How could I pass THIS up?

[capecodder]

Well, the usual yard sale weekend of hunting landed me with the proverbial "You'll never know what you'll find" item(s).

I was at one yard sale looking at some old beat up albums when guy walks up and tells me of another yard sale nearby that I didn't know about. He saw me looking at the albums and said the other one also had a lot more but in very good condition. He had just bought 130 of them (damn!) but there were a bunch more.

So.., I high tail it over and he was right about the albums condition but I only picked out 4 that I had any interest in (wish I had seen what he grabbed first). However, i start looking at this stack-o-videodisks that is sitting next to a 1980's vintage RCA videodisk player. Sign on top of player says "$50 for player, accesories and all disks". I start reading the title's of the movies and its a wonderful collection of '60's thru '80's movies. Classic ones like Apocolypse Now, China Town, Bullit, French Connection, Blade Runner, The Boat, Good Bad & Ugly, FistFull Dollars and Few Dollars More, Straw Dogs, Airplane etc, about 8 Bond movies, all the Mad Max movies, 3 Star Trek movies and the first 3 Star Wars, bunch of cool B-grade horror and sci-fi stuff (Swamp Thing, Escape from New York, Halloween 1, 2 and 3 etc.), music videos of the Beatles, Who, Pink Floyd. Crap, I realize he's got about 120 films, almost all of which I would keep and watch again (OK I may toss the Jane Fonda Workout since I already have it on tape ). My youngest 15 year old son who came with me is jumping out of his skin at all the titles. Everything is in very good condition, some actually unopened.

So, I take it all, load it all into the trunk (damn things are heavy) and schlep the stuff into the basement to the "secondary" movie watching area where I hooked it up in about 10 minutes and everything works like a charm. Video quality maybe only a little better than VHS but who cares. Sound actually quite good. So, while this was nothing I would have EVER sought out looking for, I now have a way cool selection of movies, in a funky format, to kill some boring winter evenings.

Ya just never know what you'll find....

[engtaz]

Congrats

[rskarvan]

After you get bored with a movie, you can always convert it to a frisbee!

[madmax]

Cool! I've been collecting used laserdiscs with the same ideas in mind.

[janmike]

Congrats.

[capecodder]

Having never used this format, is there a difference between laser disks in general and videodisks, or is it a generic term? As I mentioned this is an RCA player and (I think) the disks are all RCA.

[billbillw]

Having never used this format, is there a difference between laser disks in general and videodisks, or is it a generic term? As I mentioned this is an RCA player and (I think) the disks are all RCA.

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/cedfaq.html

These videodiscs are a grooved media, not laser read, so they are an analog system. Laserdisc is a digital system.

I can remember my family renting these for the weekend when I was a young teen. A local video shop rented the player and 3 movies for the weekend for pretty cheap. I saw some of my first R rated movies on this format! Porkys, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Last American Virgin, Risky Business, Stripes, etc, etc. All the 80s classics it seems.

[capecodder]

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/cedfaq.html

These videodiscs are a grooved media, not laser read, so they are an analog system. Laserdisc is a digital system.

Huh, I never even thought of that. I just assumed it must be a laser/digital setup. I watched the 3rd Star Trek movie last night (Search For Spock) with my son and it did skip a few times. I thought it might be smudges on the disk so I pulled it out (also I was just curious) and looked the disk over. Didn't see anything worth cleaning, and yes these things do look just like records. He gave me a new stylus in a box so maybe I should install the new one if the other one is a little worn. I didn't even look at the stylus in the box or maybe I would have realized this was an analog medium.

Wonder how the stylus would sound on my Linn LP12 TT??

[cfrizz]

Cool, Congrats!