Found this on the dead side of Slap Shot! From 1979 hosted by J. D. Cannon, this is how to use one of the first industrial laserdisc players. I don't have side 2 unfortunately since this was recovered from a movie's dead side.
Anyone else here because this was sampled by Norse music maker, Anders Enger Jenzen in his 2018 track DiscoVision, which was featured on a Technology Conndctions video?
I finally got around to finish the video to my song, made from samples of this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Azsk21MpbUk.html Took a lot of editing and headbutting so much due to creativity. Wanted to do so many visual things I couldn’t do, due to lack of After Effects and 3D skills, but hopefully it’s good enough. 😁😎
Love your song. I worked at DiscoVision in Carson CA 1981 and we had more rejects than good pressings. quality control was difficult. We would actually play a clear disc directly from the mold presser and determine if the master was defective. from there the clear disc went to the metalizing dept to have the coating baked on. after that the two sides were glued together. another quality control check was done to view the finished disc. hundreds of rejected disc were discarded daily.
Whoah, I had one of these! Over 15 years old at the time, but I got it as a gift from a friend who was a laserdisc enthusiast-it was his first player, but he'd since bought a more modern one and wanted to share the joy. This thing was _brilliant_. First, as you can see starting at 2:01, you had to mount it on a spindle, which locked down with an audible _thwack_. But unfortunately the video doesn’t show you what's next: the top smoked plexiglass window let you see what was happening while the disc played. The laser pickup was stationary, the _spindle_ moved. (Which is why the thing is so _huge_; it had to have room within the chassis for the entire disc to move from edge to center.) Which mean you could look in and see the spindle and disc move, and you could actually _see_ the laser pickup! Two funny things about this technological monstrosity: just as with every other home-movie technology ever developed, when this player was released there was a format war of sorts going. But compared to Beta/VHS, VideoCD/DVD, and Blu-ray/HD DVD the LaserDisc format war was relatively mundane, as far as format wars go. Since these discs were double-sided like a record (each side held up to 60 minutes, so most movies required a flip and sometimes a second disc), it was just a disagreement over which side was the "A" side and which the "B". Vendors who wanted to put the laser pickup beneath the disc wanted the "A" side "down", i.e., on the opposite side from the label reading "side A". Vendors who wanted the laser pickup above the disc wanted side "A" to be "up". This poor thing was on the losing team, so when you played a commercial Laserdisc, you had to put it on the spindle with the "B" label up, then flip it halfway so the "A" label was up. The other funny thing was a result of the moving-spindle design, which meant the disc spun freely without resting on a turntable, and spun _fast_ (at one rotation per video frame, 1800 rpm). If the disc was locked to the spindle incorrectly with a bit of a tilt (not easy, but possible to do on an old machine) this nearly 30-POUND hulk would start shaking, and could easily walk itself off a table if you weren't paying attention. Remarkably, despite containing a precision motor, not to mention a frigging _laser_, it kept running even after hitting the floor from a height of a few inches. This thing was a tank.
i have this player too. the whole thing about the reversed disc labels was actually deliberate and very simple. the PR-7820 has the laser sitting ABOVE the disc, unlike every other LD player. it's also the machine that most early industrial titles were designed to be played on. therefore, for those discs, the label is on the same side. all other discs have the label on the opposite side, because they're not specifically designed for the 7820. that's all it is. LD's with labels on the "wrong" side are meant to be played specifically on this machine, just as he says in the video.
Yep. Been binge watching Technology Connections lately. These old formats fascinate me. I just can’t get my mind around as to why RCA would continue to develop and release the notorious CED two years after this film was made. They really should’ve known better. If I was around back then and had to choose, Laserdisc would have been hard to resist. It just had more features and was more advanced compared to CED even though that was much cheaper.
The quality, for the age of the disc, is excellent. There is only occasional dot crawl, which is caused by artifacts on the disc substrate. I wish the dead sides of my discs had something useful like this. Some of them have test patterns for calibration, but mostly they say, "Please play other side". I like how he shows variable speed play and visible freeze frame. On the early players these features only worked on standard play discs (CAV), on long play discs (CLV), you would get gray or blue screens while pausing or scanning. Players sold in the very late 80's to early 90's had frame buffers for CLV discs that allowed these effects. Not as smooth, but it got the job done. I also like how they use the word Reject instead of Park, Open, Remove or even Eject. This was in deference to automatic turntables that played vinyl LPs. When a tone arm on a record player reached the end grooves of an LP, it would automatically be "rejected" by the album and park itself.
Honestly, ANYTHING from a consumer video format from 1978 in this quality, especially DiscoVision which suffered from very common laser rot, is a miracle. Also, I am honestly not surprised that this was slipped to side 2 of "Chef", knowing MCA and their bad reputation with LDs.
The dot-crawl is more or less a problem with the fact laserdisc is a composite video format. Using a more modern digital TV with a 3d comb-filter gets rid of most of it. Most of the test patterns you see on dead-sides weren't for calibration...bur rather just to let you know there's nothing there. Each place that pressed discs had different ways of doingit. Pioneer discs had the turtle; most others had pretty generic looking text. The blue-screen on CLV discs wasn't limited to just early players. Basically, a CAV disc contains two video fields each rotation; so all a player is doing when paused is displaying those two fields...on a CRT you get a frame...an LCD will give you god knows what. CLV discs however stored multiple frames per rotation; and only players with digital frame buffers could display a low-resolution still-image when paused. The fact is, freeze frame and variable speed play were only features on CAV discs. It was up to the player to to do trick-play features on CLV. None of them really got it right; and CLV discs...while standard...were always somewhat inferior to collectors.
Windows OS You seem like a passionate laserdisc collector I'm only beginning collecting laserdiscs so far I've got spartacus 1985 on MCA Laservision and I'm thinking of getting more of them
This unit was built by Pioneer. It is so interesting that the disc moves and the the laser stays stationary. This is why you had to lock down the disc on the spindle.
I recall only seeing a Laser Disc in a elementary school history classroom in late 1998. It told me real fast the school I went too was a better off one.
I was just about to upload the digitized version of this, and can confirm, the original was labeled as a single side (IP-7009). However, I got out the isopropyl and discovered the dead side (roughly 2" wide band) is a service pre-release for the '80 Chevy Citation!
That's the general name given for any unused side of a laserdisc- the later discs had a message saying that there was nothing on that side, but the first DiscoVision discs had test pressings or whatever they had lying around slapped on, and they were coated with a substance to render them unplayable. However you can clean that off with alcohol- most of the time I've found sides of other movies and some General Motors discs.
I have the actual disc, but neither side will play on 2 different LD players. Side 2 just says "program material recorded on other side" and had the lacquar which I removed, and still nothing. So it has a dead side itself. Its actually weird as the outer half is mirrored unlike the recorded area
just realised that the laptop I'm using is running an operating system, holds lots of my stuff, plays this video, connects to the internet, can scrub through video fast and can search tons of files very quickly. this laptop is literally at least 8 times thinner than the player
The funny part of this instruction video is: it is on a disc that must be inserted first to watch the first section "how to use (the player)". :-D Nice remote however why can you use also a cable? Just to add features? Nice unit anyway, want one just for historical reasons.
The capable is probably for issues with the battery, range, or line of sight. These old remotes could be really finicky, some may have preferred not to bother and just wire it up
Lots of rubbing alcohol and lots of paper towels. There's a video on Oddity Archive showing how to do it. Anyone who has these discs should be obligated to see what's on the dead sides as it could be something rare like this.
I'm beginning to wonder if Parts 3 and 4 actually exist, I have never heard of any dead sides being that, and you would think if the entire 2 sided presentation existed it'd be posted somewhere somehow. Another thing.. How are you going to learn how to use the player if you have to play a disc to do it?
I worked at DiscoVision in Carson CA 1981 and we had more rejects than good pressings. quality control was difficult. We would actually play a clear disc directly from the mold presser and determine if the master was defective. from there the clear disc went to the metalizing dept to have the coating baked on. after that the two sides were glued together. another quality control check was done to view the finished disc. hundreds of rejected disc were discarded daily.
