The laserdisc (LD) was the first commercial optical disc storage medium, and was used primarily for the presentation of movies.
During its development, the format was referred to as the Reflective Optical Videodisc System before MCA, who owned the patent on the technology, re-named the format Disco-Vision in 1969. By the time the format was brought to market in 1978, the hyphen had been removed from the format name, and DiscoVision became the official format name. Sales of DiscoVision players & discs began on December 15, 1978 starting in Atlanta, Georgia. MCA owned the rights to the largest catalog of films in the world during this time, and they directly manufactured and distributed the discs of their movies under the "MCA DiscoVision" label. Pioneer Electronics, who entered the market almost at exactly the time DiscoVision titles were going on sale in 1978, began manufacturing players and printing discs under the name laser videodisc. By 1981, Laserdisc (first in CamelCase as LaserDisc, later without the inter caps) had become the common name for the format, and the Discovision label disappeared, simply becoming MCA or (later) MCA-Universal Laserdisc.
MCA also manufactured discs for other companies, including Paramount, Disney and Warner Brothers. Some of them added their own names onto the disc-jacket in order to signify the movie was not owned by MCA. When MCA folded into Universal several years later, Universal began re-issuing many of the early DiscoVision titles as Universal discs. The DiscoVision versions had largely been available only in pan and scan and had often utilized poor transfers. The Universal versions were largely better. The format has also been known as LV (for LaserVision, actually a player brand by Philips). The players are also sometimes referred to as VDPs (Video Disc Players).
2006-06-22 08:24:28
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answer #1
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answered by answer gal 4
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I have two laser disc players and about 30 laser discs which I view occasionally. The laser disc offered much better video and sound quality than standard VHS tapes, but not as good as S-VHS. The laser disc has been obsoleted by the DVD, with even better video and sound quality.
2006-06-22 15:24:05
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answer #2
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answered by gp4rts 7
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I've never owned one, but they used them in my elementary school. I think they were called Laser Disc. I know whenever they got one for us to watch the teachers always said we are going to watch a Laser Disc movie now.
2006-06-22 15:24:33
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answer #3
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answered by ? 2
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Yeah, they sucked Philips made one called the 3do
2006-06-22 15:24:01
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answer #4
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answered by Anonymous
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I can't remember the name, but I remember them from the late 80's.
2006-06-22 15:24:20
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answer #5
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answered by Blackacre 7
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