My 900 lives in a spare room and is connected to my CRT so I guess I haven't really checked it against anything else.
That might be the reason you haven't noticed a cut off on the right side. CRT's will usually overscan so the cut off is hidden. I believe the advent of fixed pixel displays is what made it more obvious to owners of the LX-900 that there was a picture cut off issue.
There are plenty examples of the same disc w/ a different cover and retaining the same catalog number. Here are two more examples and they are documented twice on the database....
Into the Woods:
Into the Woods (1991) [ID8285MB] Into the Woods (1991) [ID8285MB]
Robocop:
Robocop (1987) [ID5168] Robocop (1987) [ID5168]
You can hit the "update" button on the existing disc and provide details of a different cover and also upload the image of the cover as well. Julien will know what to do with it.
Do you have another player you can test the disc on? If so and it doesn't play on that machine as well, there is a good chance the disc might be laser rotted.
Go get the other player but keep the 501 around as well.
Maybe you'll be able to find a good used laser pick-up from a parts player one day to repair it. Also, I always take a repair shop's diagnosis w/ a grain of salt in that they could still be wrong (you'd be surprised what some shops will say to avoid repairing a device).
But now he's asking questions, should have figured that out before he opened it :lol:
I took my car belt off what do I do next. :wtf: :lol: :wtf: :lol: :yawn: :yawn: :yawn: :yawn:
How do you expect anyone to familiarize themselves w/ how an LD player works if they never open it up? Regardless if the OP has no experience working on these machines, eventually he/she will have to open it for basis maintenance as one can't expect an extinct repair shop to help them out.
As for the OP, keep it simple when working on this machine since you are new to it. For cobwebs, just lift it out with your finger. For general dust, I would use a lint free cloth to wipe it away (never use cleaning chemicals) or just leave it as it won't harm the player. If the player is working fine @ the moment, no need to do more if it risks damaging the unit. Enjoy it for now and worry about real maintenance later.
In addition to what others have said, many films will have a combined open matte + pan & scan when a film was released for home video in the age of the CRT TV. T2 and Robocop are good examples of this. The only one movie I recall is a straight open matte from the widescreen is Rain Man and I literally went through the entire movie to check every scene. Regardless, I still prefer the widescreen because that is usually what the director intended for us to watch (but not always).
The fact that the player is capable of reading discs but just not playing them well, I would consider that the issue is probably dry capacitors in the power supply and/or system control section.
You can try and open up and see if you spot anything like popped caps, leakage on the caps, etc. If you don't see anything like that, it could still mean bad caps but you'll have to get an ESR meter to test them.
This is just my personal take but I don't think you have anything to worry about. Three years is not a long time.
However, if you are concerned, what I would do is power them up for a few minutes before trying to play a disc just to get the caps charged up from it's long shutdown.
The only thing I will say as I have unfortunately experienced a drive failure as well and lost all my data (fortunately nothing really critical that I can't rebuild), get a Network Attached Storage (NAS) unit with at least two drive bays.
That's what I did and it has been great so far. If I lose a drive, I can just get a replacement and the remaining good drive will re-populate it. I especially needed to do this since I'm taking so many pics of my new son and wanted to minimize the chance of losing them as I offloaded them from my phone. I will eventually upgrade to a four bay NAS for greater redundancy but this two bay model is sufficient @ the moment.
It's probably not a battery contact issue. However, if you want to still try, use vinegar dipped on a swab on the contacts.
The most likely cause is one of two issues. One, you have dirty contacts on the keypad and in order to fix it you'll have to open up the remote and clean out the gunk. You can clean the plastic and rubber parts w/ water after you remove the board and then gently go over the board w/ a small amount of water on a swab. Two, you have a circuit board suffering an early form of oxidation on the copper traces and if that is the case you really can't fix that. Here is an example of what that looks like....
https://i.vgy.me/hjNWlf.jpg
I'm leaning toward the first issue which is a good thing if that is the case.
Not sure what I'm supposed to see as crosstalk in the provided images. I think they look fine but maybe I need a comparison w/ an image from a Pioneer player showing how much better it's supposed to look.
The CLD-737 appears to be the Japanese market equivalent of the CLD-D701.
You can look up that manual but remember the difference is going to be the power supply (100volt vs 120v).
In any case, a power supply issue is sometimes the best case senario in respect to repairing anything. As Julian said, it does sound like bad caps so the first thing you can do is look @ the power supply and see if you can find any leaking or bulging caps just to get a quick evaluation of the issue. Replacing them is fairly simple if you are well acquainted to using a soldering iron and know how to read the values on the caps.
The extended edition on Criterion was supposed to be the original cut but the MPAA slapped an x-rating on it until it was re-edited. The funny thing (as many have commented on before) is that the edit that we ended up seeing in theaters makes the film more serious when it was really meant to be more a satire. I kind of like it as a serious film (shorter cut) because I feel it does make those dramatic scenes more meaningful to the plight of our protagonist.
You’ll have do a separate search on each model to see which one’s come with an optical and/or coaxial digital output (some don’t come with any digital outputs so you would be stuck using the AV Receiver as is with your speakers plugged into it).
For “Processors” that have an optical output, the models to search for are…..
Sony, SDP-E800 Sony, SDP-EP9ES Denon, AVD-2000
Keep a search for these on eBay and every so often you might see one listed for a good price.
Every player @ this point is a ticking time bomb so you just have to deal with it as it comes up. For the most part, the S104 should be fine as long as you don't do anything like drop it. Also, the most common issue on the majority of players is a stretched loading belt which will cause erratic tray loading movement (will auto close when trying to open it) and poor clamping (disc goes in but refuses to spin up; mostly on LD but fine w/ CD).
Jeez, I guess I'll forget about the whole ordeal then. Just very irritating, the whole thing overall, at how many other systems you need to hook up to this to get the "full" benefit. And also the people on ebay that want insane prices for older tech that's older than me....rant over.
Funny how it seems everyone new to the hobby has these high expectations and no patience when they want something. Key words I tell everyone, "be patient". Based on what I said in my 2nd post, I thought I painted a picture of doing just that but maybe I wasn't clear enough (so my bad).
Anyway, let's talk about this again. It can take months or even a year to track down the processors that I have mentioned especially if you want to get it @ a good price. Even in the last year searching on ebay, craigslist and used AV shops, I have seen them come up and disappear just as fast. Depending on the seller, many don't even know the value of the item so there is your chance to get it for a good price.
If you go the AV Receiver route, I still see a lot more variety in used AV stores and the prices are very reasonable.
Just do your homework, keep your expectations in check, and you never know what you might find.
There is a good chance the empty pad for the optical out on the 505 has all the needed resistors, capacitors, etc. running from there to the DSP chip but the only way to know is to pull the board to see if everything is connected.
On the 504, it was found to be all intact so adding it was just as simple as soldering in an optical output jack. On the 503, that was not the case so it was a lot more work to deal with.
I have a lead on an LX-900U too though that would touch all my boxes after doing the ac-3 mod.
I would probably try and skip out on the LX-900 and instead find its sister model the Quasar, LD-700. The 900 has a known issue w/ the right side of the picture being cut off a tad bit due to the way the digital memory was implemented on it. The later LD-700 is basically a clone of the LX-900 but because it was released later it had all those bugs resolved on it.
Look for broken pins on your M-Holder that holds the smaller gears. That is essentially the issue as the pins don’t hold the gears in their proper position and can’t move the pick-up assembly.
If the pins of the M-Holder don’t hold the gears in place because they have broken off, then the gears are just floating around loosely and not able to get their teeth to intertwine with the other gears. If you think of it that way, of course you can still move the pick-up around since they are turning loosely all over the place.
I think you are assuming the gears are busted or jammed which in some cases could lock something down like a pick-up assembly on a track. However, this is not it.
Just take a close look at your M-Holder and look for those small gears and look closely at the pins holding them in place. If you can nudge those pins freely with the gear, they are broken.
Both players are essentially the same with the exception of the 680 having an AC3-RF output added for Dolby Digital. Thus, you can use either for parts.
However, before you do it, just open it up and see what you can find. It might be something as simple as a stretched belt or dried lubrication which is the problem of many LD players after two plus decades of use.
Thanks list