I have one of those recordable discs from ODC. On one side is a regular format video that plays in a player but on the other side it has something recorded to it. When I put it in my player the frame counter starts ticking away (as opposed to the time counter) but nothing is viewable...

Yup, and I agree with you about the recording capability of VHS being a key reason why it lived such a long life, hell here in Austarila to this day I still see stores selling blank VHS tapes!! i.e Target, Yes I kid you not!

Also I have heard ignorant people rag on Laserdisc as though it died quickly and didn't have much of a life, well that is BS considering the first and last movie discs were pressed in 1978 and 2001 respectively (I have heard speculation that certain music discs were made in 2002 in fact), but anyway despite Laserdiscs fate being sealed from about the late 90's on, it still lasted a good 23/24 years overall, which is more then what I can say for HD-DVD which died in a flash (due to the format war).

Most comsumer A or V formats typically have about a 25 year life on the market before they are replaced, so LaserDisc lived a natural lifespan. Plus, its the basis for every single optical disc format we have now - with Discovision Associates still making a good royalty on those formats. And most people don't know that the optical disc was basically invented in America by a movie studio.

1993 was LaserDisc's top year in terms of players and discs sold, then it was downhill every year after that due to the massive amount of info spewing out of the press about VCD and the studios wanting a new 5-inch format they could have some control over - kind of like slow death for LD by a thousand quick little cuts. However, I do not believe that Pioneer ever foresaw DVD taking off like it did or the LaserDisc market crashing so quickly and finally - as late as 1999 they were still estimating another 10 years of LD disc production. Yet by the end of 1999, Image and Pioneer were having difficulty getting preorders of over 500 copies per title, which massively increased disc production costs, putting the final nails in the coffin.

There's a LD-V7400 that has LaserBarcode, but they're not advertising Level 3 support. (That doesn't mean it isn't actually there, though...)

Going back to final run players, I was reading at http://laserdiscplanet.com/museum2.html that this was the final player. Unless dedicated doesn't include combo. Not sure why it would matter, I would think combo would still be a dedicated player. Not sure where their sources are either.



I wouldn't assume they could put a sticker on the back of the 919 indicating it was manufactured at that date if it wasn't true, so maybe dedicated does indicate LD only. Still, even with a 2009 production sticker it couldn't best VHS since they're still making Blu ray VHS combo players, barnacles! LD just gets no love.

hey theres an auction for one of these discs
Sony CRVdisc Laser Videodisc Media LVM-3AA0 (14609568)

someone should grab it for the project, if its still going?
http://www.shopgoodwill.com/auctions/So ... 09568.html

To give a base for further updates, I created the 3 Pioneer VDRs:

Pioneer VDR-V100 (Japan, NTSC)
Pioneer VDR-V1000 (USA, NTSC)
Pioneer VDR-V1000P (Europe, PAL)

Julien