alternatehistory.com

For those of you who don't know, Laserdisc was essentially the predecessor to the DVD. It was about the size of a vinyl record, and had quality better than VHS (not on par with what DVD could offer; however, most early DVD's were just ports of Laserdisc films, and so that quality was the quality of the Laserdisc if you've ever seen a DVD produced from early in the day), and also offered widescreen (a feature VHS almost never offered). There was also other unique features; for example, you could fast-forward through anything including the FBI warnings, and while there were no menus or special features (at least I don't think) the LP-like sleeve that held it could come with special things like booklets and so forth.

Laserdisc remained mostly a niche format with the masses using VHS. I myself never recall seeing a Laserdisc player growing up, and was unaware of the format until not many years ago relatively. However, I've heard it was huge in the Asian markets, and in some areas did manage to become more popular than VHS.

The challenge is to make Laserdisc overtake VHS in popularity.
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