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I hate this thread. It makes me want to jump into rabbit holes like VHD and D-Theater.
you could always sell me one of the bastard children if they are all goodOriginally Posted by GohanX
I hate this thread. It makes me want to jump into rabbit holes like VHD and D-Theater.
It was a cheap slightly busted Panasonic LX-600. I always wanted to see how Panasonic compared to the Pioneer players.
Awww yeah! The Panasonic player came in, and just like the seller said it played side 1 fine but struggled when flipping to side 2. Sometimes it wouldn't load at all, sometimes it would load eventually but it took a good minute before it would start. I took the cover off and noticed what looked like powder on the upper laser rail, either dried grease or someone was doing lines off the player and some fell in. Cleaned it up, greased everything that moved (a good practice with any new player, grease doesn't last 25 years) and put in my test disc. It now works perfectly with very minimal work. Weeee! I think it might have annoyed the seller that I fixed it so easily, he probably thought something was actually broken in the player.
This is a nice player! I'd rank it second best out of everything I've tried. Higher end Pioneer players kinda have a digital look due to the video processing, while the lower end tend to be colorful and analog but have a lot of noise. This one is somewhere in the middle, strikes a nice balance.
Yay! Hardware issues!
Like most CD based devices, these things need to be opened up once in a while and have their moving parts greased. Also like old game systems, most of these are so old that they have no grease in them anymore. I've never done any maintenance to my CLD-D504, so I opened it up and gave it some good maintenance. Unfortunately, while I had it apart the B side flip stopped working. Fuck. Apparently that model has a cheap plastic part that is prone to breakage. It was probably already broken but the CD sled stayed together just enough to keep it working, with me having it apart it finished it off. Oy!
So I pulled down the CLD-S201, which (supposedly) is one of the worst players made. I was testing it a few days ago and it looks pretty good on movies, but looked awful in animation, all kinds of noise that's easy to see when there are solid colors. Turns out there are lots of little pots on the inside of the unit, all conveniently labeled on the motherboard, and after some adjustments the player looks fantastic. For what many consider to be one of the worst players ever made, it gives even my baller players a run for the money in video quality. Maybe tomorrow I'll dig into the Panasonic to see if I can find similar adjustments, if I can get the weird interference lines out of it the quality would be incredible.
Watching And Justice For All. I know this isn't the "optimal" way to be watching it- there's all kind of artifacting and it's pan and scan- but there's just something about watching these old movies on an old tv (currently my GXTV) that makes me more interested in watching them than streaming them or watching a blu ray.
Anyway, question for Gohan: I know you don't have one, but do you know how well the LaserActive stacks up in the hierarchy of LD players? Of course I wouldn't mind having a unit that doesn't require flips, but picture quality wise I don't know if I should search out another player or use this one. Or maybe because of "omg rare" I shouldn't use this one regardless.
You see my post above about the CLD-S201? It's almost identical to the LD guts in a Laseractive, it uses mostly the same parts. I would imagine the picture quality is probably identical. Which in the grand scheme of things means it's a pretty good player with no extra features. The S201 has some of the best colors of any LD player I've come across, the only thing keeping it from being a truly great player is the video noise, but as is it's still a fine player. I've been told it works great with video processors and HD sets that do a good job with composite video, but I've only hooked mine up to a SDTV.
If the GXTV has a sharpness control it can help to turn it down a bit to reduce video noise. I haven't seen one in person since way back in the day but I recall them having a pretty damn good image, LD would probably look great and the screen is small enough that you probably wouldn't even see the video noise.
Most consider it a lower grade player, but I'd take it over most of the 80's players. Most of the average LD players from the 90's aren't really better in visual quality, they just have added features like double side play and useless svideo outputs. You'd have to go up to the really good players like the CLD-D700 series or the Elites in the Pioneer line to get significantly better, or one of the two good Panasonic models.
Last edited by GohanX; 08 Sep 2017 at 04:56 PM.
what players do people use for back up purposes? I want to back up some weird stuff I have. I have the pc side covered from backing up vhs tapes. I just need a player.
Most people use whatever player they can find cheap. You mostly just want something with a clean composite video signal as your computer/capture card would be handling the comb filtering and upscaling. If you want to stay on the cheap end a good 80's player would be ideal. The CLD-D201 I mentioned above and the commercial V2600 have clean composite outs. If you want to ball hard the Panasonic LX 600 and 900 would be good.
is anything better than others at playing non mint disks? or powering through rot?
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