The Oily Maniac's Closet

OLD SCHOOL CRITERION BABY! or Quit your bitching about movies being too expensive. 

 19 years ago laserdiscs, especially Criterion releases, were fairly difficult to find in retail stores unless you lived in a major city. No internet stores yet, so you mostly likely paid full retail or maybe 10-20% off IF you got lucky. The CLV format allowed for 1 hour of play on each side of the disc. So a single  CLV disc had a total of 2 hours of video. If the movie was 100 minutes, you could only have 20 minutes of extras. The CAV format only provided 30 minutes per side but provided slightly better picture quality and the ability to advance one "frame" at a time. While there was still a time constraint, the upside was that Criterion could pack in lots of notes, posters and production stills that you could go through. No biggie, in this day and age, but back then it was amazing for a cinephile. Sadly, not everything Criterion released on laserdisc has been upgraded to DVD or Blu and some commentaries have been lost along the way.  Be thankful when you grab 5 Criterion blu-rays for $100 at the Barnes & Noble sale.....or have more than an hour of "extras"