I believe Laserman's on vacation for a bit, so I'll answer the easy things and he can fill in the gaps and make any corrections when he returns.

Does this also mean preserving the Prologic soundtrack in uncompressed PCM?

The X0 cap is to HuffYUV, so presumably the audio's in the raw AVI as PCM, yeah.

some faint haloing is still visible. The bottom picture is wider? One of them has been stretched, or squashed...?

The haloing is there in the source. I've got just about every SW LD known to man, and it's there on all of them. The width and stretching and squashing is all pretty immaterial -- that's what LanczosResize was made for.

If you going to mod a player for capturing the PAL discs, would it be possible to mod an NTSC unit (ie the X0)?

Already being discussed (by me, with Lman and MBJ, for example). If it's even possible (and it may not be), this would be mighty tricky for several reasons:

1) the player's not Laserman's -- it's "12,000 km away", I believe he posted
2) in order to do any mods, you need the service manual
3) I've never seen an X0 service manual, and believe me, I've looked
4) I suspect the X0 service manual would be in Japanese, because it was only ever a Japan-only player (lucky I lived in Japan, eh?)
5) even many people at Pioneer North America are unaware of the X0, so there's not a ton of help available, even from what is probably the largest NTSC-speaking branch of Pioneer outside Japan

I'm sure Laserman could (will?) add a few more trouble spots.

One thing I do notice is that Laserman's appeal for funding of this project (either in cash, or gifts-in-kind) has fallen on deaf ears -- at least in this thread. Seems to be a large population waiting to get their hands on an X0 cap, but a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way when some help is requested in return. I'm not blaming; I'm observing. I would estimate that those of you who don't own an LD player (let alone two or more, looking for a great one) or any LDs (let alone several, looking for the best ones) don't have much idea of how difficult, time consuming, and expensive assembling all these great source materials is. I'm on player number three, and have nine copies of the entire trilogy on LD -- that's about 60 LDs (or 120 sides) to cap. That's the result of scouring eBay and Yahoo Auctions in about four languages for almost two years, and figuring out ways to buy and ship stuff from five or six countries -- including from those xenophobes who are unwilling to ship something outside their own country's borders. (Incidentally, despite my living in Canada and speaking English, I've found US sellers are pretty much the worst in this regard.) So when Laserman asks me, "Can you cap this frame from PAL on a 925 so we can compare?", I can supply it. He could also ask for caps from any other SW LD, PAL or NTSC, and I could do it. But that facility hasn't come cheap or been easily won.

As I re-read this, it sounds vaguely rant-y. It shouldn't (except for the xenophobic American sellers part). I'm simply trying to point out what sort of investment and procurement gymnastics have to go on (and have gone on) in order for this project to get where it's going. That Laserman is willing to make the X0 cap available at all is sort of a surprise to me -- I think I'd be very tempted to hang onto it myself and let someone else who wants an X0 cap do it his or her damn self like I did.

Laserman isn't the only one who could do what he's doing. You could, too. Ah, ha-ha -- no arguments; I said, you could, too. The difference between Laserman and you is that he's doing it (and from scratch, no less) and you are not. There is more than enough info out there for you to do pretty much exactly what Laserman has done, and you even have an idea of what path to follow and what the results should be like (unlike some of the dead ends Laserman may have already faced; I know I've hit a few). If you're not really willing to attempt it yourself, then I ask why you think Laserman should supply his hard-earned results to you for free instead? A rhetorical question to chew on. "The phone lines are open; operators are standing by..."

Mmm... sleep. That's where I'm a Viking!