Need some advice on which LD player to choose from my shortlist.

Hello everyone,

I'm in the process of acquiring gear to work on a few preservation/transfer projects (I'll post more details on them when they're closer to completion). One of the items I'll need is an LD player to transfer my source material. I've searched through the forums and read the suggestions by Moth£r, Laserman and others not to bother with PAL machines or consumer units. The Pioneer Elite range are out of my budget, but I've seen the industrial models and some seemingly high-end players going relatively cheaply.

Below is a shortlist of contenders, if anyone can give recommendations on which ones would give good results or to avoid, I'd really appreciate it as I'm itching to get moving with some projects.

*drum roll* DVL 919, 909, LDV4400, D925, CLD2950.

Cheers!

Jay

Hi Jay,

From my limited research I can tell you the following:

DVL 909/919 - combo LD + DVD players - these players compromise on LD playback quality. I understand they are not recommended for LD transfer as there are many other players out there that beat them picture quality wise for less money. The reviews for these players are here.  At the bottom of the page they state that the 919 is better than the 909.

LDV4400 - NTSC only industrial player.  No idea if this is a good player or not, but it should have good picture quality being an industrial deck.  LDV800/8000 would be better and those go for as little as $20 USD on ebay.  What a bargain!

D925 - Full featured PAL/NTSC deck - suffers from a pretty average comb filter which can't be bypassed.

2950 - supposedly marginaly better picture quality than D925, but missing AC-3 playback capabilities.  AC3 can be retro fitted though.

Are you wanting to transfer PAL or NTSC or both?  The reason I ask is because you mentioned the LDV4400.  If you are after the best NTSC picture from an industrial deck, then Laserman mentioned the V800/V8000 players as being very good. Actually, I think he said they gave a better quality picture than any of the USA consumer level decks including the Elite range (could be wrong on that though).

If you are after the best PAL player which also has NTSC capabilities, then have you consdered the V4300D or V2300D? These decks are supposed to be better than those other consumer level decks for PAL. I have a v4300D, but I'm not sure if it's working properly so can't comment on picture quality unfortunately. These players seem to be hard to find and can be fairly costly depending on the seller.

Hope this helps.

That's a cool looking player.  How does the picture quality compare the to 4400?

Thanks very much for the suggestions and advice :)

I'm in the UK, so a PAL machine would've made my life less complicated but I'm resourceful enough to be able to sort out a step-down converter and an NTSC compatible TV (if required). I'll only be transferring NTSC material so having PAL disc playback isn't really that important. I remember seeing the V4300D/V2300D players many moons ago at school and my local library, takes you back! Yeah, you're right - they're very hard to come by.

The lack of a digital audio output is a minor disappointment but I can live with that. It looks like the 4400 is going to be my choice machine and right now I'm trying to negotiate the shipping costs. I'll post back with details once the deal goes through. Thanks again.

Jay

Ok, update time...

I've managed to get hold of a fully working 4400 for about $39.00/£25.00. The shipping costs are a killer, but at least I was able to get what I wanted. As it goes I did find an 8000 but the seller wouldn't ship beyond the US, ah well - good outcome on the whole. Thanks again for the advice and I look forward to posting details of my projects very soon.

Jay

Good on ya Jay.  It sounds like you got a good deal and I'm sure the player will give you the best transfer out of the players you were interested in.

Hope it all works out well for you.

JayArgonaut said:

Hello everyone,

I'm in the process of acquiring gear to work on a few preservation/transfer projects (I'll post more details on them when they're closer to completion). One of the items I'll need is an LD player to transfer my source material. I've searched through the forums and read the suggestions by Moth£r, Laserman and others not to bother with PAL machines or consumer units. The Pioneer Elite range are out of my budget, but I've seen the industrial models and some seemingly high-end players going relatively cheaply.

This page may be of some help:

http://www.mindspring.com/~laserguru/askjosh.htm#hardware

Time for another update, my 4400 arrived and is fully working - you guys were definitely right about the build quality of industrial players, it's built like a tank! The picture quality is superb and hats off to you all who replied for helping me make the right choice. Some scenes suffer from slight ghosting, but from what I've read on the video forums it's a problem (or trait) with all Pioneer models to a greater or lesser extent and I can live with it. 

I've also picked up a D925, from which I can rip the digital audio output straight into my computer and of course it also means the option is there to get the AC-3 too. The only downside is to the LD collecting is that out of the 15 titles I've bought so far, virtually every disc seems to have some presence of laser rot. Even the more recent discs made as recently as the late 1990s and 2000. This is where the PR-8210 SilverWook recommended would've come in handy, but I couldn't find any sellers who'd ship to the UK!

All in all though, I'm happy that I managed to get what I wanted and look forward to sharing my projects with you once they're ready.

Jay

Hey, that is good news.  Good on ya Jay, I'm sure you made the right choice mate :o)

Just as a matter of interest, how does the picture compare to the D925 for NTSC discs?  What titles are you planning on doing transfers for?

That's a good question Womble, over the weekend I'll sit down and make a comparison by watching the same NTSC discs on both. Really I need to hurry up and rebuild my "A/V workstation" PC, then I could take some screengrabs and post them. In the meantime, slight differences include the D925 having a better laser (transport?) and perhaps error correction. This might be because the technology was made more recently.

I played a disc that has a big crack near the centre on both machines, the 4400 attempted and gave up whilst the D925 was able to cope, albeit with a distorted image. I only did this for a few seconds for fear of damaging both players. The 4400 appears during some scenes to have more ghosting, but again I'll sort out some grabs for you to check out soon.

Transfers? Well, they'd have to include Star Wars, wouldn't they? :)

The U.S CBS/Fox 1989/1990 LD's, I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this but the 1990 ROTJ (which of course is a re-package of the 1986 JPN release) has the full dialogue of Lando in the Falcon which is missing from all the other pre SE releases.

The Phantom Menace JPN LD (tried to locate the theatrical cut at various places online and the best I ever found was a VHS rip with static on the audio and elements of "Macrovision resistance").

PAL SW OT 1997 SE LD box set, which will include all the extras (obviously I'll be using the D925 for this job and will try to get the best results I can).

Criterion editions of Menace II Society and Dead Presidents. The new director's cut of Menace on DVD & Blu-Ray doesn't have even half the extras present on the Criterion LD and the commentaries are different too.

Pioneer WS SE version of Basic Instinct - according to this review the LD's director's commentary and extras are superior to those on the unrated DVD.

There's a few others I'm looking into but I think this lot is more than enough for me to be getting on with for the meantime :)

JayArgonaut said:

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this but the 1990 ROTJ (which of course is a re-package of the 1986 JPN release) has the full dialogue of Lando in the Falcon which is missing from all the other pre SE releases.

JayArgonaut said:

The Phantom Menace JPN LD (tried to locate the theatrical cut at various places online and the best I ever found was a VHS rip with static on the audio and elements of "Macrovision resistance").

Moth3r said:

 

JayArgonaut said:

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this but the 1990 ROTJ (which of course is a re-package of the 1986 JPN release) has the full dialogue of Lando in the Falcon which is missing from all the other pre SE releases.

Interesting discovery - what bits of dialogue are missing from the earlier LDs?

JayArgonaut said:

The Phantom Menace JPN LD (tried to locate the theatrical cut at various places online and the best I ever found was a VHS rip with static on the audio and elements of "Macrovision resistance").

You might want to look for Adywan's restoration of the theatrical cut, probably about the best you can get. http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-Phantom-Menace-Theatrical-Version-NTSC-DVD-ADYWAN-NOW-AVAILABLE/topic/10615/

 

Thanks for that, I've managed to find a torrent link and I'll see if it's still active :)

Regarding ROTJ, from what I've seen on my W/S THX 1995 PAL VHS release, during the Death Star battle, just before Han deceives the Imperial forces into opening the rear base doors, Lando says: "Now. C'mon Han old buddy, don't let me down".

According on imdb and here virtually all the other pre-SE home versions have the same line. However, the JPN and 1990 U.S LD contain the full scene (present in all versions from 97' onwards) of Lando adjusting a few controls and commenting: "We're sure in the middle of it now...", after which he then says "C'mon Han old buddy, don't let me down". I don't have access to the 1993 DC or Faces sets to check them (perhaps others who do, can?), but if I'm correct, the JPN and 1990 U.S releases would be the most complete OOT version of ROTJ available.

JayArgonaut said:

The U.S CBS/Fox 1989/1990 LD's, I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this but the 1990 ROTJ (which of course is a re-package of the 1986 JPN release) has the full dialogue of Lando in the Falcon which is missing from all the other pre SE releases.

Lando's line "We're sure in the middle of it now." is present in the GOUT Jedi audio mix, it's just mixed very low compared to other audio mixes so it can be easy to miss, the dialouge is even subtitled in the Gout.

Time to resurrect this thread from the dead. Apologies for such a massive delay in updating this, my studies, ill health and other issues have taken up my time. Ok, I'm already into producing a project - I'll create a separate thread to discuss that.

Here's a link to some screen caps of the 1990 ROTJ LD captured via S-Video from the Pioneer CLD-D925. I also made an attempt to capture the RCA composite output but for some reason the quality was so poor it was unusable.

After I've had some sleep I'll post some caps of the same LD on the Pioneer LD- V4400.

Ok, click here for screencaps of the CLD-D925.

Click here for screencaps of the LD-V4400. 

I would be very much interested in your observations, to me, the NTSC only LD-V4400 is the clear winner with a far less noisier video output. There's also a marked difference in the contrast and tones too.

Anyone else agree?