So I go into a room that looks like it's been closed for quite some time at work

[Zell]

I work in IT at my university and we found this sitting below a large, crappy 90's CRT monitor:




Oh yes.  That is a working Pioneer CLD-V2600, manufactured sometime in the early 90's.  It also plays something called a "barcode CD."  NO idea what that is.  Originally cost about $800, and is now currently worth shit.  You can see how the university knows how to spend its money.

[murd0c]

The barcode scanner was used on PBS/educational docus to quickly jump to a certain part of the disc or video without having to fuck with menus, we had a couple of these in my middle school, I think they were used twice.

[RTF]

Oh wow!  I'd steal it.

Murd0c's right about the scanner, we had one in my 6th grade class.

[rbcp]

What were the advantages of laser disc over VHS?  Were there any at all, other than that the discs looked kind of awesome?  Did the discs do DVD-like things, such as commentary or extra features?

[murd0c]

Yeah, for audiophiles, they offered unparalleled sound quality at a time when the home theater market was just getting started. Besides the awesome sound most LaserDiscs had, you'd often get commentaries, chapter selection and other stupid special features that are fairly commonplace on DVDs now, but pretty much unheard of in the 80's and 90's.

Granted you had to flip the disc over halfway through the movie, and fuck all that noise. I don't want to have to get up 45 minutes through Land Before Time to switch to the other side. Especially if I just paid $700 for the player and $50 for the disc itself.

[jx]

Granted you had to flip the disc over halfway through the movie, and fuck all that noise. I don't want to have to get up 45 minutes through Land Before Time to switch to the other side. Especially if I just paid $700 for the player and $50 for the disc itself.

And they were 1the size of vinyl records. Maybe a bit bigger even.

[Zell]

Granted you had to flip the disc over halfway through the movie, and fuck all that noise. I don't want to have to get up 45 minutes through Land Before Time to switch to the other side. Especially if I just paid $700 for the player and $50 for the disc itself.

And they were 1the size of vinyl records. Maybe a bit bigger even.

Yup.  The smallest disc holder that you see in the tray in that picture is what holds CDs.  The huge ass one was just as big as a vinyl.