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Laserdisc didn't really take off until the late-80s. There were a lot of problems with early pressings, and for the first several years, they used the same pan-and-scan masters as videotape, with marginally better picture and sound quality. Sometimes they were worse, because they'd use time...

They were expensive, but not quite that expensive. I'd say the average price was in the $30-40 range, with some of the deluxe box sets going for well over $100. You were lucky to find a title priced under $25. By the early 90s, I think the players started around $400 and went upwards of $1500...

The cynical answer is that they're rushing to get them out now because it's dying.

I don't think that's an apt comparison, though. Aside from packaging, and arguably sound quality, laserdisc had no advantages over DVD. Pretty much everyone who bought or rented laserdiscs was perfectly happy to switch to DVD instead. You can't say the same about streaming. Even some of those...

I don't think it's dying, but it is shifting away from the mainstream into much more of a niche market. Same as laserdisc was.

I've found that I'm more interested in seeing something new and there just isn't that much stuff I want to rewatch, and most of it is favourites that I grew up with. I'm also lucky in that a lot of those films show up theatrically fairly regularly - in the last couple of months I've seen...

I don't think discs are going away anytime soon, but they're no longer the way the mainstream consumes media. They're a niche for film lovers and collectors - laserdisc v2. I certainly don't want physical media to die out. If there's a film that I really like and know I'll want to watch...

The problem with discussing streaming quality is that different people are seeing very different things depending on their connections and set ups. Having recently upgraded to fibre-optic gigabit internet, I can honestly say there's a barely perceptible difference between iTunes titles and...

It's odd that the writer picks True Lies as an example, as that's only available on disc as a non-anamorphic DVD, but pops up sometimes on movie channels in an HD version.

For what it's worth, I know a number of people in their thirties and younger who have no disc players of any kind - not blu-ray, not DVD, not even CD. And that includes people who work in the film and television industry.

Yeah, I don't understand why it has to be an either/or proposition.