Its not happening unless someone who is rather rich does it for hardcore fan reasons. "Analog is coming back" isn't going to bring back a format that is this much of a PITA.

Comparisons to cassette are invalid. Although cassette and 8 Track are also pointless (even more pointless than LD since they suck, always sucked, and always will suck, and were never the "premium" format like LD was for ~20 years) in 2012, its still possible to make high quality cassettes with easily obtainable equipment. Same with VHS. You can get a pro deck from eBay for $50. This is NOT happening with LD. Even if you could find the equipment, it would cost many thousands and you'd need a really smart and experienced dude to run it. LDs are probably the most technically picky format ever. Who wants to spend $300 per copy of a "fan appreciation LD"? Well, I would. But I would be pretty unhappy when it started rotting a year later.

Comparisons to vinyl records are even more invalid. With the right gear vinyl sounds as good as any format invented. Its also been in continuous production all over the world for 60+ years (for LP and 7", decades earlier for shellac 78s). Even at the lowest point of production vinyl still outsold LD. If you were talking about making some CEDs, then that would make sense since, as I understand it, you can made CEDs on a record press.

The CDV thing...might work. Most CD manufacturing places these days have a really hard time dealing with non-standard formats. CDVs not even being digital (the video part anyway) they are going to have to dig some old junk out of the closet to make it work. It could happen, but it would be hard to find a place to even take the job, let alone get it to work. Their mastering software is going to hate it, and they don't even have a way to test from the source except after pressed, meaning you'd be paying for an untested die every time you made an attempt.

I think if this is going to happen you'd need:

An old dude in Japan who knows his business really well.

A nice millionaire nostalgic for the 90s.

Well I have made it clear i don't see it happening anytime soon because of the recession but I do see the players themselves making a comeback. Even better would be a new laserdisc format for the digital age with playback compatibility with the old discs. I don't see physical media ever going away regardless what the streaming / smart brigade think. Storing all your favourite films / tv shows etc on servers isn't really practical and can's beat physical discs on a shelf.

Roger Shore

The problem is that adding LD compatibility to any new device is going to cost many times what the device would be selling for otherwise. Example: the cheapest LD players ever were $300 or so. There are 3D Bluray decks at the grocery store for $80. There are almost no cross compatible components either. Look inside your LD player. See all that stuff? Virtually none of that is in a Bluray player, an Apple TV, Roku, whatever. It would be like trying to add dish washing capabilities to a VCR.

If built, such a device would only be interesting to people who know and love LD, and those people would abandon ship as soon as they saw how sucky the player was...and it would be sucky.

The best way to add LD compatibility to a setup is to just buy an LD player. It will be cheaper, better, and more reliable than the disposable lightweight garbage they make today.

I think comparisons to vinyl are valid. With the right equipment, an LD can look superior to dvd and often times it sounds superior.

CD and VHS served the same purpose (cheaper cost). Cassettes/CD and MP3 serve the same type of purpose (portable). After CD's became the norm, vinyl became a niche market, it was only the artists that kept and fed the vinyl market from completely dying.

A laserdisc comeback would need artist support which it likely would never get.

this is not going to happen.
unless like posted above
An old dude in Japan, EUROPE OR AMERICA who knows his business really well.

A nice millionaire nostalgic for the 90s. WHO IS WILLING TO LOSE MONEY JUST FOR A HOBBY.

the technology is out there, but you have to get someone who has money and is willing to do it.
otherwise everybody is just talking and nothing will ever happen, you can debate it for years.
if you don't get anyone with money it will never happen.

the only thing that might start it back up is if you get a small run of players made from a factory in CHINA, yes CHINA and they have upgraded filters and connections.

take a look at some of the high end CD players on the bay, 2-4K for a CD player from china???
so that means they can make high end and will make anything for a buck.

also let's start a poll, who is willing to buy a new LD player for 4 thousand dollars??

if you are willing then you can start to think about bringing back a dead technology with no new software for it, as i'm sure others will want to buy a 4K player and dollar discs on the bay to play them

A good LD looks better than a bad DVD, that's for sure. Even better than a good DVD, much of the time. That's mostly just because DVD sucks. Bluray just completely crushes LD though. It lacks nothing. Aside from things that don't actually have anything to do with the format's latent capability (i.e.: small cover art, unskipable ads, overly cooked masters, BD live) BR is superior in every way...and its way way easier to make players and disks. LD players are highly physical and analog. They have to be well made. A cheap BR deck that weights half a pound can still put out a good image. A cheap LD player will always be crap.

You can make vinyl records at home (dub plates, anyway) if you don't need very many of them. LDs can only be pressed in industrial facilities with extremely clean conditions. You know how we debate which pressing is better than some other pressing, and how certain factories are famous for making rotters? Keep in mind that the good the bad and the ugly LDs of yore were all produced in an era when there were millions of LDs being made every year by billion dollar companies who made tons of money from the format. There were hundreds of technicians and engineers working on the stuff. If it were possible to make a non-profit LD, it would almost certainly be an amazingly bad LD. Even the worst LDs of all time had more invested in them than what the scene could fund today, and they were all made at a time when there was tons of momentum for the format.

Then there is the fact that everything SD looks like garbage on HDTVs, which is a more or less insurmountable problem.

I think the future of playing LDs will be this: very soon it will be possible to buy flatbed scanners for office or home that can take a good enough image of the surface of an LD so that a piece of software can convert that scan into a digital video file playable on anything. The scanners needed are only a matter of time (already obtainable as pro equipment). The smart dude that writes the first "LD Emulator" program might take a while longer to turn up, but it will happen.

A fascinating idea. I'm not sure it will happen but it's an interesting alternative.

you still have a scanner?

i think i have used mine about 8 times in the past 2 years.
the only reason i have it is due to the combo printer, fax, scanner.
and i don't even used the fax part

Interesting idea BUT: Your talking about a digital transfer (or digital interpretation) from analog, at least as far as the picture goes, so what is the difference from just doing a digital transfer in the first place from the best converters available today? What possible could a scanned LD surface + digital converter software do better than a great LD player via capture device to digital, available today?

Elvis

Nothing really. However I think if any new player does come on the market it is most likely going to be mostly digital anyway.

well then if a new player is made and it is digital it will probably be called a Digital Video Disc player

Um...the difference could be huge. When doing a digital transfer from a photographically scanned LD you would be bypassing all the analog electronics in the LD player. You'd have exactly what is on the LD, physically, and the duty of interpretation of the analog signal would up to software. You'd be able to resample or scale or interpolate whatever as many times as you want without any biases or flaws in the electromechanical real time mechanism of an LD player.

For the same reason not all LD players put out the same signal (not by any means whatsoever) it is possible to improve methods by which LDs are read.

The irony of it was that the big stores like HMV and Virgin Megastore killed all the independent stores in the 90's and now the internet has done the same to them!
When I was on holiday in the US and was able to visit some independent record stores like Reckless Records in Chicago they were really thriving.
I even bought some laserdiscs and shipped them home to myself in the UK! Of the few big stores I visited they were almost empty so small stores will indeed thrive again as there is always demand for being able to visit a real shop.

I can still see laserdisc making a comeback at some point. Or at the least the players. Could you imagine if the next HD format was was done on a 12" disc with less compression and backward compatible with analogue laserdiscs and aimed at the high end market. The 4K as I would call it would be a winner for video/cinema buffs.

Roger Shore

There are three good (IMO) record stores in my town. They sell primarily vinyl. All the "mainstream" stores like Warehouse, Camelot, Same Goody, Tapeworld, Tower, etc...all gone. Those people just pirate everything or buy it from Wal Mart.

We have only one good record shop in town but it's worth gong to and they can usually get you anything you want (except 8 track, only joking!)

Roger Shore

There's quite a few good independent record shops around here, they're never empty. I was surprised by the number of independent record shops when I was in Helsinki, they've almost got a record shop district! If you're ever there check out Music Hunter, brilliant place.

I'd love to go but I'd be 4000 miles of track but its nice to see them making a comeback and I really do see laserdisc coming back in some form at some stage. Yes the obstacle to laserdisc is the actual pressing facility but I've sure if the money became available anything is possible.

Roger Shore