Pricing Help is Needed? Am I getting a good Deal? (1 Viewer)

[Keith Wagar]

Hi all,
I once again need your help. I have the chance to purchase a Kenwood LVD-820R Laser Disk Player. From the manual I downloaded from Kennwoodusa.com I noticed that it does indeed have an s-video out as well as Digital Optical Out.
Two Questions:
What should I ask the seller prior to purchasing this equipment?
AND
Is 50.00 US sound like a decent price for it. By the way it also includes a few movies like the Abyss and Star Trek etc..
Thanks,
Keith

 

[Tim Hoover]

Two basic things are:
1- Does it have auto-flip?
2- Will it pass a Dolby Digital bitstream? If it will, chances are it has an RF output for DD. You will need an RF demodulator to run this into the coax or Toslink DD inputs in your receiver. If you have an older DD receiver with RF input, you don't need the demodulator of course!
Overall, I'd say for $50, why not? Would you pay $50 for a used S-VHS VCR (roughly the equivalent)? I'd go for it, considering the abundance of cheap, cheap movies that are available for it.
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[Thomas_Berg]

I know this is a little off-topic, but why does everyone use laserdiscs? only thing i know about them are that they're about the size of vinyl and like a cd. is the quality really good or something?
just wondering...

 

[Ted Lee]

thomas - i'm no ht history expert, but here goes:
ld's were the de-facto for ht a few years ago. they were one of the first formats (actually, i think they were the first period?) to introduce digital quality picture and sound to consumers.
they had a few drawbacks, but i think they would still be around if it wasn't for the dvd. i think one of the major drawbacks was the fact that they were non-anamorphic, which was a big issue. it kind of limited their viability as tv technology increased, especially now, considering all the 16x9 tv sets that are available.
a lot of people still use them. my understanding is that you can often get ld imports with titles that aren't even available locally! phantom menace comes to mind (although it's just about to be released on dvd)
my uncle has a rather large ld collection...maybe i'll con him into turning it over to me.

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You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

 

[Mattias_ka]

Ted Lee:
Some of the things you said is wrong.
Ld have only analog picture. It have digital audio.
And Ld could have anamorphic, some titles was released in
16x9.
Cheers!
-Mattias-

 

[Ted Lee]

hi mattias -
are you sure about that?
doesn't a laser disc, by it's very nature mean it's a digital picture? it is being picked up by a laser beam, correct? binary? 0's and 1's?
also, i know many ld's were released in 16x9 letterbox (that was one of the great appeals of the format), but we're they anamorphic?
again, thanks for your comments.
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You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

 

[Craig Robertson]

Mattias is correct.

 

[Ted Lee]

i stand corrected!

thanks for clearing things up for me!

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You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.