I have been a laserdisc tragic since the 90s. I couldn't afford to buy too many discs/players when I was younger, while struggling to pay off mortgage & support a young family, etc.

The irony is since the ceasing of laserdisc production in early 2000's, I've been accumulating more & more laserdiscs & LD players, because everyone is throwing them out. Right now I am a proud owner of 300+ laserdiscs and more than 10 LD players. Problem is even the newest LD player is more than 20 years old.

I've been chatting with a fellow Laserdisc Connoisseur here in Australia recently. He reckoned perhaps someone could mobilize a crowdfunding project, for the resurrection of LD players. As an experienced businessman, he worked out the project would be financially viable with only a production of 1,000. This is provided manufacturers e.g. Pioneer still have their old tooling around, or adopting more modern setup of today. Image a multi-format player that can handle Laserdisc/DVD/HD-DVD/Bluray/4K...wouldn't that be great!

Anyone out there like this idea or better still, start running with it?

I'm not an experienced businessman but I have to imagine that any product that comes out of a project like this would need to be astonishingly expensive in order to interest a Pioneer, Sony, or Panasonic in tooling up to make only 1000 of something.

What type of business is this guy in

Only way to get any crowd funding is for you to find a place to make them, single sided would be easiest. and then find out costs,
then start the crowd fund.

Don't expect any of those companies to give you anything, even if you do pay.
Its not worth their time and money to bother with this anymore.

Panni hasn't had a player since 1993 or around there, Pio hasn't had a player since the mid 2000's. Sony could be the lat 90s early 00s

Why would a multi million/billion dollar company hold onto old worthless junk, they don't even stock parts anylonger why keep the
machinery to make players???

I think the 2009 batch of DVL's were the last ones Pioneer could economically build - there are several LD-only IC's which even if they still were available new wouldn't meet ROHS specs.

You might, just might be able to build 1000 for $1000 (edit: each!), but there probably aren't enough people willing to pay that much.

In a decade or two someone might bother to build a one-off machine to scan a Laserdisc and do the equivalent of a Kyroflux - assuming I'm still around I'd be up for helping with that. (and if I'm not hopefully the code I've written will be useful regardless...)

It's already been discussed here:

Is there ANY chance for a new player in the future ?

Julien

You mean $1000 each, right? That's what I think you meant.

Yeah, there's no way you'd be able to build these things at such low volumes at a reasonable price without massively compromising quality; you can either build them up to a standard, in which case only the hardcore collectors with deep pockers would be able to afford them and even then vintage high-end machines might end up being more economically feasible for the buyer, or build them down to a price, in which case they'd probably break down in a year or so, and who wants that?

I wonder if it'd be more feasible to just manufacture discontinued spare parts for old machines. You probably could easily manufacture parts with no dedicated electronics like the VNL1779. I've been wondering how hard it'd be to make one of those by hand, possibly by casting it from another, more durable material. Whole circuits and complex parts like laser pickups would probably require industrial manufacturing facilities.

I would agree that I would not buy a newly tooled $1000+ player if I can pick up a functional unit for way under that price.

Also, LD players are not like turntables in that they are vastly more complicated and requires very specific electronics to make them work so a project like this would be a massive undertaking that may never get past a planning stage. In addition, people dumped players in droves when the format really died out and many of us (not all) did buy up a lot of spares (I'm at 10 machines now so I don't really need more of them).

Same goes for AC3-RF Demodulators that someone I won't name mentioned about crowdfunding a project to build more and wanted to price them for $40 each (you couldn't even get them for under $100 when they were mass produced).

Oh, you could crowdfund it easily. But crowdfunding isn’t a way to make things, it just just pays for them. Actually building it? Ha! The idea is ridiculous. The more you know about it the more fanciful you realize the idea is. Without expertise the money is useless. There are lots of things on crowdfunding sites that were paid for but never built because the idea wasn’t as realistic as someone thought it was.

Pioneer don’t have jack anymore, btw. The don’t even really exist as they used to.

I question the viability of creating a new LD player (even if it plays BD & 4K), without the return of LD production. As much as I would love to see it, I just don't think it will happen.

Even TECHNICS took 7 years to reconsider making turntables (that are not mechanically complex like a dual-sided/multi-format LD Player) with a hot vinyl revival and thousands of fans signing online petition.

When the first revived player was release, it was a US$4,000 and the first 1200 were all pre-ordered in a few hours.

So... now for a smaller LD Player demand, with all manufacturing tools gone and original mold probably destroyed we'd be talking about... $10,000, $15,000 a piece?

Julien

I loathe when people equate the manufacturing of TTs and records as being somewhat comparable to LD manufacture but I would like to point out that in the year 2000 you could get a Tech 1200 MkIIId for $380 street. So the price is literally ten times higher than it was in the boom years. LD players used to *start* in that price range so maybe we’re talking about $1000 maybe $10,000. It’s very hard to say since if you made an LD player today the electronics would be almost totally different from the original stuff.

There are really 2 situations here.

1 we no longer have bottomless pocket videophiles or moviephiles anymore, anybody who want's a film or setup can just go to wallyworld and pickup a
very cheap 5.1 setup and be very happy with it.
There is no more prestige in showing off your major theater room like in the 80s and 90s.

2 we always get these single post trolls who ask things like when can we get players, discs etc made.
They also come in and ask strange questions as to why people collect LDs, does anybody remember that post where the OP disappeared.

I'd say it'll be 10 years before you see a one off player again just to play the discs that exist and bear in mind technology has moved on so far since the last X9 was produced in 2002 that you probably would be able to get one produced a lot cheaper than in it's hay day and way better in terms of quality and built. Better materials, better construction and more durable. I think you'll get a point when collectors will be screaming for a new player because of lack of parts and lack of machines out there. I'd say it's be a few years before that happens.

Better build quality than an X9? Have you purchased any electronics in the last decade or two? You can’t buy anything built like an X9 for less than $20,000 now.

I think we will get a new player some day but it will be a LOT different from any player that has come before. I think spinning the disc at all will be passé. The thing will look like a flimsy POS and have amazing output but it will have build quality worse than any player ever built.

Probably right but if if get a new player I'll be a happy camper...

I love these threads for the delusions some folks have.
Better than watching Nickelodeon or something.
But I'm not worried about the future anymore.
Only a question of time before we can purchase a HLD-X10 for $4.99 at Walmart.
Yahoo!

I definitely think that if it ever happens any new future players will do away with spinning. I keep hearing the idea of scanning the discs, digitally unwrapping the tracks and processing them which could work in theory. Someone made a proof of concept for vinyl a few years back (though the implementation was fundamentally flawed, sounded awful and many believed it to be a hoax) but I think we're still a long, long way off being able to scan a CD or LD in high enough quality required to "see" the signal encoded on the disc.

Would feel odd though, watching a laserdisc without that familiar hum.

That’s one area where an LD would be easier than an LP. LDs are two dimensional.

Again, I love how this fantasy is going on when most collectors won't spend more than 5 bucks on an LD and even more just
have these expensive titles in their wishlist and will never really buy it.

Then how can you expect anybody to spend one thousand dollars on a player when you never did when they were new.

Hell, they can't even spend 300.00 on a nice 97 now, and you think they will spend 1000+ on new players??????????