Wazzles said:

So I'm just curious, is it really worth it to pay $5k for a Laserdisc player? How much more quality could you possibly pull out of a Laserdisc? Isn't it still going to top out at lower quality than DVD? I mean, Laserdisc is awesome, but not THAT awesome.

Not worth it to me, no. But everyone has their priorities (and budgets).

For Star Wars, the Laserdiscs would top out at less than DVD-quality, but remember that the DVD we're talking about (the GOUT) also tops out at less than DVD-quality, so it's closer than you'd think. And since the DVD has issues other than resolution where it's bested by some Laserdisc releases (DVNR, color accuracy, theatrical audio, uncompressed audio), a Star Wars fan could quite reasonably prefer a Laserdisc to that particular DVD, and sometimes you just have to have the best.

It's not really that Laserdisc is so awesome, so much as that Laserdisc was awesome for its time, and some DVDs are so bad that the Laserdiscs can still compare quite favorably to them. Kinda like when there's a Blu-ray release that's so bad people still prefer the DVD for that particular title. Doesn't happen a lot, but it happens. The GOUT is one of those releases that's so bad the previous generation media format is at least arguably better.

Also, for your amusement, look up MUSE Laserdiscs, which the $5K X0 can play, not that this applies to Star Wars.