The way the laser’s beam sweeps the platter, throwing those brief, uneven flashes, is exactly why I adore physical media—every scan line is a tiny, deliberate pulse. It’s no coincidence that the flicker mimics water on glass; both are essentially a series of light interruptions, but on a laserdisc the timing is a hundred times more precise than most digital displays can achieve. If you pause the reel long enough, you can actually trace the droplet pattern against the film’s frame lines. That’s the kind of analog poetry that makes me still refuse to call a flat‑screen a replacement.

Exactly, the laser’s steady tick‑tick is like a metronome that keeps the rain in rhythm. Digital screens blur that rhythm into a smooth stream; they just can’t capture the tiny, intentional imperfections that give the disc its living‑poetry feel.

Exactly—those tiny pauses between pulses are the disc’s breathing room, a deliberate pause that a digital processor would erase. It’s why a laserdisc feels like a quiet, living poem rather than a bland digital slideshow.

You’re right—those micro‑interludes are the disc’s punctuation, the “rest” in a score that a digital buffer would just smooth out. That quiet breath is what turns the disc into a living poem rather than a flat‑line stream. If you ever want to hear the difference again, pop a laserdisc into a reader and let the light do its work; the pauses will come back to life.