I remember Laserdiscs -- they were a predecessor to today's DVD (and pretty much fell out of fashion in the mid-90's, as DVD's were beginning to be accepted by consumers). Much like the way Blu-ray is on the rise, today...
For those who never experienced Laserdiscs, their main disadvantage was each large disc (about the size of a 12" pizza or vinyl album) could only hold 60 minutes of material and had to be "flipped over", like the old vinyl albums.