The End of LaserDisc - A Picture A Day # 11

A Picture A Day 011 - Pioneer combo LaserDisc/5-disc CD changer.

I didn't know it, but Pioneer has still been making these things. They've announced that they will discontinue production very soon. I adopted this one from my dad.

Dad has always been a hi-fi kinda guy. He's had dozens of tuners, record changers, turntables, equalizers, and all sorts of other moderately high-end equipment over the years, much of it still around. He introduced my brother and I to the idea of home theater long before there was any such thing as multi-channel surround sound. I currently also use a pair of his very nice old Acoustic Research speakers (AR's) as the front right and left channels in my 5.1 system.

Once again, Dad is primarily responsible for my passion for home entertainment. It began with a Show-N-Tell, led to a nice portable stereo record changer with attached (removable) speakers, then to a marvelous tuner/amp with a flywheel tuner. I loved using that thing.

I'd spend hours and hours, all hours of the day, carefully trying to find and log every signal it could pick up, no matter how faint. I'd listen to each station at least long enough to get the call letters. This helped me build an appreciation for a very wide range of music and broadcast styles. There's no satisfaction to be found trying to do what I did using todays digital tuners. You can't find those faint distant signals hiding between frequencies. And all this auto-seek push-button nonsense... there's just no fun in it.