I know its recommended to go with standalone players but I wanted something newer because I want it to go the distance. I got one with a remote and manual off of eBay for $270-something shipped. Not sure how good a deal I got on that.

Being the savvy consumer I am, I read reviews AFTER making the purchase and it sounded like the picture quality isn't the greatest. Kinda bummed out about that but thought id come here to see if anyone can tell me how it is firsthand.

That is a fair price. In Germany it usually goes for well over 300 €. Though as I see in the US everything goes a lot cheaper. The 909,919 and 925 are the most sought after models and sometimes the 2950 (the one I have). Currently in the German ebay site there are two 925s one ending in 18 hrs and the other in 7 days and they at over 100 € at the moment, but they will for sure go over 300. I wish I could buy a 909 for 270 usd with shipping, it is really a great price!! (though I got my 2950 for free...the guy thought it is a record player which is broken. It was his ex-wife's father's player and when I went over to "haul it" I had to keep my pokerface because it was near mint and perfectly working )

I think 909 and 919 is 2 of the more nicer looking ld-players on the market, I will own one of them sometime just because of that.

I sold a dvl-909 3 months ago for about 400 euro on auction, so yeah 270 dollars is a good price

I agree with Johan, these players looks good and dont worry about the picture quality, im sure you are gonna be satisfied with it

A picture of my old 919e that still keeps spinning discs: http://www.minhembio.com/bilder/hq/?pic_id=406020.jpg

I always liked the DVL-909 and 919 as well - the champagne gold European models in particular are really classy looking. If you have an HLD-X9 they sit very well together!

The 909 and 919 tend to get a bad wrap but I think they're decent machines. I managed to pick up a 919E for VERY cheap (around £15) because it had a couple of broken parts. A little bit of elbow grease and new parts from Pioneer (via helpful US residents) and it's as good as new, it was much easier than I expected, I'm not even a very technical person. Of course if you try this you could end up with a nothing more than a very large paper weight, but if you want one of these players on a budget then it's worth considering.

What are all the regions for LD? And do you guys know which regions the 909 can play? I'm thinking about getting a Japanese copy of Godzilla vs Biollante since it never got a U.S. release in Japanese with english subs

And wow just realized all you guys are from Europe. Is laserdisc very popular over there? In america, most people I talk to think laserdisc means dvd. Kinda glad though because it keeps the prices low

Hi
I have had my 909 for a while and actually used it to play dvds. It is a very nice machine and the picture quality is very good. Just get good wires and skip the svideo connector. You will be happier. Anyway, it works well, it is nice and I have never had problems with it other then it not always catching the laserdisc on the first try. It has to search 2 times on occasion for the disc. Looks nice though.

I had some luck on New Years Day with a DVL-909. I got it for $145 (price with shipping) on eBay and it was a "Best Offer" deal. The person who sold it to me received it as in inheritance and just wanted to be rid of it. It came with the original remote, manual, warranty card, and the original sales receipt from Sears when it was purchased for a whopping $500 in 2002. Believe it or not, that was the clearance price! The player was in pristine condition and plays anything i throw at it. As far as the video quality is concerned, i would give it a 7/10. It's playback is equal to the CLD-D604 which itself is a pretty good machine. The only downside is that you can see some video jitter every now and again, but it is not at all distracting from your viewing experience. The best players to purchase outside of the DVL-909 are either a CLD-D703/704, CLD-79, or a CLD-99. These three machines were manufactured right before the DVD/LD combi players, and offer outstanding video quality that surpasses the DVL-909. I say this because my primary machine is a CLD-D704, but I shipped it out to Washington for a minor repair and a tune-up. I just started using my DVL-909 a few days ago as my backup. I also have a CLD-D504 as a backup to my backup, lol. I hope this all has been helpful to you.

Well I cant speak for the whole Europe, but here in Sweden its kinda of a rare format. It was never a big HIT when it came out on our market and in fact I have never seen swedish advertisment for laserdisc, so it isnt strange that only a few ppl invested in these machines here. But on the bright side, the value of laserdisc is much higher here then in US since we got a small market and a growing interest for this format

Rare format here in the UK too. Laserdisc was never marketed well here in the UK and was never really made attractive enough for most people to bother with.


Laserdiscs don't have regions in the same way as DVDs, the signal is just encoded differently between regions, like VHS. I think the only two signals on laserdisc are NTSC and PAL. A lot of EU players will play both, I'm not sure about US ones but you should have no problem playing a Japanese disc on a US machine. I've looked about at the Godzilla films too but I think I only found that one or two at most were released in Japanese with English subtitles, I know Godzilla Vs King Ghidora is available on HK LD in Japanese subtitled with English and Cantonese, but I don't know how good the translation is, can't remember any other subtitled one off the top of my head but if you have a look through lddb you'll get an idea of what is available.

I think the d704 was the first player I did a search on and couldn't find a single one for sale. Must be a very sought after item

It is actually a very sought after player. The 704 is the precursor to the Elite CLD-79/99. The 79 is basically a 704 with a more fancy/sturdy build and the 99 just has a 3D comb filter that can only be used via S-Video. People want to get the 704 because it performs just as good as the Elite series does.

In Germany it isn't that rare I'd say. Depends on the age who you ask, but one good indicator is to search for 'laserdisc' on the Germany Ebay. Just now it gives over 1000 listings. And then I didn't search for 'bildplatten' which would add even more. The discs listed are usually 'generic' movies both ntsc and PAL DEU versions, but sometimes you can find some rare stuff. What makes it even better is that Austria,Switzerland and Belgium and Holland are close and these territories have a nice number of English language discs. What I discovered is that the northern part of Germany seems to have more people selling discs. Maybe the fact that Antwerp is close could be a reason.

Hungary on the other hand....well When laserdisc had its days the most spoken second language there was German, but the price of these players were waaay out of our reach. And in a country where people were glad to have a 3rd or 4th generation dub of a movie on VHS with overdubbed soundtracks....well one example..the first Batman movie, I saw it in the early ninteties on VHS, the color completely washed out, with cantonese and german subtitles, and one guy in a monotone voice reading out the dialogs However the first time I saw a laserdisc player was in the mid nineties...except for arcade videogames, but there you don't see the player. There were really only a handful people with players here. Despite the price the language was and still is the main problem for marketing products here. The only discs I know of to have traces of Hungarian language on them are the Unusual Suspects and Queen's Live in Budapest (funnily both spoken by non-Hungarians). But luckily I obtained my player here. As I wrote it earlier on this borad, the guy thought it was a broken record player

That was a really interesting post, peti9, especially the bit about the dubbed VHS, always good to hear the perspectives of other countries.


Queen Live in Budapest was one of my first discs and is also my avatar, it's a great concert.