Which is the better Laserdisc Player - Pioneer LD-707 or the Pioneer CLD-S201?

I'm going to guess the 707 was player from the mid (maybe late 1980's)  while the s201 was from the mid 90's.   From the information I can find and making a couple assumptions from the looks of the 707,  I'm going to bet the 201 has far more capabilities unless you have a very specific purpose in mind.   I'm not even sure the 707 would be able to handle many of the discs released in the 90's -- most 80's players had little of no ability to handle the digital audio tracks.  

 

Is the 707 a US player -- could it be a international or PAL only player?

According to this they were both from 1992 - http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/pioneer1.htm

Sorry the 707 date is not confirmed

It's so hard to say (I was hoping Kurtis Bahr might pick up this thread).   The LD series for the most part predates the CLD series except for a few industrial players and the venerable LD-S2 and LD-S9 level players.   LD-700 was released in 1983, LD-870 in 1989 -- just the general styling of the 707 front would make me think 80's, but certainly could be early 90's.     A picture of the back panel might yield a bit more information, but with so little information available on the 707, if I was forced to make a blind buy I'd go with the 201

I don't know anything about the 707, but my first LD player was the 201 and it's a solid unit.

 

 

Many people like the 201 because 1. It is newer and not likely to have dried or worn out parts. and 2. It was an entry-level player, and many like that because it had no "digital processing" or other "enhancements" that may have been "state-of-the-art" in the mid '90s, but are drawbacks today. To put it more simply, it pretty much gave you a pure analog signal for present day technology to work with. I'd say unless you plan on spending big $, stick with the 201.

I am not sure whether the LD-707 has digital audio.  It appears to be a variant of the LD-700 which did not.  This is, of course, very desirable, sometimes necessary, for playing discs released after 1990.

The fact that it does not play CDs might be considered an advantage, in regards to the LD clamping mechanism, but overall I would say that the mechanics & electronics both of the S201 are likely to be superior.

I'd bet that the LD-707 is a model from '85 or '86. The dates on the LD Archives are frequently wrong. I got my first LD player, an LD-838D, in '86 and I'm sure it's an '85 model. I told the Archives they had the LD-838D dated wrong but they have never corrected it. It's listed as 1988.

There's no doubt in my mind that a properly working 201 is gonna outperform the elder deck by 1-1.5 db on the video noise suppression based on the decks I had over the years.