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| LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6452 |
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| Author: | elahrairrah [ 20 Jul 2016, 18:04 ] |
| Post subject: | LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
Here's another interesting LD related article I came across in an old issue of Video Magazine. In this one they do a direct comparison of video and audio quality between 5 different LD players: Mitsubishi M-V8000, Panasonic LX-1000, Philips CDV600, Pioneer CLD-3090 and Sony MDP-605. Scan 1 Scan 2 Scan 3 Scan 4 Scan 5 Found it odd that they rated the Sony player the highest. Then again, when I had a Sony LD player (MDP-A3) I thought it looked really good--at first before the picture began to fail. Not surprised about the Panny as I used to have one of those and thought it looked pretty darn good. Though I'm surprised that they felt these players looked better than the mighty LD-S2. |
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| Author: | forper [ 21 Jul 2016, 10:45 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
Yeah this article just makes online Pioneer snobbery and bias so much more apparent. In my experience with lower end players Sony's always look and sound better and are more reliable than Pioneers. The Pioneer LD-S9 has the best picture I've ever seen on LD but I haven't seen any hi-end Sonys yet.. Actually I have been a loyal Sony fan since the '90s and was only convinced to go Pioneer with LD because of all the internet propaganda here and elsewhere online. I learned my lesson as I'm now having inexplicable problems with the S9 and will go back to Sony ONLY. |
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| Author: | elahrairrah [ 21 Jul 2016, 13:44 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
Well, I had a Sony player like I said, and it fell victim to the well-known common problem of the picture going horribly wrong over just a few years. The picture darkens and gets grainy and soft and there's no way to reverse it. When I replaced the Sony with a middle of the road Pioneer DVL-919, the difference was night and day. The Pioneer was heads above the Sony. Plus Duncan (ldservice) when he would post on these boards said that the particular model of player in this review had a habit of leaky capacitors destroying circuit boards in the player. So with my own experience along with all the other horror stories about them, I'll never get another Sony LD player again. That's not to say I'm against Sony as a whole. My display is a Sony WEGA. I own several Sony Betamax VCRs. I've been a longtime supporter of the now dead Minidisc format. It's just that they stumbled horribly with LD. And just so you know, I'm not totally for Pioneer when it comes to LD. I currently have a Runco LJR II in my home theater along with a Pioneer CLD-97 and Panasonic LX-900 as backups. |
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| Author: | rein-o [ 21 Jul 2016, 14:12 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
I believe at the time it was all SONY electronics that had the faulty capacitors. There were other SONY products that my father owned with the dying caps. Just think, i own 2 pre 1989 PIONEER LD players and they still work fine with the same picture quality. |
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| Author: | tasuke [ 21 Jul 2016, 16:20 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
just look back towards the drop-dead gorgeous 1990 TOTL SLV-R5UC S-VHS VCR and it's infamous leaky-cap-laden PSU module to fully understand the magnitude of the F%$ks totally not given by SONY whenever they were the least bit involved with a consumer A/V format that they happened to be disinterested and/or resentful towards...     
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| Author: | happycube [ 21 Jul 2016, 23:58 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
Yup... even if the 605 was better out of the box, the bad caps result in basically a 100% failure rate long term - with a reasonable chance of it causing irreparable circuit board damage. Also many older reviews should be taken with a grain of salt, unless they used proper test equipment. A 1990 TV will 'look' better/sharper with edge enhancement that would be seen as annoying ghosting on more recent equipment. |
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| Author: | forper [ 22 Jul 2016, 00:00 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
2 Sony LD players, 4 Sony VCRs and a bunch of Sony ES audio gear and never ever had a problem with degrading PQ or leaking caps. Only issue I've had with caps was on a crappy modern Pioneer BD player BDP-50FD I think. That VCR makes me so hard, thanks for posting. SONY ONLY FOREVER. |
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| Author: | elahrairrah [ 29 Jul 2020, 17:57 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
Since the picture host I used previously, tinypic, has gone by the wayside, uploaded this article again:     
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| Author: | krbahr [ 30 Jul 2020, 00:07 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
The SLV-R5UC was a very nice SVHS player and I add a lot of money re-capping the power supplies. This was another player that old not handle closed cabinets. |
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| Author: | happycube [ 30 Jul 2020, 07:02 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
TBF the Pioneer player was the rather dreadful 3090. There is/was an interesting eBay auction with a massive list of reworks earlier runs in particular needed before any other warranty service would be paid for! And the late run Panasonic 1000 may or may not have been a good player. So if the review was earlier (Pio 3080) or later (Pana 900) the Sony would've had more of a challenge. |
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| Author: | ldfan [ 30 Jul 2020, 07:42 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
forper wrote: Yeah this article just makes online Pioneer snobbery and bias so much more apparent. ---When we revealed the identities of the players, our panelist were amazed that picture quality performance seemingly had nothing to do with price. Most agreed that all five players performed well. "There are slight differences in color and sharpness." one panelist noted, "but you can adjust the monitor and solve those problems in two seconds"--- Really??? Doesn't sound like anyone felt any one particular player out did each other. forper wrote: In my experience with lower end players Sony's always look and sound better and are more reliable than Pioneers. I remember the 900 series Pioneers always being just something one would rather skip and save your money toward a better model. And as for Sony? Well, I did have that crappy MDP-455 that was just garbage but it did look somewhat nice and build quality was great. forper wrote: Actually I have been a loyal Sony fan since the '90s and was only convinced to go Pioneer with LD because of all the internet propaganda here and elsewhere online. I learned my lesson as I'm now having inexplicable problems with the S9 and will go back to Sony ONLY. I'm a pretty dedicated Sony fan as well when it comes to their DVD players and pretty much most of their ES products. But in respect to LaserDisc, it's pretty well documented that they have had a pretty dismal history when it comes to reliability. Maybe some of the reasons for Sony's bad press might have more to do w/ the fact that they made far fewer players than Pioneer (and that's including all the clones that Pioneer made for other manufacturers) and thus it represents a far smaller sample size that gives the impression of more bad units. However, with far fewer players, that also means fewer spare parts, and fewer spare parts means more junked players that remain unrepairable that just adds to their legendary unreliability issues. And to be fair, I wouldn't say that Pioneer players were extraordinarily reliable because that wouldn't be true either. Their 2nd generation Alpha Turn players were a disaster when it came to fragility so it was not unusual to see 50% of the players sold being defective right out of the box. However, once they were fixed @ a shop, they were otherwise extremely reliable after that until they were sent in the mail once again (e.g.: ebay). And even today, most Pioneer players that appear to be broken are in most cases just experiencing simple issues like the ubiquitous stretched belt or mechanical regreasing which is a simple fix. So in that case, I'll be sticking w/ my 12 working Pioneer units and continue to avoid every Sony that comes my way (unless it's free  )
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| Author: | shopkins82 [ 30 Jul 2020, 08:27 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: LD Player Comparison Article in Video Magazine |
Having spent a brief period of time writing for a couple of consumer electronics magazines, a lot of these types of articles are pay-to-play (Mfg pays a certain amount of money or runs a certain amount of ads to be included in the shootout) and keeping advertisers happy can definitely play into the calculus of how these types of articles (and even objective individual reviews) are written. I can say I never let advertiser interests dictate any of my equipment reviews, but I did have a handful of reviews shelved either because they weren't flattering to mfgs that were advertisers, revealed too much about the manufacturing lineage, or even for positive reviews of brands that were not advertisers that might step on the toes brands that were. I remember an early Onkyo BD player review that was shelved both because I pointed out specific objective failings in its chroma and cadence handling and also because I mentioned it was a Funai-manufactured reference design... even though Onkyo wouldn't comment on if/how they had improved the reference design (because they hadn't, other than inflating the weight with a heavier frame/case). In another instance, I had a review of an excellent budget set of internet-direct speakers shelved because ID was an emerging threat to the established mfgs/advertisers at the time and the publication didn't want to step on any toes. I ended up publishing the review personally on AVS and HTF to make it up to the company since they provided the review sample and went above-and-beyond to answer any-and-all questions I had when researching the article/review. Needless to say, I didn't make it in the mainstream consumer electronics publishing world very long and returned to the aviation maintenance industry. |
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