Obviously Pioneer dominated the field of LaserDisc Players, but what other brands would you consider to be good players too? (Even if some were only re-badged Pioneers.)

I think the general consensus is (and people may agree disagree) that the "really good" players were only the last few models released in the US (like the cld-97/99) and then of course the Japanese late high end stuff (which is the ultimate in quality). Earlier pioneer models were "ok" and everything else was not so good. I think that this is why lesser models are so cheap often selling for less than 50 bucks. If your thinking about buying a player to watch movies on, then I would stick with pioneer.

If you look at the laserdisc poll in this forum, you'll see that almost everybody is using pioneer players. There is a good reason for this!

I was asking out of curiosity. I've only owned Pioneer players, and I was just wondering if other brands were as good, or if they truly deserved their reputations as mediocre players. I sometimes hear of a (very) few Runco, McIntosh, Mistubishi, Theta and Panasonic players being good, while Sony seems to have a bad rep. Maybe the members of these forums who've owned such players can confirm?

I have a Mitsubishi M-V8000 that is pretty good, but nobody knows anything about it.
The player replaced a Pioneer CLD-604 that broke and from what I can remember the CLD-604 was just slightly more noisy than the M-V8000

As I've stated here previously and having viewed thousands of LDs on many dozens of players, and I must also say this is my subjective opinion based upon my viewing experience without delving into technical quantifications, I've found both the Panasonic LX900u and LX1000u to be a good match to most better US Pioneer models.

Risking upsetting "Pioneer Elitists", and that is supposed to be a humorous pun so please don't take personal offense, I liked the Panny 1000u so much I replaced my Pioneer Elite models with them.

Another brand of player I liked in certain models, and bound to cause some dispute, are the Sony MDP-V series, the last ones they made, and the Sony MDP-1700AR, a really simple and straightforward 2-side player, composite output with no filtering or enhancements, with black blanking and a fast side turn and no on-screen cues of what you're doing, therefore very good for duping your LDs to another format.

Wasnt there a macintosh Player that was supposed to be good? lol

My main player is a Panasonic LX-H670. I have another Panasonic but it's an older model that I use only for backup. The LX-H670 is a workhorse!. I've had no problems, even a belt replacement, in 1000's of hours of play. It has been my main player for 5 years.

Starting sometime in the mid 90's every player I remember was a Pioneer, Panasonic, or Sony. The others were clones of these machines.

I would not recommend a Sony as all but the final model had a bad rep for grainy picture and mechanical issues. Even the HIL-C2EX had a grainy LD picture.

Panasonic is a good player, I thought the chroma control was a little better with Pioneer players. Luminance noise is low with the LX-900U. The issue with these is getting parts. Panasonic cannot help. need to look elsewhere.

From a repair standpoint Panasonic players are much harder to work on. Instead of variable resistors to turn like Pioneer players, Panasonic has electronic registers. You have to trust you can press the remote buttons at the right time to get the adjustments correct in test mode.

Macintosh as in Apple computers? Wasn't aware they made LD players!

Macintosh made an awesome looking player, one model I think. Inside it was a Pioneer CLD 97. I could be wrong. I lost a bid on it once to a lot of heartburn. Mitsubishi is the only other company besides Pioneer to make one really good player. It's the M-V7057, inside it is definitely a Pioneer CLD 704. I own one and they are hard to come buy. You can get one cheap if you can find one sold unsuspectingly. The display panel is actually better than the actual 704. The white lighting is nicer looking than the standard yellow on Pioneers and it is arrayed in an attractive looking and detailed fashion. A great way to get a 704 at 150.00 instead of 350.00 or even 500.00.

Were you thinking of the McIntosh MLD-7020? One is being sold on Ebay right now (for a lot of money). http://www.ebay.com/itm/220889340489?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

I was being facetious with the MacIntosh comment, since most people know that the McIntosh MLD-7020 and MLD-7020b are Pioneer CLD-97's under the hood.

The one player I'm trying to track down that is not a Pioneer was one we discussed in another thread, the MSB LS-2X Silver.

It's basically MSB's release of the Runco LJR II (which is an upgraded Panasonic LX-900u) since they designed the Runco player--with a twist. Some models have a built in RF Demodulator.

Apparentliy they are still supporting this player to some respects, as I emailed them when I came into owning a Runco LJR II for a short time, asking if they still have parts and can fix the Runco player since they designed it. They said that they still have parts in storage if necessary.