Just curious who has or uses a single sided player daily or as a back-up?

For me its a cld-3030 with ac-3 and once in a while I will pull out a ld-s1 just to compare.

The 3030 is the one that started to use the superior Video processor IC PA5010 .....

Pal NTSC machines:

Pioneer cld-s315 ac-3rf out with dts mod. output (Simple no nonsense player)
Pioneer cld-1950 optical output and ac-3rf out mod.

The only player I ever use is the LD-S2.

TLK

My only single side player is a Yamaha CDV-1700.(1992) I purchased the player in the summer of 2010, from a consignment shop in Rhode Island.
It was clean in appearance,and included the original remote.Asking price was $ 65.00. It has S-Video, & optical out. I have it connected to a Panasonic Plasma,and a Yamaha sound bar. I have this setup in my home office, and have enjoyed using it. It is not a bother for me to get up, and have to flip the disc. I play CLV titles mostly.

I have a cld 3030 a cld 1010 and a cld 1030 all single sided players. My cld 3030 would be my most favorite being it has the digital field memory. But I don't want to wear it out, so I'm using my 1030 as my daily player.

I haven't had the pleasure of owning a ld-s2, I was always afraid of shipping, but from what everyone told me it has a great film look..

The 1030 has the PA5010 processor and is also capable of digital out for Dts and ac-3.....

I've owned the ld-s1 and currently have an ld-s2.

Gumbyandpals: I want to hear your viewpoint on the LD-S1 right down too the details why you like it or love it and what do you find so intriguing about your LD-S1, Pioneers first statement player!!

Thanks if you could give us your experience with the Pioneer LD-S1 Player when you have time?

Duane, MI

Those are my only two choices on opinion?

Here you go grasshopper:

I no longer own my LD-S1 but I found it to be a very sturdy and reliable player. It was much smaller than the LD-S2 but still gave the impression of being well-built. It had digital effects, which was a huge plus for a machine of that vintage. No digital out though.

The player had, in my opinion, pretty low background noise levels resulting in a nice stable picture. The picture was fairly sharp too. What I didn't like was the level of chroma noise and the false outlining. The false outlining isn't terrible, but I preferred my LX-900U which has very little of that. The LD-S2 fixed the chroma noise levels, but still has false outlining.

As for the styling of the player, I think it's very nice. I like the cut-out areas in the front panel that light up depending on type of soundtrack, disc type, digital memory etc. better than later players that have a few of those light up on the main readout.

Overall, a nice machine to look at and see operate, but outclassed by later offerings. I bought mine many years after its release and I bought it out of curiosity because I had never owned an 80's player and was intrigued by the first "Reference Laservision Player." I might still own it if I had unlimited space, but at the time I think I had 4 players and needed to downsize.

I have an 8000 with a few problems. It's soooooo conveniant to be able to still frame a CLV though, at least when it wants to work

I still really like my Philips CDV-488. It was a bear to get properly aligned but once there the picture is very nice. It is also a digital or pure analog video high end player. If you look at the schematic you can see where it has switches and by pressing the "Digital Picture" button on the front panel it switches going through the digital memory circuit or bypassing and being pure analog. The digital circuit does sharpen the picture a little with is why players use it but the picture is really smooth in analog mode. Then the built-in audio digital section was the then famous TDA1541 series which I modified and it sounds better than all my other LD players. Just don't use it in my main system as I want two sided playback. I do also like the LD-S2 or HLD-X0. HLD-X0 is a LD-S2 with a highly advanced DNR and 3D Adaptive filter. Turn all that off in the X0 and it looks like a S2.

Definitely the X0. I even expect the moment when I stand up and flip the disc over to the other side.

However, if money and wife allow, I will grab a S2 certainly.

Don't currently have a single sided player. I think the only one I had was a Theta Data II (which is a rebadged/retooled Phillips I believe--there's a thread on this somewhere.) Wasn't particularly impressed by that one.

I am trying to get an LD-S2. Saw one on craigslist some months ago for $400, but it sold before I got to it.

I have only 1 single sided player and it is a Pioneer CLD-980. My mother bought it for me new as a gift for Christmas or my birthday (I don't remember which) about 20+ years ago. I keep it for playing 8" music LD's and any LD's that do not have digital sound and it works fine. It only has line level audio and composite video outputs. Right now, I only have 2 8" LD's and neither has digital sound so the line level audio output by the player works fine for me. All LD's I have with digital sound are played on a Sony MDP-600 which has optical output.

The two single sided players I use on a regular basis are the Pioneer LD-1100 top loader and the Philips CDV-488. The 1100 will play virtually anything thrown at it, and since it is in perfect working order, I don't have to worry about crosstalk on CLV titles. It produces a very smooth, realistic image with no ringing around objects and, for a gas tube player, it has quite low chroma noise with only a trace of color flicker. The 488 has incredible sound and while it has more noise in the dark areas of the image than the light areas, it produces a razor sharp picture and can actually achieve 440 lines from late era LaserDisc's. It also has Philips FTS system for CD's and LaserDisc's that carry TOC, so on music discs I can program it to only play my favorite tracks and I don't have to reprogram it every time I play a disc. I also love its huge, five pound programmable remote. It even let's you change the name of each source on its LCD display and has soft switches you can program and rename. Its only down side is the digital effects are very digital looking since it doesn't interplolate between each line smoothly.

aye, the DNR and 3d adaptive filter, are they the same as in the X9, or are the X0s dnr and comb better? also, do the S2 have smearing?

-pix

The X9 has a slightly more advanced comb filter and DNR because it needs it - without both it's a noisy player that looks no better than a 99 with its NR turned off. The X0 is, like the S2, a no-holes-barred design to lower all sources of video, audio and electrical noise, with the 3D comb and DNR added as icing on the cake (the S2 used only a 2D adaptive comb filter and non-switchable NR). The S2's DNR was the first generation of advanced digital processing Pioneer ever used and the S2 was actually originally built only as a laboratory tool to see how low they could get the noise and how far they could push the format - Pioneer then decided to sell it, not really expecting it to do well, but that wasn't the case and from then on, all its technology, except for the linear laser transport, slowly trickled down into other players. The linear transport only was used again in the X0 - the X9 used the cheap gear driven transport used in all other players and really isn't worth the money charged for it.

The S2 has smearing but not as bad as most Pioneer players - its very soft picture probably helps hide some of the smearing.

aye, ok! so the red laser doesn't really help with picture improvements at all?

The red laser helps cut down on drop outs caused by inclusions (bits of dust trapped under the plastic) and its narrower beam keeps it from reading adjacent tracks as readily on warped or improperly pressed discs - it also cuts through fingerprints and other surface obstructions better than the infrared laser and helps it reject pressed-in noise, but the electronics in the X9 itself were not designed for the absolute lowest noise like the S2 or X0 were. So while the red laser helps, by itself it can only do so much without the electronics also being designed for low noise. Look at the CLD-97 - it uses a standard infrared laser but has all its electronics designed for lowest noise, so it puts out a lower noise picture than the X9 with its red laser, advanced DVNR and late-model 3D comb filter. (a good 3D comb filter can help reduce the overall video noise due to the way it adds multiple frames together when in 3D mode - 2D combs have no effect on reducing video noise - they actually reduce vertical chroma resolution since they add lines together)

The red laser itself doesn't make a player good - if it did, the Magnavox Magnavision would be a good player since it used a red Helium-Neon gas laser. But it was a truly awful player - even the first reviewers of it in 1978/79 noted that it wasn't a very good player, and those were people who had never used LaserDisc before and hadn't become aware of its limitations. Many of the reviews done on the Magnavision 8000 and it's remote controlled replacement, the 8005, noted that a good Beta-II speed or VHS SP recording had better chroma quality than the Magnavision could produce. Even the wonderful Pioneer VP-1000 had a measured chroma S/N of only 38db (Video Review's first test).

A red laser is icing on the cake, but the rest of the player has to be well designed also to take maximum advantage of it.

Great info Disclord. Don't suppose you would know what the Pioneer PR-7820 stands up as far as S/N ratio and such?