Quote Originally Posted by r3dline
I've thought about trying to find a decent laserdisc/dvd combo, or just a good laserdisc player alone. But I'm also on a budget.

Anyway, anybody know a decent laserdisc player for a good price? Also, when were some of the last movies to be released on laserdisc? Oh...and...how's the overall quality of laserdic, anyway, in comparison to say...dvd?
The demand's just not there anymore for Laserdisc players, that's why that Pioneer costs so much, because the economies of scale that lower production costs don't exist. Add to that a glut of unwanted machines and collectors dumping their disc collections, and you're left with a market where only people with a deeply vested interest in the format (like enthusiasts who had large disc collections that went into the thousands) will buy a new player. If you're new to the format, it makes no sense to dive in right now, unless there are a lot of titles unavailable on DVD that you'd like to get. If you're on a budget, it would make a lot more sense to go with a used player and hunt around for used titles. If you go to places that sell used videos, the Laserdiscs are blowing out for really cheap right now.This is like the situation with LPs around the late-80s and early-90s, except that unlike the vinyl format which continued to issue hundreds of titles every year, Laserdisc production has pretty much stopped, so it indeed is an orphaned format.

When I bought my DVD player three years ago, a couple of stores in my area still carried new release Laserdisc titles. But, they were also clearing out their remaining Laserdisc inventory to make room for more DVD racks.

The line resolution of DVD is higher than with Laserdisc, but that's not a guarantee of better picture quality. In general, DVD SHOULD look better than Laserdisc, but in practice it can vary from title to title. DVD is a compressed format and if not done correctly, digital artifacts like haloing or visible pixelation or overdone edge enhancements can show up. Another thing to keep in mind is that some early DVDs were transferred from the same masters used to produce Laserdiscs, so the end result was not all that different. However, the clearest advantage of DVD is when viewing on a widescreen 16:9 TV because almost all widescreen DVDs coming out nowadays are anamorphically enhanced, which gives you full resolution with a widescreen monitor.