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LaserDisc
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== Impact and decline == LaserDisc did not have high market penetration in North America due to the high cost of the players and discs (which were far more expensive than VHS players and tapes), and due to marketplace confusion<ref>{{cite book |last=Taylor |first=Jim |date=2006 |title=DVD Demystified |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ikxuL2aX9cAC&q=confusion+laserdisc+ced |publisher=[[McGraw Hill]] |isbn=9780071423984}}</ref> with the technologically inferior [[Capacitance Electronic Disc|CED]], which also went by the name [[Videodisc]]. While the format was not widely adopted by North American consumers, it was received well among [[videophile]]s due to the superior audio and video quality compared to [[VHS]] and [[Betamax]] tapes, thus finding a place in nearly one million American homes by the end of 1990.<ref name="Dick" /> The format was more popular in Japan than in North America because prices were kept low to ensure adoption, resulting in minimal price differences between VHS tapes and the higher quality LaserDiscs, which helped ensure that it quickly became the dominant consumer video format in Japan. [[Anime]] collectors in every country in which the LaserDisc format was released (which included both North America and Japan) also quickly became familiar with this format, and sought the higher video and sound quality of LaserDisc and the availability of numerous titles not available on VHS. (They were also encouraged by Pioneer's in-house production of anime which made titles specifically with the format in mind.) LaserDiscs were also popular alternatives to videocassettes among movie enthusiasts in the more affluent regions of South East Asia, such as Singapore,{{Citation needed|date=September 2021}} due to their high integration with the Japanese export market and the disc-based media's superior longevity compared to videocassette, especially in the humid conditions endemic to that area of the world. The format also became quite popular in Hong Kong during the 1990s before the introduction of [[Video CD|VCDs]] and DVD. While people rarely bought the discs (because each LaserDisc was priced around US$100), high rental activity helped the video rental business in the city grow larger than it had ever been previously. Due to integration with the Japanese export market, NTSC LaserDiscs were used in the Hong Kong market, in contrast to the PAL standard used for broadcast (this anomaly also exists for DVD). This created a market for multi-system TVs and multi-system VCRs which could display or play both PAL and NTSC materials in addition to SECAM materials (which were never popular in Hong Kong). Some LaserDisc players could convert NTSC signals to PAL during playback so that TVs used in Hong Kong could display the LaserDisc materials. Despite the relative popularity, manufacturers refused to market recordable LaserDisc devices on the consumer market, even though the competing [[Video cassette recorder|VCR]] devices could record onto cassette. This had a negative impact on sales worldwide. The inconvenient disc size, the high cost of both the players and the media and the inability to record onto the discs combined to take a serious toll on sales, and contributed to the format's poor adoption figures. Although the LaserDisc format was supplanted by DVD by the late 1990s, many LaserDisc titles are still highly coveted<ref>{{cite book| title= DVD Demystified | url= https://archive.org/details/dvddemystified00tayl_581 | url-access= limited |pages=[https://archive.org/details/dvddemystified00tayl_581/page/n122 3]β64| first1=Jim | last1=Taylor |first2=Mark R. |last2=Johnson |first3=Charles G. |last3=Crawford |date=2001 |publisher= McGraw Hill Professional | isbn=9780071423984}}</ref> by movie enthusiasts (for example, Disney's ''[[Song of the South]]'' which is unavailable in the US in any format, but was issued in Japan on LaserDisc.) This is largely because there are many films that are still only available on LaserDisc and many other LaserDisc releases contain supplementary material not available on subsequent DVD versions of those films. Until the end of 2001, many titles were released on VHS, LaserDisc, and DVD in Japan.
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