharing your experiences on this site.

5000 titles . . . . . . well that's just awe inspiring.

When I have finished collecting Laserdisc's, I may reach 1000 give or take.

I to have a collection of good, to high end LD players, only because I go for build quality.

When I finish paying for my equipment support stands I shall be unpacking all of my players, as I am fed up with looking at boxes and want them displayed and used.

I have attick space that I have fitted out with flooring but I wouldn't want them up there doing nothing.

You ''I think'' have a lot more room than myself, so can understand why you would keep the rest tucked away for a rainy day ''as it were'' and good on you.

I think you would have thought ''as I did'' when Purchasing Laserdisc's ''for me it was an investment'' that I wanted to take care of from the start.

I have purchased more than I need but hey' at least there paid for, and I havn't wasted my hard earned money on other things if you know what I mean.

Sincerest Regards

benmbe,

Like yourself and probably a good few others I purchased additional laserdisc players to protect my investment since I didn't buy the laserdiscs as museum pieces - I really do enjoy watching them all! Given the cost of the discs, the players actually seem something of a bargain these days in relative terms so I see it as a wise precaution since none of us know what will happen in the future. I think in all likelihood demand for laserdisc technology will fall and there will be plenty of players and discs to go around for anyone who wants to enjoy the format as I do. Certainly I see no shortage of either at the moment although decent player prices have been rising somewhat over the last 6 years in the UK if Ebay is anything to go by. Beyond that I cannot comment as I only started collecting laserdiscs in January 2006. It will be interesting to see what happens the really high end equipment over time.

I've a sizeable quantity of duplicates to sell or swap so my total collection may actually fall in size over time however there would always be some additional titles I could think of to fill out the shelves....perhaps some movies or even anime. So far I have tried to keep focused though on music laserdiscs as music has always been my main interest and lifelong passion. I know I am in the minority though as laserdisc seems to have had the greatest appeal to film lovers and to a lesser extent anime fans. The 'useless statistics' which you see when you click your collection always amuses me because even with over 4500 LDs entered in my collection (the remainder still to catalog) it reports: 0 title(s) of the Top 100 Collection and only 2 titles of the Top 100 Wishlist! Confirmation if ever there was that I am the odd one out. I do not appear to collect or desire the same titles as anyone else out there!

I'm really not sure how many more music LDs exist that would be of interest to me. Probably the biggest unknown quantity are promo music LDs that were never available commercially and produced for broadcast companies. They were played weekly by satellite companies to promote future hit singles. Of course many of the songs never even made the charts and just disappeared into obscurity after one or two air plays so there are lots of zero hit wonders out there! I get the impression I could probably collect these for the rest of my life as there seem to be thousands potentially produced although they are very difficult to track down having never been released to the public. It is a bit like flicking through a book which documents every single music video released by virtually every artist over say a 20 year period. How long is a piece of string?!

As regards storing backup players I agree it is a scary thought putting them in the loft or worse still garage!
Last year I had a thermometer in my garage and the temperature registered minus 15 degrees centrigrade in December!
Now I know that is a freak event for the UK but that would likely have cracked plastic parts inside a player if I had stored them outside.
So for now I have them stored at normal room temperature inside a spare room I don't use!

At 541 entries, almost all of them anime, I am at 0 of the Top 100 Collection & 1 of the Top 100 Wishlist. That one is the Studio Ghibli box set, which even people who aren't really anime fans would probably have wishlisted. Over the weekend I saw 5 of the Ghibli films at the cinema, courtesy of a local film festival ; 4 of them are to be found in the box, & the 5th was actually the first US showing of the new film based on "The Borrowers".

I was kinda disappointed with that one.
While it looks nice, it is not epic.
And epic is what I kinda expect from Ghibli.
But then the same could be said about Ponyo...

So these days my "expectation of epic-ness" has shifted away from Ghibli over to
Shinkai Makoto and his works. I really liked "Children who chase lost voices from deep below".

My opinion was this.
Are there better Ghibli films? Yes. Is it possible, in theory, that there could be a better "Borrowers" film made? Yes. Is it likely that such a thing will happen? No.
Of course, I don't suppose that will weigh as heavily with someone who didn't read the book as a child, but it's very well known in English-speaking countries.