no frills entry level Pioneer CLD S104 - got the floor model from United Audio Centers in 1995 for $150 :D 2 years before DVD came and made it extinct :D
no double-side, no AC-3, but for years i badly wanted a laserdisc :D my dad knew a few people that had one and it was just miles ahead of VHS. better quality, widescreen, no need to rewind, you can skip chapters. true, you cant record, but whats worth recording anyways ;)
bad timing? not really. On a CRT tv that didnt have component outputs and progressive scan, DVDs at the time didnt look that much better. only advantage was that dvds were a lot cheaper....and didnt rot ;P only bought a handful of discs and mostly rented.
man...those were the days.
although at the time I thought it made for a cool novelty, Laserdiscs should have been more popular than just a 1% market penetration. I think i read somewhere that most consumers of laserdiscs were people that used to have BETA and switched over when Beta went away. I guess the idea of home theatre was just ahead of its time. and now with flat-screens, 1080p, digital media, everything came into sync for DVD, then blu-ray adoption.