In Digital Living

Format wars: The tech that should have won

Did you love Laserdisc? Were you bonkers over Betamax? Do you cry yourself to sleep because BeOS never hit the big time? Fret no more -- superdork Captain Tech is here to travel back in time and save the format losers that should have triumphed

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Laserdisc

What it was
Looking like a CD the size of a vinyl record, Laserdisc stored high-quality analogue video, with the potential for digital sound in the form of Dolby Digital or DTS.

Why it lost
Cost was the main factor here. While pre-recorded VHS tapes were as cheap as chips, Laserdiscs were $50 each. The hardware was also far more expensive and only available from a few companies. Having already beaten Betamax, VHS polished off Laserdisc.

Why it should have won
Laserdisc was light years ahead of its time, pre-dating even compact disc. It was initially called DiscoVision, a truly magnificent moniker. Pioneer launched its first player in 1978, but changed the name to Laser Videodisc and then later to just Laserdisc.

The picture quality was amazing for the time, offering 440 lines of picture information in PAL and 425 lines for NTSC. That made for a picture that was twice as good as VHS, and very nearly as good as DVD. Even better, because it was a disc, not a tape, accessing scenes was as easy as pressing a button on the remote. It's disciness also meant that Laserdisc didn't wear out over time, because there was no physical contact between the read head and the surface of the media.

Later on, there was the added bonus of digital surround sound, meaning that people could have a cinema-style experience in their own home, without the sticky floors and hooligan children throwing popcorn at them.

There are some people who feel that Star Wars got its best ever home-video release on Laserdisc, before Lucas started messing about with whether Han or Greedo shot first. Some sound enthusiasts claim that the DTS surround-sound track on Jurassic Park is better than the version on DVD.

Towards the end of Laserdisc's life, Pioneer even started producing players that would play both 12-inch laserdiscs and the comparatively tiny DVD format.

Our fantasy outcome
In a fit of 80s Material Girl pique, Captain Tech would banish pre-recorded VHS tapes and ensure that every home records on Betamax and watches movies from Laserdisc. Eventually, Laserdisc would be replaced by DVD, or even better, the market would skip DVD and move straight to a high-definition format.