Laserdisc was a video format that was quite big in Asia in the 1980/1990′s. It was never a hit in Europe, and in USA 2% (roughly two million units) of the households had a Laserdisc player. Here’s a few shots of one of my old Laserdiscs (Star Wars) that I took today.

The size of the Laserdisc cover is the same size as an old vinyl LP. I put a bluray disc in the shot just for comparison.

You could unfold the cover and read interesting stuff about the movie.

And on the back cover you could find even more info.

The movie was recorded in an analog format and had higher resolution than the popular VHS format (roughly 420 lines compared to 240 lines).

The sound quality was very good, and in the 1990′s you could even get discs that featured Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

One problem with the large discs was that they couldn’t store much data. A typical movie was featured on 2 laserdiscs and even though some of the modern Laserdisc players could start playing the other side of the disc automatically, you still had to switch discs at some point.

Here’s a Laserdisc lying next to a bluray disc.

And here are the two Laserdiscs containing the original Star Wars movie.

More about Laserdisc [Wikipedia].