Israel LaserDisc

The Israeli Scene | Why This Site Was Made

Israel is a unique country when buying a Home Theater system / LaserDisc player.

Video Standards
The official video standard is PAL. All of the television and cable broadcasts are in the PAL standard. All the video cassettes for rental are PAL. All of the VCRs are PAL (or multi-system). All of the televisions are PAL (or multi-system).
Almost all of the laserdisc players and movies in Israel are NTSC.
This means that you need a multi-system TV or NTSC->PAL converter (which degrades the picture quality) in order to view laserdiscs.

Audio Equipment
Home theater systems and LaserDisc players are still uncommon in Israel. Many people don't really know what Dolby Pro-logic or Dolby Digital (also known as AC-3) mean. Almost all major home electronic stores sell receivers with Dolby Pro-logic, but if you want a receiver with Dolby Digital or a good LaserDisc player you usually have to go to a High-end stereo store or one that specializes in Home Theater.

Audio signals: Television / Cable / Video Cassette Rentals
In Israel most of the audio signals from television and cable are mono. All of the video rentals are mono (with the exception some videos that do not have hebrew subtitles). The main exceptions are the cable channels who's audio is broadcast via radio if you connect your tuner / receiver to the cable connection. The cable wall outlets have 2 connections in Israel. One for the cable decoder and one that you can connect to the antenna connection of a tuner. When I watch MTV and VH-1 I hear the audio via the tuner. Most videos are in stereo and some commercials (especially ones for movies) are in Dolby Pro-Logic.
Video cassettes for sale usually have their original audio encoding scheme if they do not have hebrew subtitles.
All this means that laserdiscs are one of the main sources in Israel for viewing movies with any surround encoding scheme.

Update : (thanks to Danny from Herzliya)
"I'm from herzliya, "Arozi Zhav" cables is broadcasting in herzliya. they broadcast mtv, vh1, channel 8 and movie channel in NICAM stero encoding that enables me to hear stero thru my TV & VCR (i have nicam decoder) without using a FM tuner."

DVD
At the moment (Nov. 1997) DVD barely exists in Israel. I have yet to see any store that rents or sells DVD movies in normal quantities (more than 10). I do not know anyone that has a DVD player. I think it will be quite a while until DVD becomes widely available in Israel.

Why This Site Was Made

In September 1997 I decided it was time I got a new stereo system. At the time I had no intention of getting a Home Theater system or LaserDisc player and I had never heard of Dolby Pro-logic or AC-3. I walked into a stereo store that specializes in Home Theater. He showed me a few movie clips with Digital Dolby sound (on high end equipment off course).
It was then I knew I wanted a Home Theater system.
During the next few weeks I searched the Internet for all the information I could find on Home Theater equipment (and found lots of it). I also tried asking around at local stereo / home electronics stores but found out that most places are clueless when it comes to Home Theater. Additionally I found it hard even to find out what places carry laserdisc players or movies.
So i decided to make a Web site to help all Israeli's find stores that sell or rent laserdisc movies and buy/sell or trade their used equipment or movies.

At the moment (Nov 1997) I am still looking for a laserdisc player and multi-system television for myself (hint hint).

All the information on this site is true to the best of my knowledge. I am fairly new to this field myself and will gladly make any corrections needed to the information given here if you tell me what needs to be corrected.

Ophir