I just bought a used LD player, and have a couple of problems:

1. Even though the discs are in mint condition, the video sharpness is equal to a 3-5 year old VHS tape. No speckling or noise or anything, but not sharp at all.

2. When connected to my stereo system, sound comes out the right speaker, but not the left one.

3. When I play Dolby Digital discs, static comes out the speaker instead of sound. I don't think it's laser-rot, because the video is otherwise normal, with no speckling.

The player is a 14-year old Pioneer Industrial LD-V4200. It's pretty banged up. Will cleaning the video/audio outputs solve my problems, or should I just get a better player?

Because there are several problems it sounds like a clunker. Video should be noticably better than VHS but just short of a non-anamorphic DVD. The sound should be equal to a prologic DVD and in many cases better because of the compression used in DVD.

Sadly, the remote on my Laserdisc player (Pioneer CLD-3070) has stopped working. I have heard it possibly might be the IR device on the player that receives the signals, and would be a simple fix. Does anyone know anything about this?

Regarding the video softness, as noted above you may just have a clunker in poor condition.

Regarding the audio problems, the machine you have was an older industrial unit designed for use in schools. It cannot play digital soundtracks, just analog. On discs with Dolby Digital encoding, the DD track is stored on the right analog channel in RF-modulated form. Your player is not capable of processing this signal, and so it is output as a high-pitched whine. You will only be able to listen to the audio on the left analog channel on such discs. In many cases, this will be a mono version of the soundtrack, but in some cases there will be an audio commentary there and you will not be able to listen to the movie's soundtrack at all (the movie soundtrack is stored on the two digital channels).

Long story short: You shouldn't have purchased this player and I hope you didn't pay much for it. If you have any interest at all in the format, you'll need to do some research and buy a new player.

There is a beginner's FAQ and some buying tips on my site at the link below.

Spot on Josh Z.

Yeah...it's an old industrial player, so it's probably been used hundreds of times in some classroom somewhere. Looks like I have to cough up the cash for a CLD player to get AC-3. Thanks for the info guys.

When FedEx brought it, the box had a huge dent on the corner, so that's probably what f**ked it up...