(1982-08-17) 1st CD Manufactured

[drh3b]

I don't know the first CD player I had other than it was the first affordable "name brand" that I recall being available. It was a Technics that looked something like this:

It suffered an ignominious fate, as it sat for years in my brothers system, unused, and when tried again was dead and got thrown out.
My first CD was probably Boston. Then, when the clubs started selling CDs at a reasonable price(generally about $8 on sale), I replaced all my LPs that I had bought the same way.
Both the CD player, and my first CDs were bought at a Best Buy that has been closed for decades.
I don't even know my history of CD players. Probably went through close to 10 of them, but I rip everything now. I do have an Oppo 203, but I never use it.

 

[kfbkfb]

http://www.blamld.com/DiscoVision/LaserMagic1998.htm^^^
David Paul Gregg, an "eclectic engineer" (his words), claims that he first conceived of the name and concept of video disc during his employment at Westrex corporation in the late 1950's.


I first read about Mr. Gregg and his contribution to the optical disc system in a monthly video magazine with an article about the newly introduced Pioneer CLD-900 LD (with CD format digital audio) and CD player.

I hadn't read about him in all of the reading I did about the MCA DiscoVision videodisc and the CD in the late 1970s

An instruction manual for setting up a videodisc factory said to manufacture them in a clean room environment, for some strange reason, MCA ignored this and made the videodiscs in an environment clean enough for vinyl records (and paid the price in defective discs).


Kirk Bayne

 

[Sonik Wiz]

http://www.blamld.com/DiscoVision/LaserMagic1998.htm^^^
David Paul Gregg, an "eclectic engineer" (his words), claims that he first conceived of the name and concept of video disc during his employment at Westrex corporation in the late 1950's.


I first read about Mr. Gregg and his contribution to the optical disc system in a monthly video magazine with an article about the newly introduced Pioneer CLD-900 LD (with CD format digital audio) and CD player.

I hadn't read about him in all of the reading I did about the MCA DiscoVision videodisc and the CD in the late 1970s

An instruction manual for setting up a videodisc factory said to manufacture them in a clean room environment, for some strange reason, MCA ignored this and made the videodiscs in an environment clean enough for vinyl records (and paid the price in defective discs).


Kirk Bayne

Many thanks Kirk. That was an excellent and detailed article. I certainly learned things I didn’t know before. The trials & tribulations of developing & getting this product is amazing.

Now most people I know give as much respect to the Laserdisc as to say, a steam powered automobile. But LD was indeed special with many innovations.

So even tho it’s already been mentioned, before Blu-ray, before DVD, before CD, there was Laserdisc. With all the pain & inspiration that went into it, the system was what made the following developments relatively speedy.

It was the first audio/video home entertainment to come to market with stereo audio from day one. Soon after it became the first to have a noise reduction encode/decode system using CX. Yup, it really needed it as the audio prior was just analog FM. It was first with excellent full frame stop motion instead of just single field, first with bookmarks/chapters, first home video with CD quality digital audio, first with AC-3 & DTS for video. Plus you could play your nifty DTS music CD’s right into the Millenium decoder using SPDIF.

It was the first to offer anamorphic wide screen images and I do note that only about a dozen were made. It was the first with high resolution video images at 1135 lines resolution and first with 3D video. The last two I witnessed myself on a visit to Disclord’s. The 3D images were pretty blinky if you moved your heads or eyes but still worked. The high res system was called MUSE, still analog video but compressed to fit into a conventional bandwidth. It required an outboard demodulator and I know that at least Sony made a widescreen CRT high res TV for this system. The MUSE players, even with out the extra demod box, are highly valued today as it used a shorter wavelength laser that is practically immune to disc rot.

Oh and due to the large size of the LD disc, it was prone to a bit of wobble. They worked around this by getting a correction signal to a piezoelectric modulator attached to laser, to counter effect this. CD’s & DVD’s did not need this because of the smaller size but when Blu-rays came out any disc flutter was disastrous for the much higher density data. So the LD tech was quickly adopted. I don’t know if it’s currently needed in newer players but still, the Laserdisc legacy is just amazing.

 

[soesbeout]

My first player was an inexpensive model made by some small company out of California called Vector Research lasted untill Pioneer came out with their universal player.

 

[atrocity]

Broadsword West German CD first.

Pre-emphasized!

 

[atrocity]

An instruction manual for setting up a videodisc factory said to manufacture them in a clean room environment, for some strange reason, MCA ignored this and made the videodiscs in an environment clean enough for vinyl records (and paid the price in defective discs).

The infamous Carson, California plant! I remember fans being unhappy with the announcement that Star Wars was coming to LD and would be manufactured there. Though my now nearly 40-year-old memory says that they used that as incentive to clean up their act (literally!) and "Made in USA" on a Laserdisc jacket ceased to be a warning label.

Though "Made in Japan" was also a warning label on...umm...ahem..."adult entertainment" because Japanese censorship laws applied even to LDs manufactured for export.

 

[kfbkfb]

I preordered my Star Wars LD in the summer of 1982 - it arrived 1982-09 - it's made in Japan.

I've had one CD fail - "laser rot" - it was made by MPO in France in 1985, my Magnavox player tried to smooth over the missing data but eventually begins muting periodically as this CD plays.


Kirk Bayne

 

[atrocity]

I preordered my Star Wars LD in the summer of 1982 - it arrived 1982-09 - it's made in Japan.

I wonder if I'm thinking about one of the sequels. Or if my memory is just a massive heap of garbage.

I've had one CD fail - "laser rot" - it was made by MPO in France in 1985, my Magnavox player tried to smooth over the missing data but eventually begins muting periodically as this CD plays.

I semi-recently ripped a friend's entire collection for him and found a surprising amount of pressed discs that had issues of one type or another. Not 10% or anything that outlandish, but out of about 1,600 discs there were at least two that simply couldn't be read at all, one of which would not even be recognized as a CD in any standalone player or computer drive. Several others could not be read error-free in any of the multiple drives I keep around here for that purpose. Unsurprisingly, CD-Rs were FAR less reliable.

The biggest surprise was an old pressing of the Risky Business soundtrack that was so rotted that you could see what appeared to be pinholes in the data...but which CueTools was able to repair after the rip to 100% accuracy.

Going back to Laserdisc rot, remember when 3M started manufacturing discs? For a time they were considered the best out there, so Criterion used them from the beginning...oops!

 

[JohnN]

Pre-emphasized!

I much prefer the remaster with bonus tracks. I still like the remaster after listening to the new book-set.


https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/thre...ast-west-german-cd.102493/page-2#post-2765835

 

[barfle]

I still have about 100 laser discs, although they’re a lousy way to watch movies these days, so I’m gradually replacing the movies with blu-rays. There are plenty of music performances that were either shot with TV cameras or just not re-released on higher res formats, and those I continue to treasure.

Digitizing thise discs is an option for me, but not at the top of my bucket list.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Digitizing thise discs is an option for me, but not at the top of my bucket list.

Out of interest... Does your LaserDisc player offer an S-Video output port?

 

[BrentAudi]

I still have about 100 laser discs, although they’re a lousy way to watch movies these days, so I’m gradually replacing the movies with blu-rays. There are plenty of music performances that were either shot with TV cameras or just not re-released on higher res formats, and those I continue to treasure.

Digitizing thise discs is an option for me, but not at the top of my bucket list.

There is a good bit that was put on Laser Disc that was never on DVD, HD Disc or Blu Ray. If you have a HMDI Out DVD recorder that has an S Input, you can do out from your Laser Disc player to the Recorder and your Laser Disc Playback will be bumped up to 1080. It is not too bad if you have movies that you watch but don't have on any other format.

 

[barfle]

Out of interest... Does your LaserDisc player offer an S-Video output port?

No, it does not.

If youndon’t already know, S-video on a laser disc is pretty silly. The whole idea of S-video is to keep the luminance and chrominance signals separate throughout the signal chain so they don’t have to be filtered away from each other, and the signal on a laser disc is specified to be a composite signal, already combined. That means the only thing that happens in a laser disc player is that the filter is moved to the player from the TV.

 

[barfle]

There is a good bit that was put on Laser Disc that was never on DVD, HD Disc or Blu Ray. If you have a HMDI Out DVD recorder that has an S Input, you can do out from your Laser Disc player to the Recorder and your Laser Disc Playback will be bumped up to 1080. It is not too bad if you have movies that you watch but don't have on any other format.

I have a converter that plugs into USB. It has S-video inputs that I used when digitizing my S-VHS collection. My Oppo 105 can upscale that signal, and although that’s an improvement, it’s still not HD.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

No, it does not.

If youndon’t already know, S-video on a laser disc is pretty silly. The whole idea of S-video is to keep the luminance and chrominance signals separate throughout the signal chain so they don’t have to be filtered away from each other, and the signal on a laser disc is specified to be a composite signal, already combined. That means the only thing that happens in a laser disc player is that the filter is moved to the player from the TV.

My DVL-700 has S Video out as well as composite. In early days of owning it it was noticeably (just barely) superior to the chroma filter in my TV. Then as my display devices got better it made no improvement.

I have a front projector & 8' screen. Up scaling to 1080 & filling the screen actually increases the softness of the LD video. I have multiple display ratios & the one one that works best for this is 16:9 but with a funny symbol in front of it like $16:9. I've captured many LD's to DVD & this setting displays with out up scaling at 720x480. My screen is big enough it's still a decent size but looks as crisp as the LD can be.

 

[barfle]

My DVL-700 has S Video out as well as composite. In early days of owning it it was noticeably (just barely) superior to the chroma filter in my TV. Then as my display devices got better it made no improvement.

I have a front projector & 8' screen. Up scaling to 1080 & filling the screen actually increases the softness of the LD video. I have multiple display ratios & the one one that works best for this is 16:9 but with a funny symbol in front of it like $16:9. I've captured many LD's to DVD & this setting displays with out up scaling at 720x480. My screen is big enough it's still a decent size but looks as crisp as the LD can be.

Shortly after I got my first LD player, I also bought a Sony monitor/receiver (CVM2150, if memory serves), and built a passive video,switch to mimic my audio switching capabilities, which kept getting klugier as time went on. So I was doing baseband video from a Laser disc and my Panasonic stereo VCR in 1978 - my first home theater!

LD was as good as you could get in those days, and I tended to obsessively collect even mediocre movies. My LD player is one of the many pieces of gear I own that needs “attention.” I believe it’s just the switch that senses when the drawer is closed, but I have to open it up to find out for sure and hopefully fix it. Once it’s back in action, it’ll be connected through one of the composite inputs on my Marantz pre-pro, so there won’t be any upscaling unless I actually get around to digitizing them and burning DVDs. I’ll have to get pretty well caught up on about 40 years of other projects, though, and at 75, I doubt if I’ll get to that.

My display is a 60” 3D Samsung, and it’s staying until I find a 4K/3D screen at a time when my budget can take it.

 

[gene_stl]

barfle said

it’s staying until I find a 4K/3D screen at a time when my budget can take it.

Have they started building 3D screens again??? If so I am happy to hear it. I have a 46 inch samsung that can do 3D and I saw a while back where a particular model was said to be "the last 3D screen sold at retail"

 

[atrocity]

My DVL-700 has S Video out as well as composite. In early days of owning it it was noticeably (just barely) superior to the chroma filter in my TV. Then as my display devices got better it made no improvement.

I'm not sure if either are still working, but I have a Panasonic LD player and a Pioneer. Both have S-Video out, but it looks terrible from the Panasonic and indistinguishable from the composite on the Pioneer.

 

[barfle]

barfle said

Have they started building 3D screens again??? If so I am happy to hear it. I have a 46 inch samsung that can do 3D and I saw a while back where a particular model was said to be "the last 3D screen sold at retail"

As far as I know, they are not, at least in any configuration a mere mortal could afford. So I put up with streaky blacks, and hope nothing happens to my screen.

I’ve read about some 4K projectors that have 3D, but I’m not in the market for a projector, at least not yet. And I can’t afford those, either.

 

[gene_stl]

My samsung has one partial line through the lower half of the screen. Inoffensive enough that it doesn't make me replace it.
Though the OLEDs I see at Costco look pretty appealing.