Buckaroo Banzai

First: What Kind Of Player should I look for? I'm not really interested in spending more than 150 Canadian. (Or Roughly 100 American).

Second: I am not sure what versions of films to buy! I.E. CLV vs. CAV ?

Third: What are some good online places to buy New or Used Discs?

Fourth: Do LaserDiscs support Dolby Digital, with or without some kind of mod?

If you can help me with any of this info, or maybe interested in selling me your player or films, please respond.

Ian
I still love my DVD, I just have heard some very good things about Special Edition Laserdiscs.

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"How about I give you the finger....and you give me my phonecall."
Thomas A. Anderson

Blade

Buckaroo,

Once you've decided on a LD player, you might want to check the International forum for a good deal. You also might want to read up on the players reviewed at www.audioreview.com and check ebay for prices and availability.

CLV is not as good as CAV. It is cheaper though. CLV LDs are able to record about 1 hour per side of the disc. It doesn't support frame advance though (or at least not as smoothly as CAV does.) CAV has higher resolution, but at the cost of space, meaning you can only fit about 30 minutes of material per side of the LD. This also translates into more layer changes and disc swapping.

As for mods for DD, it depends on the player you get. Some players had modifications available so that they could be upgraded to DD. Some players are able to play DD out of the box. However, you're receiver or pre/pro has to either have an RF demodulator for the LD's DD signal or you have to purchase one seperately. (I think that's right. I'm sure someone else here can correct me.)

I'm going to move this to the DVD and Home Theater Hardware forum so you can get more (and hopefully better ) answers to the first part of your questions.

Moving thread.

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-David
Other forum

JimRochester

Buckaroo; you might need to spend a little more than $100 US but it will be worth it. Look up Patman. He is probably the most knowledgable about LD and he helped me in my quest. LD is fantastic, I frequently watch Star Wars, Men In Black, Sound of Music, Back to the Future,...well you get the picture. Just make sure the player does automatic side changes because it is one royal pain in the gluteous maximus. Like Blade mentioned some only have 30 minutes per side. My Jurassic Park sounds great but the 2+ hour movie is spread out over 5 sides of LD. Easy to see why LD never really dominated the way DVD is.

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Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
Jim's DVD Tracker list
But John, when Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.

Patman

Buckaroo, check here for a decent FAQ on LD and LD players.

If you have other questions on particular LD models, post here and I'll try and give you some advice/info on them.


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PatCave ;HT Pix ;Pat's DVDs

DivxGuy

Patman, can you tell me anything about the Pioneer CLD-D502? I bought one of these a couple of months ago, but the image quality was a disappointment. Would I be better off getting a newer player?

Thanks, RD

LtlPhysics

I have a Pioneer cld-703. It received rave reviews from the old Video mag and I was not
disappointed. It features adjustable video noise controls that really work and bests some of the Elite models that were more expensive and not necessarily any better.

It has all of the still and slow/fast speeds that you would expect on a $1220 machine. I paid $770 for mine. Your $100 price point is a little unrealistic.

It has a digital out for dts, it's successor, the cld-704 also has a rf out for the old Dolby ac-3.

If I had to do it all over again, I would do it all over again.

As far as cav and clv, that's a software element as all ld players will play both (to the best of knowledge). Less expensive ld players will probably have no circuits for slow/freeze/etc. effects from clv disks. Cav disks (constant angular velocity) spin at top speed and each revolution is a frame. Clv disks (constant linear velocity) spins at top speed for the first frame only and spins slower and slower as the disk is read from the inside of the disk to the larger outside, giving each frame the same length of disk distance.

Patman

Divxguy,

If you really care about video quality on a LD player, then I would steer you to the Pioneer models:

704 (the best bang fro the buck bargain of the bunch). If you have $400-$500 to spend, this is the one to get (if in nice condition).

Elite 79
Elite 99

Elite DVL91 or the DVL919 (both are combo DVD/LD players.

The 50x series just doesn't cut it on the video side. The 606 is okay, and so is the DVL909 (which I have). I sold off my 406 (so-so video, but had all the audio outputs I wanted).

There are other Japanese import models, but I won't go into them here since I don't have much more info than something like the HLD-X9 model which is supposed to truly kick some butt when it comes to LD video on NTSC displays.


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PatCave ;HT Pix ;Pat's DVDs


[This message has been edited by Patman (edited April 11, 2000).]