It is currently 19 Mar 2024, 12:13

All times are UTC [ DST ]


Search found 57 matches

Author Message

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 02 Feb 2018, 11:13 

Updated to "VAP", thanks!

That was totally stupid of me! Got confused between VAP and VAJ .

OK, got it right this time:

VAP is mostly Anime (7xxx-xx) stuff and music (VPLx-xxxxx)
Video Arts is mostly music (ref in VAL*-xxxx)

Now the split looks like this:

VAP = http://www.lddb.com/search.php?adv_search=*&studio=119
VA(J) = http://www.lddb.com/search.php?adv_search=*&studio=324

Julien

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 16 Mar 2018, 22:25 

If you watch all old movies on LD and only new ones on BR you’re missing out on a LOT. The fact that you even make that distinction on purpose makes me feel you put too much thought into this kind of thing. If you aren’t enjoying LD then please sell your stuff to someone local and move on.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 23 Mar 2018, 10:28 

For me, it has always been about collecting films (often very rare ones), not formats.

Nowadays I have films on the following formats:
DVD (ca. 3300)
VHS (ca. 720)
Video CD (ca. 550)
Blu-Ray (ca. 530)
Laserdisc (ca. 250)
Betamax (ca. 20)
Super-8 (ca. 20)
HD-DVD (16)
VHD Videodisc (ca. 15)

On EVERY of these formats, I own at least one film (in most cases, significantly more than one!) which can't be substituted in EQUAL (or better) quality on ANY of the other
formats.
That being said, there are always plenty of other reasons for a film collector to buy a film on an older format (open matte; minor differences of the print used, e.g. reel changes, print damage, different colour grading, whatever; great cover; sense of nostalgia; interest in older/other technologies; great players; etc.).

The fact that my home cinema set-up supports so many formats these days also gives me the opportunity to seek out each format's hidden treasures. Take the best of all worlds.
Of course it would be nice to have a Criterion blu-ray or even UHD blu-ray quality release of each and every film in my collection, but since this is without the shadow a doubt never ever going to happen, I don't need to ask myself why I'd still be in need of older technologies.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 28 May 2018, 08:20 

Ok...

As I mentioned in my previous post, here is the repair that I did on my SDP-E800's minor display issue (the missing "i" and "a" digit depending on the input selected). This repair will also fix any dimming issues as well (will have to solder more pins to the left and right of the one's I highlighted in the first picture).


After you remove the five screws holding the cover of unit in place, take a quick look @ the back of the display board and you will notice the row of pins I highlighted here....

https://vgy.me/fEGBey.jpg

Although every pin is not going to have weak joints, it's still a good idea to resolder all of them since one can make the case that if one already got weak the others stand a chance of going bad later as well.

Now, in order to make this fix easy, it's better to remove the display board from the facade so you can lie it down on a table for a more convenient angle to solder.

So the next step is as follows.....

https://vgy.me/LHmNIH.jpg

https://vgy.me/aFR40G.jpg

https://vgy.me/mMqMPP.jpg

Now with the board removed, you can see how the these pins connect to the display unit.

https://vgy.me/tHmsIA.jpg

Now it's time to solder and all you need to do is heat up each point and add a very tiny bit of solder (watch out and don't accidentally bridge one pin to another as you will damage the display when it gets powered back on; might want to ask someone with experience to help if need be).

https://vgy.me/sItSZ1.jpg

After getting all the pins soldered, it's a good idea to take a voltmeter, place it in "continuity mode" (it will beep on many voltmeters when the points are bridged by accident), and go down the entire row of pins w/ the probes touching the next adjacent pin. If these pins you test never set off a beep on the voltmeter, you're good to go with putting the unit back together.

https://vgy.me/OWkO4B.jpg

I ran my unit for over two hours after I was done and it's was perfect. No more disappearing digits. :thumbup:

Lastly... as a disclaimer, I don't hold any responsibility for damage to your unit if you try this on your own. It's still a risk if you don't have any experience w/ soldering irons and voltmeters so I do emphasize getting a friend to help who has some basic electronics knowledge.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

 Post subject: [LD-X1] Review
Posted: 27 Jun 2018, 10:04 

LD-X1 Review

https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=320x1024:format=jpg/path/sc418f3b0caa8fc1d/image/idf61dc1b3bb95a13/version/1530085877/image.jpg

It took me one month to get a prefect working LD-X1 and lot of money.
First, I did a bid on Yahoo for a superb version of the player : absolutly
no tears, no scratch. With the original box, remote control, and manual.
And the big, very big thing is the official RF-AC3 mod added by MSB. It
costed me 750 $.
The bad news were that image quality was far from perfect. Lot of artefacts
and waves.
One month after, I decided to call Pioneer to take care of my player. Today,
the King has returned ! it came back in perfect working condition ! It's third
time I use the service of Pioneer. I have to say that the technician I met each
time is really professionnal. We had some discussion about LD players, and
Pioneer great days (longtime ago...). It costed me 200 $ more for reparation.
Problems came from old condensators. He changed it. He also changed all the
grease, and belds. The player should work for years without problems now !

Review : (you can find it also in my site : https://retro-visual.jimdo.com/laserdisc/ld-players/ )

Brand : Pioneer
Release : 1989
Media : Laserdiscs, Single Side
Format : NTSC
Video Output : RCA out x1, BNC x1, S-Video out x2
Audio Output :Stereo out x2, Optical out x1, AC3 out x1 (MSB version)
Size : 457×458×182
Weight : 28kg
Release Price : 3700 $ (400.000 yens)
Today price (used) : 300 - 1000 $

The LD-X1 is maybe the best LD player (not hi-vision) ever created.

it's a very specialized player. It can read only single side. CD are not playable.
But it reads LDs so smoothly ! not any sound from the player, even from a
CAV disc. The tray is strong. All is heavy and construted with super quality
material. The player weight 28kg, at the entire service of reading perfectly discs.
I personnaly prefer the metal rending of the HLD-X0, but I have to say that the
LD-X1 with his black piano rending is really a beauty.

Now the intersting part : picture quality. Yes, Pioneer repaired my player,
and they changed lot of condensators. That is certainly the reason why
the picture is now so good. But I have to say that I never saw that on a
LD player, even on my ex-HLD-X0 (RIP). The picture is so soft, colors so
warm, noise near 0 (except in fushia red, and some blue, like every players).
You can choose a pure signal from the disc by BNC, passing through without
any DNR. If you have a good DNR machine, this is clearly the best option. But
you can also choose to use DNR inside the player. It completly erase any trace
of noise, with a very good render.

The analog audio out deliver a very good sound. But because of the age,
the DAC is limited to 18bits. (But it is sometimes better to have a good
18bits DAC dans a bad 20 bits.) If you have a good DAC, you can connect
the player by optical out.

Conclusion : 10/10

Clearly the best player for me. But it takes time, effort and money to get a
working well machine. For people who start LD, or can't risk too much money,
I recommand a CLD-959 (CLD-97).

pictures :

https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=1920x300:format=jpg/path/sc418f3b0caa8fc1d/image/i2fc60e58039b7d1b/version/1530089215/image.jpg

https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=1920x300:format=jpg/path/sc418f3b0caa8fc1d/image/ice764fffebb13f36/version/1530089305/image.jpg

https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=1920x300:format=jpg/path/sc418f3b0caa8fc1d/image/i3de664a08d5b29ad/version/1530089305/image.jpg

https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=1920x300:format=jpg/path/sc418f3b0caa8fc1d/image/i9c8f8cdc7997ff05/version/1530089305/image.jpg

https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=1920x300:format=jpg/path/sc418f3b0caa8fc1d/image/i30fab3d982280824/version/1530089305/image.jpg

https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=1920x300:format=jpg/path/sc418f3b0caa8fc1d/image/if5f7bfceda9dcbf1/version/1530089305/image.jpg

 Global announcement   Jump to topic

Posted:  

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

 Post subject: Re: How about a Discord ?
Posted: 20 Mar 2019, 23:04 

It’s the new way to suck forum traffic away, from what I can gather. Like Facebook but not as terrible.

Or it’s the new IRC. I don’t know. I’m totally ignorant!

Don’t care either way. I like forums and email. Forums and email rule all over this new ad driven crap.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 10 Jul 2019, 23:39 

I don’t see any problem with that. It may be five more years before anyone needs this kind of info but it’s good to get it written down somewhere.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 17 Jul 2019, 04:24 

forper wrote:

You should be grateful you live in the greatest democracy where even spewing blatant kooky lies and propaganda doesn't get you thrown in jail.

Yeah, it could be a lot worse, he could be living in Australia.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 10 Sep 2019, 04:12 

Done.

It should show as a small, half transparent (to differentiate it from the seller's comments) "added YYYY/MM" on each item.
I don't think the day/time is relevant.

Gives a little more guidance for a best offer if the disc has been lingering in a shop for years!
Can you gather virtual dust?

Julien

 Global announcement   Jump to topic

Posted:  

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 08 Oct 2019, 15:35 

Just received City Hunter 2 Vol.1 and 3

Attachment:
LDSaebaMecompr.jpg


Thanks Julien.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 31 Oct 2019, 12:46 

I owned an R7G for several years until selling it earlier this year for around £/€600, it was a mint example both cosmetically & mechanically. It's a super machine with the most advanced 3D comb filter ever fitted to any Pioneer player (X0 & X9 inc.) and when using its s-video out the image quality was very close to my HLD-X9 on well mastered LDs e.g. The Fifth Element, Star Wars Trilogy etc. although the performance gap perhaps widened a little when running discs with poorer quality transfers. The big downside with this player though is that unlike most other machines it's performance when switching to the composite output is a huge disappointment; in my system the image appeared very soft indeed, infact the CLD-925 produces a far better result especially via the Lumagen 2144 processor. In my humble opinion I wouldn't advise the R7G as a particularly good choice and especially as your display isn't fitted with an s-video input. Finally I thought R7G image did tend towards the digital look which is no surprise for such a late player, perhaps you should be looking to obtain something on the lines of a CLD-97 or similar for that smoother more analogue kind of image you mention is your preference?

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 19 Nov 2019, 16:53 

I got a message a few days ago from a chap who bought LDs from me when I was buying & selling players & discs years ago before my back put a stop to that, it can't take the running about the country buying collections & players anymore.

He is fairly close so back then he would often come to me to pick up any discs he had bought or I would drop them off if I was out his way - he made a a damn fine cup of coffee too.

He is moving house soon & has passed the player with most of the discs on to his son but it appears that his son took all the discs that he might get round to watching & has left around 20 to 25 LDs that he did not want.

It looks like the LDs he has left behind are mostly Japanese & there are one or two F1 discs among them & he just wants to see them gone before the house move.

He remembered that I collected LDs also but not in general as such & that I was looking for mainly F1 LDs & other Japanese discs.

He has kindly offered them to me if I want them or they will end up being binned, I did suggest as they were Japanese LDs they might sell fairly quickly on ebay if he listed them at a low start price but he does not want the hassle (his word) that goes with that.

So I am off now to pick them up & any that are not on here or don't have cover pictures on I will update.

There are nice people around & I am pleased that the LDs are not going to a landfill site, that would be a bit sad.

As above, very kind & thoughtful.

Cheers for now.

.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 23 Dec 2019, 11:03 

Didn't Nobel just make it up to feel less guilty about inventing dynamite?

I like the part (sarcasm) where Obama won the peace prize for being elected president just for being black> the ultimate condescentian of a president elect. Typical European leftist elites, virtue signalling how good and noble they are while actually being blatantly racist by having lower expectations for minorities.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 29 Apr 2020, 16:14 

Hey Forper,

Don't own my own home
Don't own a car (sold old 2nd hand piece of crap because worked hard enough to negotiate a company one)
Not married and no intention with partner of 18 years (marriage 'industry' is a crock off s**t for one thing....)
Guess I'm pretty lucky health-wise.

Some do it tougher than others. Life isn't fair. I have mates who got thrown out of home by bad parents for no good reason. They still don't go round wishing death on them in online forums. No matter how bad your parents were it makes you look bad too.

Apologies to substance for stirring this up.


That’s ok mate. Everyone is bored, tense and ready to get triggered right now. Everyone has their story. I have mine too. I don’t know the situation in Australia. I can not comment. But I am an immigrant in the US. I came here from a poor country and I came with near empty pockets. When people tell me how nice stuff I have, I tell them how much nicer stuff they would have been if I was born in this country. But then what do I know? Everyone has a different life regardless where they were born. Some are more fortunate than others. Maybe being an immigrant I was more motivated more driven. But I can give you an example, college took me 10 years to graduate and not because I was dumb but I never gave up. After I graduated, I realized it was useless and I didn’t need it but maybe I do? Maybe not the knowledge they teach but being able to say I have an engineering degree? Or that decade long suffer made me who I am. No one has the right formula. We try our best. Forper has a solid plan and he knows it’s gonna happen. Ideally you want to love your parents like you do. I respect you for looking after your mother. I left my mother behind some 20 years ago. All I can do now is to call her everyday and tell her to stay home. The rest of my family calls me only when they need money. I stopped answering their calls long ago. I hear you both. Life is complicated. I am sure more will chime in here soon. Sometimes one needs to vent. That is ok. As long as we are respectful to each other and not judging.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

 Post subject: Re: Fawlty towers is racist
Posted: 14 Jun 2020, 10:33 

Sonicboom, people here just exposed your nonsensical "arguments" way more eloquently than I could ever do in this language, but I still wanna add my thoughts in the mixture.

I've seen a lot of opinions like yours on social media on things like racism, diversity, gender equality and other social concerns.

Out of honest curiosity, are you an african-american ? I'm guessing not.

So then, what gives you the right to speak on the behalf of african-american about how they are portrayed in the media and what they think about it ? Virtue signaling and white knighting aren't valid excuses. Perhaps you should instead just listen and allow them to educate you on how that kind of behavior can be harmful and offensive?

See how easy it is, by playing by those rules, how easy it is to turn your words against you. And this kind of "counter argument" really happens on social media and people end up virtue signaling each other until no end.

This kind of "argument" is real b******t to me and I'm sick and tired of hearing this all the time. This "Hurr durr, your not this, so you can't speak about that" kind of thinking is just actively digging bigger gaps between people and separating them more and more.
I mean just look what the "anti-racists" way of thinking almost ended up doing; in a universty in the US (don't remember wich one), there was talk about separating "people of color" from whites, because "they should have the rights to graduate between themselves without white intervention and colonialist way of thinking" or something like that.
They wanted the apartheid all over again, but they'd do it with a mile on their faces fighting "white supremacy".

"Anti-racists" today is just a codeword for racism against white people.
You know what, I'm going to stop here. I was going to continue and destroy one by one each of the so called arguments people like you use, but it's not worth it and I have other things to do.

Just let me say this, stop your "virtue signaling", for your own sake. You just look like a fool acting like this white savior trying to educate us poor uneducated savages.

And come one, triangle and square ?
You see us like that or what.
e80cd151e4e22cf6e50f811c3fe7f67e.jpg

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 19 Jun 2020, 09:12 

どうぞ読んで下さい!

パイオニア レーザーディスク カタログ
1983年夏[LS306VX-2]
1983年冬 [LS307VX-2]
1986年7月 [ZBS103C]

ニュー・ディスク・フラッシュ
1984年3月 [LS033VX]
1984年4~5月 [LS034VX]
1984年6月 [LS035VX]

Julien

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 31 Jul 2020, 16:47 

....thank you sir, it is 800 bucks! WHAAAT ?

Did you not know that this is what these things cost?

Most 50 ep TV series were about $800, usually sold in two half-boxes for $400 each. OVAs like Bubblegum Crisis, Giant Robo, etc were $100 per episode. The UY box set was...I want to say $5000? I can’t remember.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 26 Aug 2020, 21:51 

Your Name.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 26 Aug 2020, 23:02 

a Complete Evangelion collection would be nice. Everything is on Laserdisc except for the 4 rebuild movies. so those.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 27 Aug 2020, 22:13 

Drive without a doubt.

Imagine the Criterion release :clap:

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 31 Aug 2020, 23:51 

UPDATE:

Things are not always what they seem. I opened up the original PS again. I'll correct my earlier statement and say the board is somewhat labeled but is cramped and hard to see anything. Plus I'm not a pro so there is that.

PSinside1.jpg
PSinside2.jpg

Anyway, I tried to trace the wires to their sources and now understand why I was confused before.

For one, there was a ton of brown dookie that was used to hold the wires in place originally. I've heard this can become conductive over time. The 2 black and the yellow seemed to be connected to the same solder point but after meticulously cleaning the dookie away with 99% Alcohol I was able to see they are in fact separate. There were a few capacitors that also had the dookie of death surrounding them and so I cleaned all that away.

Remember how I said Yellow and Black were almost connected via the dookie? I'm guessing that was the main issue but I maintain that I know nothing.

I decided to just put humpty dumpty back together again and install it in the Crystalio and hope it didn't explode.

Prior to all of this my symptoms were a ever present chirp, like maybe from the fan I thought. This thing is always on so maybe the fan chirped and was nearing end of life. I've run it with the top open before and don't notice the fan coming on. So maybe the PS is overheating? Then it randomly powered off during a few movies but would work if I powered it back up until one movie it did it a few times too many and I decided to unplug it and investigate.

Now that I cleaned it all, re-installed it and powered it on......nothing. Well almost. It did power on normally but no input or output. The front panel buttons were also non-responsive. Sh!t.

Power down, check connections and unplug/replug the front panel connector.

Power up and bang, we are back in business! I'm running it with the top off and after about a half and hour I hear a little bit of the same chirping noise and the fan is not spinning at all...still quieter than before. The PS is hot to the touch but that's probably normal. I'm guessing that if it gets too hot it will shut down again. At that point I'll probably put in the replacement I bought.

I'm going to wait and see what happens with this for now but I do have a replacement and now I know what the C2 logic board wants (left to right looking at the mobo from the front):

Blue is -12v / Black are both 0v / Red are both +5v / Yellow is +12v

I really hope this has been or will be helpful to someone in the future. I also really hope the guy who was snarky to me reads this and re-evaluates his style of "helping people". What's the use of posting online so much an being a Laserdisc personality if you are only going to be an elitist jerk when people humbly ask for help? Communities are about supporting people and coming together as a team not joking about people's taste, skill-set or volume of acquired knowledge.

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 23 Sep 2020, 15:18 

It has been a little more than 3.5 years since the last upgrade (see https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6849) and the hardware is not really an issue... but the Operating System is (Debian 8: not maintained anymore since June).

Updating the whole OS from Debian 8 to 9 or 10 on the main server is quite scary.
Doing a parallel validation and switching to the new server when ready is much, much more recommended.
It just requires to pay for both during the migration preparation time, some of the donations will be used for that.

=> http://163.172.34.149/

For most users the difference will only be a 4~24h downtime while the DNS get refreshed.
But for me, it will be several busy evenings and weekends :-P

Julien

 Jump to forum   Jump to topic

Posted: 25 Sep 2020, 08:39 

Just back from the Service Center where they probably still didn't fully comprehend this over excited gaijin (me) showing up with a mint LD-S9 for servicing and inquiring about a lot of things!

The person before me left a CLD-R5 for servicing as well.

IMG_1770.JPG
IMG_1769.JPG
IMG_1768.JPG


But the bad news (for now) are:

1/ Do you still have spare parts available to buy?
=> We do not sell internal repair parts.

2/ What will happen to the parts/stock after 2020/9/30?
=> It will be discarded.

3/ Do you still have the User/Service manuals available?
=> We do not sell service manuals.

I'm not giving up. I'll make a serious business offer to purchase the remaining parts inventory in bulk.
For this I need the service desk/center to escalate higher in the hierarchy.
I gave them my LDDb business card if it can help :-)

I can be reaaaaaaallllly annoying until they give up :-P

Julien
Page 1 of 3 [ Search found 57 matches ]


All times are UTC [ DST ]


Jump to: