OT: Laser Disk Players

farss wrote on 2/14/2006, 9:32 PM

I've been asked to transfer from laser disk to DVD but it seems that there might be a few traps in buying a laser disk player, I'm not certain if there was a model ever built that could play all format, something to do with the change form analogue to digital audio.

Bob.

Comments

jaegersing wrote on 2/14/2006, 9:47 PM

Hi Bob. The players I have seen can always play analogue and digital soundtracks. It was common on karaoke discs (which are still used here in Singapore) to have the version of the song with vocal on the analogue track, and the version without vocal on the digital track, and you could select on the player which track you wanted to listen to.

There are quite a few standards applicable to laserdisc, so the scientific thing to do is see what logos are printed on the disc sleeve. Then try to get a player that supports the same formats.

On the other hand, if you have a Cash Converters nearby, take the LD along and see if any of their sets can play it.

Richard Hunter

farss wrote on 2/14/2006, 10:19 PM

Thanks,
Seems there was some that'd play PAL and NTSC as well and I suspect these disks are NTSC having come from Taiwan. What I try to do when something like this comes along is use the first job to pay for the gear and then add that capablility to my list of Can Does.

Main reason I asked was I found a quite nice ex Demo Panasonic unit on eBay and managed to find an archived revue of it and the only downside was it'd only play the digital audio disks.

Not that I'd mind buying a couple of different machines if need be just that space is getting to be at a premium, the three Otari 5050s and a Revox already taking up room....

Bob.

Coursedesign wrote on 2/14/2006, 11:52 PM

I think the Pioneer CLD-97 was the best laser disk player of its time, perhaps the best ever. I had one of those and a CLD-95 before it, never saw a disk it couldn't play (out of a very large and eclectic collection of disks).

If you're buying an old player, the CLD-97 would be preferable, it had a more robust mechanism.

johnmeyer wrote on 2/15/2006, 12:13 AM

I have an older Pioneer (circa 1989). It does NOT output AC-3. That was the key thing that was added. It still plays "digital" audio as well as the analog track. You would want to make sure you get one that plays AC-3 (and DTS).

I don't know about PAL/NTSC.

Some of the fancier players had all sorts of fancy outputs. For the type of conversion you are doing, all you need is a composite output. I'm not even sure you get any benefit from using S-Video (this was explained to me ten years ago by another EE, and I don't remember the justification, but I've heard it a few times since -- may not be correct).

farss wrote on 2/15/2006, 3:17 AM

Thanks guys, yes the CLD-97 got favourable mention in the reviews I read as the best ever built, later models were always compared to it.
Bob.