> as well as video > codecs capable of preserving the video output in a way that can be read, manipulated, > and displayed true to the original hardware.
As soon as you start talking about capturing video then you've failed. The video output of a laser disc player is generated by the player, using sub standard circuits which haven't gotten better with age. It may not affect arcade games, but it's possible for discs to have audio stored in multiple formats and capturing all of them when thinking about video capture is not going to be easy.
Capturing the signal from the disc, before it's been degraded by the laser disc player is the therefore the only practical solution. It's been proven to be possible, it is just going to take a while for the gears to get in motion.