So I'm walking through Best Buy and find a Laserdisc Player (1 Viewer)

[John Besse]

The wierdest thing happened to me today. I went to Best Buy to finally pick up my Jurassic Park 3 disc. For some odd stupid reason I decided to go take a look at the TVs and DVD players. And... There it was... A table filled with useless junk, such as old DVD Players in opened boxes, cables, a few floor model TVs and a big Pioneer white box with the words Laserdisc written down the side.
I stopped dead in my tracks. I stare at the box and say "No way that's a Laserdisc Player. I haven't seen a box like this in stores in about 4 years." So, I walk up an then say to my friend: "Dude, if that's really a Laserdisc Player... I'm gonna buy it!" The salesman turns around and says "Yep, that's a Laserdisc Player."
A big yellow price sticker right on the top of the box was stating $39.60. So, I tear open the box to see what model it was. It was an older Pioneer CLD-S201. No A-B side changing, no DTS or AC-3 outputs. But, for under $40! I just couldn't pass up a new toy.
Well, I paid the $39.60 and took it home. It actually powered up and works perfectly. Since my friend and I just bought a DVD Writer, and I put all my old LDs to DVD. I was thinking about canning my old CLD-D406. Now I have a great excuse to keep a LD Player just for the Star Wars THX discs! Wow... What a messed up thing to find at Best But.

 

[alan halvorson]

So, John - what DVD Writer did you get? I've been thinking about the same thing.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

LUCKY! If they have a second I'll throw in something extra for your trouble to ship it to me

 

[John Besse]

No extra Laserdisc Players at my Best Buy.

Got the Panasonic DMR-E20. Nice unit, but now I want to mess around with the Pioneer Elite.

 

[Kevin P]

I've had a CLD-S201 since 1993. It's a decent bare bones player, mine's been going on 8 years now without any problems, other than the fluorescent display getting dim to the point of being hard to read. But it still plays discs, on the infrequent occasion I actually use it.

I added a Precision Laserdisc AC-3 retrofit kit to it, that works great as well.

KJP

 

[Scott Strang]

Howdy John,

Please let us know how well the DVD-R's playback on other DVd players. Also how well does it record from an LD? How do you control the analog audio record level? Does it have firewire input/output?

I saw that model at Sears for $1K. I consider it to be a great value and will probably buy one later.

 

[John Besse]

No firewire input. Not too sure about audio control level, we've never needed to do anything with it. Other than that it does a great job backing up Laserdiscs. We ran S-Video from a DVL-919 LD/DVD combo Player. The only noticable thing is the DVDs come out a little bit soft in color. But, you'll only notice it in a direct A/B comparison. All our DVD-R back ups have worked on every player we tried. The rumor is as long as you have a 3rd generation DVD Player or newer you'll be fine. But they work on the Pioneer DVL-919, DV-525, DV-C503 and a Samsung Player (not sure of model).

 

[Philip Hamm]

John,

Does that machine record the PCM stereo audio digitally? Does it record the DD bitstream?

 

[bill lopez]

How about the side break of the laserdisc?

Do you notice it on the dvd copy you made?