One of those would be great for a Trek marathon lol

so i've got a totally stupid question.

would you be better off buying 2-3 newer model players that will do dual side and have
them all setup to play a 2 disc film?

they might even give a better picture quality, right?

Lol, you could do that. My tv has 4 inputs, you could hook up 4 players and have them ready to go, that being said, if you had 4 of these you could play 8 sides

The LD-W1's video performance is the same as Pioneer's first Elite model, the LD-S1, compete with its analog video noise reduction system that could make the image look 'busy' in the areas of the picture that went from dark to light quickly... Like a strange busy noise in shadowed areas. It also made the image a tad softer than the prior players without any noise reduction like the CLD-900 and CLD-909, which was the last player not to have any form of video noise reduction. The picture takes on a slightly smudged look when compared to players without NR. It's a simple non switchable analog coring type of NR, so it doesn't suffer from digital artifacts, but isn't anywhere near as powerful either. And it doesn't do drop out compensation digitally. If you turn the digital memory switch on and off during a CAV still frame (it defaults to on when the player is turned on, giving you a half resolution field freeze on cAV discs) you'll see another slight softening from the 8-bit AD conversion, which was limited to a SN of 48db at that time. Time Base Correction is via CCD delay.

For a short time Pioneer also offered it as an industrial model in an off-white case. No S-Video or digital outputs were ever offered as sold from the factory. At the end of its run, it could be bought new for $375 from authorized dealers. A very cool and totally unique player.

My son has adopted it and I have figured I will keep it, unless someone offered me a bit for it, it is here to stay.

That is a seriously cool machine, liking the styling quite a bit. I looked up how the side changes work on youtube, really clever thing that. I'd love to have one but I'd hate to know what the shipping costs would be

It does weigh a lot. Probably UPS would be cheaper even with the added on whatever they do.

You can program the player to play the sides in a specific order. On a 3 side film, I will program A-B-D and then load the 2nd disc upside down. The transition from B to D is slightly faster than B to C because the laser pickup and motor assembly don't have to turn back over.