LaserActive Preservation Project - Interesting Stuff
Apparently, some group has launched a website dedicated to capturing a ton of video footage from the LaserActive before they all break.
http://laseractive.wordpress.com
I guess they're serious. They might as well...the damn thing is never gonna get emulated. I always wanted one, but they're beyond my price range.
Thoughts?
MAME already has working laserdisc games.Originally Posted by vgmthebest
It can be done.
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Oh, it can. It just won't, not enough people care sadly.
Very interesting, LaserDiscs had to be made perfectly otherwise they would have premature bitrot. Still, a very interesting system.
LaserDiscs never had major market penetration. I think it's kind of a forgotten format, people remember VHS and even Betamax, but not LaserDisc. I've only ever seen one player, and I got it when I did. A LaserActive would be awesome to own...
Apparently they were kind of a big deal in Japan and Hong Kong. Guess they were cheaper there?
That's what you say now. But as long as these guys preserve the discs the right way, then there's a chance.Oh, it can. It just won't, not enough people care sadly.
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Let's hope they do. It looks like they're doing a decent job, they had their console refurbished and everything.
my player still works
If anybody wants to donate some discs for me to 'preserve' I'm all for it
.............
While the LaserActive wasn't that popular over here, LaserDiscs really don't seem to be that rare here. In fact, just last week I saw a LaserDisc player in a Goodwill, and pretty much every Goodwill has LaserDiscs. There is a used media store that has a section of LaserDiscs that they have carried ever since I remember them opening in around 2000.
Dan Loosen
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Yep, here in the United States while it was never a ubiquitous format, it did find it's way into an estimated two million homes. Sure, that's roughly only 2% of households even in early-1990s numbers, but it's still not that rare or unusual. I had a laserdisc player when I was a teenager and I still have several players as well hundreds of discs and I knew a couple of other friends who had either laserdisc or RCA CED in the mid to late 80s, so they were out there at least.
Is there any way you can attach a Laserdisc player to a computer, then copy the data to a hard drive? If not, were eventually gonna lose some games.
I think I read somewhere that there are a couple people that are really close to dumping the data from discs. Not there yet though.
Wasn't there a PAC for connecting to a PC or MAC. Are they hacking that?
I remember back when the Daphne emuilator came out, there were some LD players that had com ports or something on them that were compatible with the emu. Perhaps some of these players could facilitate this?
-Rob
The moral is, don't **** with Uncle Tim when he's been drinking!
No idea, but I doubt it. It's stupidly rare, nobody's ever seen it up for auction. Some even doubt that it was ever released.
Maybe it's possible to make your own board for the LaserActive to connect it to a PC. It would take some work, but I say it's possible.
On the other hand, anyone trying to connect a Halcyon to a PC?
That would be the only solution. Even if they did get the PC PAC hacked, you can't have two PACs in at the same time. The necessary game hardware would be missing, making it only useful for dumping disc contents.
And haha, I doubt that. People don't care about the Halcyon enough to even collect for it, let alone try to connect it to a PC. Although it is a pretty out-there system :P
I thought dumping the disc was the whole point. I don't think game data was included in the PAC, that's just the hardware to play it on.
Then yeah, it would probably be extremely beneficial in dumping the contents of the disc. From what I've heard, the people who are close to dumping discs are using a custom USB-to-Genesis Controller Port cord, so it'll only work for the Mega-LD titles unless a similar cord exists for the PC Engine. (Though, to be fair, the majority of the LaserActive's games were Mega LD).
This is a blurb I found about it:
Computer Interface PAC (PAC-PC1)This PAC has a 25-pin serial port allowing the CLD-A100 to be controlled by custom programs authored on PC or Macintosh computers. This PAC came with a 33-button infrared remote control providing more functionality than the 24-button remote included with the CLD-A100. Also included on DOS and Mac floppy disks was the LaserActive Program Editor. The floppy disks included some sample programs created with the editor for use with the first five LaserDiscs in the Tenchi Muyo! anime series.
It was likely only released in Japan (as the PC-1 designation indicates - the other six modules had a 1 for Japan (such as Pac N-1) or a 10 (such as Pac N-10) for the U.S.
I also found this for it:
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg27/...jpg&res=medium
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