Most of the rest of the laserdisc made for the instore display promoting the launch of the first Digital Satellite Systems or DSS, more commonly known now as DirecTV. I always thought this was one of the stupidest consumer electronics products in history- when it was first introduced, the dish and receiver cost about $700, and you STILL had to pay several more dollars per month to get anything at all on it- no channels have ever come in on it for free as they did with C-Band dishes, even the ones that run commercials. You young 'uns may never understand that commercials were originally so stations could make money WITHOUT charging their viewers, but it turned out many people are dumb enough to pay to sit through paid ads.
The "quality demo" here cracks me up too since it's essentially just showing how great laserdisc quality was- DSS has always been overcompressed, and it looked especially crappy when it was new. (When I pointed out the blocky picture in store displays, salesdroids claimed I was imagining it as 'Digital' always meant 'Perfect'!)
It's a lot cheaper nowadays to get a mini-dish, but there's still nothing on it worth paying for. Many electronics stores now have annoying DirecTV salespeople trying to sell you on it- every time I see one, I tell them that I'll get one if they can give me a good reason to, but so far nobody has.
Note the early US widescreen TV model shown here. At the time it was mainly good just for cropping the unused screen space from 4x3 letterbox movie transfers (which of course were mostly on laserdisc, very few on satellite or cable.)
19 авг 2010
