Some weeks back, I embarked on the purchase of a laserdisc player. As many of you may know, laserdisc was the videophile format of choice in the 90s. DVDs score over laserdisc in several respects: the discs are smaller, have more room for extra features, more flexibility in terms of interactive things, better video & audio quality, and lower cost. But I bought one because I wanted to Star Wars trilogy in its original form, and George Lucas has made it clear that the movies will never be released in that form on DVD. So I now have an old Pioneer laserdisc player and all 3 movies (total of 9 discs). And it's cool.
But, there's no remote. You can put the disc in and take it out, start playing, fast forward, or rewind. No stop (you have to take the disc out), no chapter skips, no pause. Bummer.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, you will recall I got the Cyberhome 402 DVD player. The
fancy all-in-one remote that I got from Radio Shack did not have a code for it. But never fear, according to the manual, you can call them, they will take the model number of your equipment, and feed a new code for it into your remote via the earpiece of your telephone. I have to admit that I was mildly skeptical that this would work... but I called em up.... and it worked like a charm!! One of the neatest things I've seen for some time.
So, for the piece de resistance, I thanked the woman for her help with the DVD player and then I said.... I'd be really surprised if you have a code for a Pioneer laserdisc player.. but... could you look? She tapped on her computer for a bit, and then downloaded a second code for me. I was quite impressed.
Meanwhile, I'm planning to sit down tonight with a bag of popcon and roll Star Wars: Episode IV from the beginning.
03-07-2003, 10:36 AM
Linear Mode
