Okay. Tried another 2 other CAV discs. And the zigzag pattern was gone! Now, does this confirm that it's crosstalk and something fixable by adjusting the pots?

Is the improvement just on CAV discs? How about CLV and the blue screen; still have issues?

If everything is starting to seem better (please confirm with us), why even mess with the pot? That old saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Quite possibly, maybe this player was sitting for a very long time not being used and that caused maybe some excessive energy drain on some of the capacitors and the fact that you have been running it more than usual might be slowly restoring some of the energy in these caps (wishful thinking but I’ve seen stranger things before).

So at this point, I would play a wait and see game. No sense in risking more issues by jumping in before knowing what the true problem is.

I thought of that as well. I'm still seeing the vertical lines on blue screen and zigzag pattern on CLV. I wish I have the equipment and knowledge to fix the issue. I will give it a week and see if it'll improve. I'll keep you guys updated.

You could be jacking with the post to fix the player for 1 disc.
How many discs do you own?? It could be a faulty disc, have you read what and how crosstalk happens????

Some discs just have crosstalk and no amount of adjustment can fix it, or you can fix it for this disc but then no other discs will play correct on that player.

Sell the player before you jack it all up, I'll buy it, I've been looking for a 3080.

I have about 300 discs. So far I've tried about 20 CLVs and confirmed that those works just fine on my CLD-2090, DVL-909, and CLD-980.

I haven't touched anything yet. I'll give it a week and see.

Well, I guess I'm too impatient to wait for a week. I decided to open it up and adjusted a couple of pots. I took a photo of them before making changes. Voila! It worked! No more noise and crosstalk!
Thanks everyone who helped!

This solved it for the blue screen as well? If so, which pots did you adjust? Just curious in case this topic comes up again someday.

Blue screen lines remained. I adjusted VR302 (inside the shielded part of the HDTV board and VR103 Tilt Balance near the lens. I won't bother with the blue screen lines as all I care about is the issues when playing movies. Thanks again.

I'm having the same issue with a CLD-D502. Video during playback is fine, but the blue screen looks like the one in this post, if not worse. There is a very faint buzzing from the power supply (probably the cheap transformer), and the PCB around IC101 (MA2440 switching regulator) is quite dark.

Could the issue be coming from this nasty looking 1f 5.5v cap?

I replaced the supercapacitor. It did not resolve the issue, but this corrosion had to go either way. I have a full set of replacement caps for the power supply as well, so I am hoping that will resolve this.

All aluminum electrolytic capacitors on the power supply board have been replaced (and upgraded). The vertical lines remain, but at least the player has cleaner power now.

Does anyone know where the background "squelch" signal originates?

Squelch signals are sent to character generator IC405 PD0093A. On the 3080 it is IC501 MS0552-132SP.

I need to check the three electrolytic capacitors from IC405 to video out. There is one tied to IC405 and two in the video buffer.

I think I finally need to invest in an ESR meter.