I asked a laserdisc repair expert about it and he said that this is an unknown problem that happens with certain players while playing CLV discs. There is no way to fix this problem unfortunately. The problem doesn't occur with CAV discs though.

I didn't notice the difference between CAV and CLV before, but you're absolutely correct. My Taxi Driver caps aren't as bad, being CAV sourced.

What's got me all in a tizzy now is what I'm going to with my projects sourced from laserdiscs that have CAV on the first disc and CLV on the second. (ie Criterion's Othello). The streaking gets way worse when the CLV sourced material pops up. I guess I'll just deal with it, or sell a kidney to buy yet another laserdisc player.

Thanks for the quick responses!

--bdev