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spudeus
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Post subject: Weird Personal Survey: LD vs. BRD Posted: 20 Mar 2021, 15:57 |
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Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 20:33 Posts: 71 Location: United States Has thanked: 4 times Been thanked: 10 times
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For whatever reason, I decided to conduct a Weird Experiment/Survey after thinking about physical media. I looked at the various LDs I had purchased online over the past several months with price excluding shipping (some were part of small lots), and then looked up the same films on bluray.com which has a quite extensive database and links to the going Amazon price. Sure, I’m comparing used vs new, but I would point out that all the LDs were in VG+ condition or even in their original shrink wrap. I was just curious – what’s out there and how do the prices compare? So now, the bell sounds and the Battle of the Decades commences. In this corner – Laserdisc at a lifespan of 22 years and 425 horizontal lines of resolution. And in the other - Blu-ray Disc, with a 15 year lifespan to date and a total of over 2M pixels.
[list=]Title............................... LD $.................BRD $ Stalin 1993 miniseries_____________5______________Not Available 38: Vienna Before the Fall_________8______________Not Available Is Paris Burning__________________7______________No Release Date The Alamo (roadshow)____________19_____________No Release Date (either version) Blue Tornado____________________16_____________Not Available Two Girls and a Guy______________6______________70; 2 cuts, OOP Khartoum_______________________5______________99; LE of 3000, OOP The Rapture_____________________10_____________No Release Date Final Notice_____________________5______________Not Available Andrei Rublev (Criterion)__________12______________29 Demetrius and the Gladiators_______5______________137; LE of 3000, OOP The Fan (81)____________________1______________21 The Brady Bunch Movie___________1______________No Release Date Sleeping With the Enemy__________2______________7 The Naked Jungle________________6______________Not Available Ironclads_______________________14_____________Not Available Rollerball_______________________15______________25 Dune Warriors___________________15______________45; Screen Archives OOP The Thief of Bagdad (1940)________2_______________No Release Date The American President___________2_______________15 Hamburger Hill WS_______________6_______________7.50 Wild Side______________________10_______________Not Available Fatal Attraction WS______________8_______________17 Ice Station Zebra________________6_______________15 December______________________5________________20 MSRP for Bundle pack in May 2021 Quigley Down Under______________4________________20 No Way Out WS_________________5________________80; OOP? Altered States__________________3________________15 Last Days of Man on Earth________3________________20; Shout Alexander the Great_____________3________________35; LE of 3000, OOP The Blue Lagoon________________8________________90; LE of 3000, OOP Yanks_________________________5________________21; LE of 3000 Topaz_________________________2.50_____________15 A Midnight Clear________________2.50______________22 The Time Guardian______________15________________listed as 'Early 2021' Cat People_____________________7________________16 The Prodigal____________________9________________Not Available[/list]
The results were surprising to say the least. 22 of 37 titles (nearly 66%) either have never been released on Blu-ray, or are currently OOP with inflated prices. If I were to try and replace my LD collection with BRDs, at this rate I’d go bankrupt! LD for the win, I’d say Blu was KOed in the fifth round. If I reran the experiment with DVD, I’m sure prices would be lower on average and the number of available titles higher, but I’m guessing LD would still be the overall winner.
This just calls into question the naysayers we typically run into on web forums who seem to leap at the chance to call Laserdisc expensive, useless, pointless. Looking at these results, which format is more accessible? Which one is the ‘niche’ format? Which has a more robust catalog? Is more consumer friendly, even? I’m preaching to the choir on LDDB, but these are real questions with murky/evolving answers. LD definitely has a role to play in 2021.
_________________ CLD-1070 / CLD-D701 / CLD-V2800 / DVL-909
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spudeus
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Post subject: Re: Weird Personal Survey: LD vs. BRD Posted: 20 Mar 2021, 22:58 |
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Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 20:33 Posts: 71 Location: United States Has thanked: 4 times Been thanked: 10 times
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@zeta: That's similar to my tendencies. I have a growing number of silent-era LDs, and I doubt they'll look better (in fact, some of them can't be found on any other disc format).
@rein-o Agreed; from my list above I doubt I would watch any title more than once in a 2-3 year period. If I do watch something annually, I consider the upgrade.
I'm still scratching my head as Last Days of Man on Earth is a fairly obscure, cult title, but Shout Factory released it on Blu last year and it can still be obtained reasonably. Meanwhile, No Way Out, a mainstream Kevin Costner thriller you'd expect to be in the $5 bargain bin, apparently goes for big bucks ($50-$90 on ebay)?!
_________________ CLD-1070 / CLD-D701 / CLD-V2800 / DVL-909
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takeshi666
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Post subject: Re: Weird Personal Survey: LD vs. BRD Posted: 21 Mar 2021, 09:44 |
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Joined: 01 Feb 2018, 02:41 Posts: 2000 Location: Finland Has thanked: 185 times Been thanked: 390 times
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teddanson wrote: Fabulous Baker Boys (great film) is another one you'd think could be had for pennies. Twilight Time released about minus 57 copies on blu ray. Thus all the scalpers bought them and it now sells for about $6.3trillion a copy. The only Twilight Time release I have is Zardoz and it's not even unique, it's been released on blu-ray all over Europe by now. I cope by telling myself "at least it has the isolated score".
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rein-o
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Post subject: Re: Weird Personal Survey: LD vs. BRD Posted: 21 Mar 2021, 16:12 |
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Joined: 03 May 2004, 19:05 Posts: 8118 Location: Dullaware Has thanked: 1228 times Been thanked: 851 times
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This is also the same for stupid stuff like 6th day, I was going to post a pic of the DVD that was at the salvation army for a buck and say look what I found. I can totally understand stuff being expensive when its not available and its a risk game to wait for it to come out etc. But roxbury
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takeshi666
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Post subject: Re: Weird Personal Survey: LD vs. BRD Posted: 21 Mar 2021, 16:21 |
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Joined: 01 Feb 2018, 02:41 Posts: 2000 Location: Finland Has thanked: 185 times Been thanked: 390 times
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spudeus wrote: Zardoz (I own a copy on DVD). . .yikes. Amazon has it at $159 new/$90 used. As Forper pointed out, this Screen Archives Limited Edition trend is creating artificial demand and one I hope goes away. . . assuming the rights have reverted to the studio maybe we'll see 'non-limited' releases of some of these titles (but I'm not holding my breath). I mean it sort of makes sense, a lot of the titles released under the Twilight Time banner probably might not get a blu-ray release at all otherwise. But I movies like Zardoz are cult classics with a much higher demand than the 3000 or so copies would meet. One argument I always hear is "the people who want it won't wait"; but what about the latecomers' tax, eh? Imagine coming across a movie and watching some low-res copy of it that you find and you're like "holy sh!t this movie is f***ing great I must have a copy" and then you go to amazon or ebay and find it's $200 or something because you only discovered this thing years after that limited edition release. Also I pre-ordered those Studio Canal 4K limited edition box sets of the John Carpenter movies that came out a couple of years ago but I couldn't make up my mind between them and the steelbooks, so I canceled the former thinking I could just get them later...well that turned out to be a freakin' mistake and the steelbooks aren't worth anything so I can't even trade them.
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