CompuServe Messages

If you're not familiar with laser discs then your statements have a nice ring, but the fact is that laserdiscs provide about 70% more scan lines of true video than the best VHS, effectively direct broadcast monitor quality video, as well as (in the best of them) true CD 44Khz sound. Laserdiscs sell to people who want to own and collect movies and musical performances, and this is a demanding audience. I seriously doubt that this audience would move down a notch in video or audio quality, which is what the system you describe would require, nor would the current tape audience switch to a new format that will give them little better than they have on their tapes. Even Super VHS never really took off. It is difficult to describe the laserdisc without showing it and listening to it. Laserdiscs not only have superb quality pictures and sound, but allow all sorts of image manipulation, carry both pure digital and analog tracks on which often different things are recorded (the director commenting on each scene, etc.) and additional material that is accessed in ways more common to what CD ROM can do and what Video for Windows and Quicktime only hope to someday come close to doing. To replace the laserdisc in the current market, you need more than a smaller disk; you need a better laserdisc.