Starting their run at the height of Pioneer's LaserRot troubles, their entrance into the LaserDisc
manufacturing market was viewed as very promising. Greystoke suffered from some minor speckling which varied
from copy to copy, but the big problem was warping and the inability of the players (at the time) to deal the
variances in the warp. Alas, these would become the least of their troubles. By the end of 1985, Technidisc discs
were failing at an astronomical rate of near 100%. Troubles included horrific LaserRot where entire discs would
become unplayable, to actual disc separation. The plant closed its doors and all titles they produced went out
of print. This put Image Entertainment in the unusual position of deciding which titles would be continued in the
catalog by not repressing them at Pioneer - at the time, the only major facility in the US.
For a long period, it was thought all discs from the Technidisc I era had long been destroyed. Since all suffer from excessive speckling, I had thought most people would have junked these discs long ago. Some of these shining examples of "how not to make a LaserDisc" have started turning up on Ebay - only 16 years later. As you can see by the image above, these mint markings are quite different from those of the other Technidisc periods. This sample was taken from New World's "Fraternity Vacation".
By mid-1986, Technidisc had fully retooled their facility, and were pushing off test pressings of "Greystoke" on every Home Video label they could find. They claimed to have cleared up all their problems, converted to CAA encoding (in an vain effort to eliminate crosstalk) and were now poised to re-enter the LaserDisc replication market. Image Entertainment was the only distributor to bite. Having signed exclusive distributorships with Buena Vista
Distribution (responsible for the entire Walt Disney and Touchstone catalog), CBS/Fox Video (20th Century Fox Films
and a number of United Artists pictures) and to a lesser degree, TriStar Pictures, they were under increased pressure to produce all
these titles. Drawing from the Pioneer well for 100% of their replication needs was not going to be possible, not
only for for pressing time restrictions, but cost restrictions as well. Between Technidisc and
3M Manufacturing Image was able to reduce costs and avoid Pioneer completely.
Discs pressed in this period, which I (also lovingly) call Technidisc II, are represented by the two images to the left and right above. While they look somewhat different, the only real difference is the size of the inner band the numbers are written on. It is also possible for there to be no band at all (as on "Toto: Past to Present"), but the numbers used are always present on this series of discs. I have not fully determined the complete meanings of the numbers, except they obviously carry the date of mastering, something that Technidisc continued through the end of their production life. The samples used for these scans are Touchstone's "Good Morning, Vietnam" and CBS/Fox's "Broadcast News". Other titles pressed by Technidisc during this period included the Deluxe edition of "The Dark Crystal", "Suspect" and "Better Off Dead".
True to their word, Technidisc had managed to clean up their process. Discs stayed glued together, LaserRot had all but vanished and the warping problem was gone. However, the discs lacked a "professional look" to them. Labels were applied poorly, sometimes being so off center, they would cover the hole of the disc. While not entirely Technidisc's fault, the labels were often poorly reproduced and the inks could fade and run if not stored correctly. With us too was the ever present speckle problem. One would often go through several copies of a disc to find acceptable copies. I personally went through over 10 copies of "The Dark Crystal" before finding one good copies of all sides. The speckling and crosstalk problem became such a serious drawback to purchasers of discs, that once again, Technidisc was forced to shut down production. The plant went off-line in mid-1990.
In early 1991, Technidisc quietly reopened its plant, fully retooled (again) and now producing some really fine discs. This new variant (which I call Technidisc III - clever isn't it?). Early on, the pressings suffered
from high-frequency speckling, which varied from disc to disc and from title to title. Acceptable copies of all
discs could be found. Mint markings samples for Technidisc III, taken from Buena Vista's "Return of Jafar",
are shown here.
Technidisc also became conscience of the bad rap they had acquired over the course of the past 8 years of disc replication. As a result, they offered an option to not have the name Technidisc appear anywhere on the disc. This was evident on FoxVideo's release of Alien3, which included all the markings on these samples, but omitted the "TV" symbol and "Technidisc" which are present in the image on the left. The mint markings aside, Technidisc continued to suffer from generally poor replication. Most discs contain an excessive amount of single-line dropouts and all CLV/CAA sides suffer from excessive crosstalk on all laserdisc players. Regardless, they have been able to land some significant pressing contracts including the aforementioned Alien3 and Voyager's Criterion Collection edition of The Prince of Tides. The experience that Voyager had with the pressing of The Prince of Tides was so troublesome, they would refuse to repress the title at Technidisc and did not utilize them on any other title.
In August of 1996, Technidisc closed its doors. A loud cheer was heard on the otherwise quiet alt.video.laserdisc newsgroup. It is unclear why the company closed its doors, or if the closing is permanent. However, with this closing, several hundred titles from Image Entertainment are now out of print. While I don't expect a mad rush to purchase copies of "The Chase" or "Alien3", we may get lucky and finally get a good copy of "The Prince of Tides".