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 Post subject: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players......
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 13:27 
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It's been hard not to notice the sheer dominance of threads about broken laserdisc players recently. Quite depressing actually.
I'm not knocking the posts, I'm just concerned what has triggered this avalanche of reports?

Have we reached the point of no return where there are more broken players out there than working ones or is this just par for the course given the machines are all starting to show their age?

Only 2 of my players have broken in 11 years of use and I've probably more discs that 99% of the LD community left worldwide.
I use them everyday too so I'm puzzled by this dramatic increase in dead machines.
Also most of mine are just ordinary run of the mill machines like a Pioneer CLD-925 yet they seem to have lasted a lot better compared to what everyone else is using.

What could explain so many people's machines suddenly dying?
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 16:08 
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I too have noticed here on the forum and also on ebay more broken players.

From my opinion they come from a few different reasons.
People buying broken players to try and fix but mess up worse.
Getting working players but trying to make the image look better, so they tweek the insides and break them.
Shipping from poor packing is always a reason for damaged players.
And then just old players breaking from use etc.

With less repair techs known and less parts available I'm shocked at how many still buy top of the line expensive players with no parts available.
I now have 4 players in the house and in the process of getting another one, and I'm also selling off more of the expensive LDs in my collection.

No reason to keep a 300+ wall hanger when I can have a painting on the wall.
Its sad to sell some of them off but I will still have a large collection of discs that i watch all the time.










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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 17:42 
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rein-o wrote:
With less repair techs known and less parts available I'm shocked at how many still buy top of the line expensive players with no parts available.

This is what made me choose the LD-S2 over the HLD-X0. For extra parts I can just purchase another one. I have two at the moment though one is in a questionable state thanks to FedEx.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 18:00 
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I'd say Rein-o pretty much sums it up, in my case I felt like I could save money from buying a broken player and repairing it, I've done this several times and have always had to put more into them. I spent a lot of time and money on my 503 and at this point its basically worse off then when I got it.

On the other hand you look at the prices of players on ebay, I just saw a DVL-90 sell for almost $400, I picked one up locally with a few discs thrown in, it has issues and I've had to spent extra to get parts but so far it's still a fraction of what you pay online.

I think the well taken care of players just last, most of the broken players are due to miss-use/neglect and shipping damage,
and I think there is a lot of both cases.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 18:07 
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sjoerg wrote:
most of the broken players are due to miss-use/neglect and shipping damage

I think that this is a really good point. As time goes on more and more people are selling their players or flipping players for profit, so I'd bet we recently hit the global maximum for number of LD players shipped at one point in time and now we're on the downward part of the curve, but with the damage done.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 21:06 
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I bought all my players second hand mostly in first few years of starting to collect laserdiscs in 2006-2010.
I was definitely fussy picking up the cleanest machines I could find at the time.
My DVL-909 and 919 models in particular are all indistinguishable from new and in beautiful condition.
I don't think any of my players had ever been opened as the screw heads were untouched on all the cases and there were no signs of them ever having been tampered with.

Looking back prices back then were far cheaper than now, especially in Europe as it was easy to pickup a very clean and complete D925 or DVL model for £75-90. Most of mine were in that price range, 3 even cheaper. I agree prices for the more basic units have risen significantly since then whilst it seems high end player prices like the HLD-X9 have actually fallen because more are being sold on Ebay from Japan.

It's a scary thought that in another 10 years time it will be nearly all broken units available and to think a few on the forum were selling their extra players not so long ago because they needed the space. It might cost 2-3 times to buy them back again and also get one in a lot worse condition! I'm certainly not selling any of my players as I know I will be very glad of them in the near future.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 23:12 
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Broken... one of those terms....
I found numerous 925 players so called faulty! Mostly a case of "unused" for many years gathering dust hence the term faulty.
I gathered many 925 units in immaculate condition. Even bought the hard used ones just for the sake of parts one day. Scrapped some. Assembled a few out of three different ones.
amazing however how some people manage to screw up a player. i've seen dents, scratches, filt... I mean how do you do that?
Once got a player that belonged to a smoker... I mean... the thing was destined to fault sooner or later.

It is true that some people mess around inside a player then things go wrong and they f...ck them all this way doing so.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 23:27 
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kris wrote:
Once got a player that belonged to a smoker... I mean... the thing was destined to fault sooner or later.

In what way? I personally don't smoke, but curious since the rest of the household smoke. Especially in the room I keep most of my stuff (including the LD players). Haven't noticed anything wrong happening to any of my various equipment the past 15 years.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 23:42 
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The thing wass all yellow inside. The grease looked horrible, plastic guidance rail had a bad case of cracks in different places... found a dvl909 the other day. You should see the cloth I used cleaning it.... switches sticky.... not very pleasant!
Btw, smoker myself... outside the house :thumbup:
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 23:48 
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Then there is shipping.... dangerous game,without the original box.... not to mention the courrier.... :lol:
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 06 Apr 2017, 23:53 
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Perhaps I should start to convince the others to smoke outside. Guess the reason they smoke in "my" room is because I haven't complained about it. The rest of the house in general isn't smoked in. I cleaned the walls once, that wasn't a pleasant sight after 15 years. Some things get more dirty than others in my experience. From your description, it sounds like especially the lubricant used absorb crud and start to degrade. Considering I own a farily expensive model, I wouldn't want to cause it to fail by lack of proper lubrication.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 07 Apr 2017, 00:12 
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samaron wrote:
Perhaps I should start to convince the others to smoke outside. Guess the reason they smoke in "my" room is because I haven't complained about it. The rest of the house in general isn't smoked in. I cleaned the walls once, that wasn't a pleasant sight after 15 years. Some things get more dirty than others in my experience. From your description, it sounds like especially the lubricant used absorb crud and start to degrade. Considering I own a farily expensive model, I wouldn't want to cause it to fail by lack of proper lubrication.



Believe me it is not a pleasant experience removing that kind of sludge inside. The thing with the dvl unit was it looked... dried out in a way inside. Plastics looked deteriorated, dried out ... I don't know. Felt brittle like chips :lol:
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 07 Apr 2017, 00:27 
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kris wrote:
Then there is shipping.... dangerous game,without the original box.... not to mention the courrier.... :lol:


Of the 3 players the that I have with Issues I'm pretty sure at least 2 got messed of in shipping, if not all 3 of them.

the 504 looks pretty good on the outside, inside it's all smashed up, must have taken a hard drop/hit at some point

503 has a few dents, I feel like someone maybe put it in a garage and stacked some heavy stuff on it, it also has some brown paint blotches on it.

The DVL 90 I know for certain got smashed in shipping, it got sold as working and was returned by buyer(not me), I then got it locally from the original seller, he told me he had sold other players over ebay and had no problems...His feedback tells a different story....

I have 3 other players I bought locally, all of them work fine (knock on wood), including my CLD 704 which I found on craigslist when I was in Oregon and I shipped it back home to New York. When I went to pick it up at the post office one of the corners of the box was ripped clean open, thankfully, the player survived.

this is why I prefer craigslist to ebay for players..
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 07 Apr 2017, 02:10 
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We have had four players over the years. Two arrived damaged :(

Luckily parts were available for them both and they were repaired.

The tech issue is even worse here in Australia. We were extremely fortunate to find a tech that could fit the parts.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 07 Apr 2017, 02:18 
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In the past an LD player wound be shipped from Japan to the US, then carried by union carriers by ground to the store, then to your house. If you lived in Japan it was a domestic product that never saw an airplane and was only handled by Japanese postman. If you live elsewhere...you didn't know what LD was.

Now we live in the age of the collectard. Thirty somethings with extra money who...well, want to be like Techmoan, basically. They feel the need to own every gizmo ever, every game system, laserdisc, vinyl, VHS... if not for very long. They get bored and flip the stuff for profit quick, sometimes a few weeks. I've seen collectards on forums sell stuff on eBay they just bought hours before, that is, they flipped it before they had it!

So what has happened is that a Super Nintendo now has the carbon footprint of a burning oil rig because it's been shipped 68 times! And 67 of those people aren't as old as the machine, have no experience with dodgy analog stuff, can't fix anything, etc. One guy is the original owner, it worked fine for him.

So, yes, the players are breaking and the parts are gone. However, if you are the original owner or second owner, you'll be in a better shape than if you just heard of Laserdisc a week ago, have already purchased a player (that hasn't been turned on in 23 years) don't know how to confirm correct operation let alone repair anything, and now you want to get the thing to stop grinding because you've already sold it to RetroSubZeroX69 for twice what you paid for it and you need that cash to get a game machine you didn't know existed an hour ago.

LD has become a low hobby. That's what happened.

I recently went and exercised all five of my players, which I do at least annually, and they all did everything they are supposed to. The 604 is pretty...creaky, but the 503, 99, W1, and whatever that industrial model is I have all did their jobs. If you don't use them they are doomed. The industrial model and the W1 had had little to no service ever from what I can tell. The turning models have all had belts and grip rings and alignments within the last ten. I think I'm set for a decade bare minimum. Sell your rare anime to me. :)

EDIT: I just remembered I live about a half hour from one of our good remaining techs (who's services I have never used but will need someday for sure) so I might be more set that other people. :)
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 07 Apr 2017, 16:58 
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kris wrote:
The thing wass all yellow inside. The grease looked horrible, plastic guidance rail had a bad case of cracks in different places... found a dvl909 the other day. You should see the cloth I used cleaning it.... switches sticky.... not very pleasant!
Btw, smoker myself... outside the house :thumbup:


A few years ago I was given an old iMac computer that had been owned by a heavy smoker, and had to get inside it to put in a new drive. iMacs have a very efficient cooling system so air and anything in the air goes everywhere - The whole inside was coated with a tarry residue that I had to clean out with white spirit (not sure if this is sold in the US, it's like turpentine) then industrial alcohol. It was a horrible job, especially since I'm a non-smoker and hate the smell etc. The optical drive was dead, of course, not sure why the hard disk died but that can't have helped. Took me four or five repeats and most of a roll of paper towels to get rid of it all.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 07 Apr 2017, 20:37 
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I think we call it "odorless thinner" in the US.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 08 Apr 2017, 08:55 
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Of the two laserdisc players of mine that eventually broke it was good old fashioned mechanical parts that failed.
It wasn't due to them being dropped down a flight of stairs, filled with dust or smoke or someone tweaking pots!
So at least I know what I've got still - 99.9% of those machines are still perfect even if they don't work.

Machines that have been tinkered with and then sold on as needing minor repairs are probably the biggest nightmares to deal with. The initial problem that rendered them unusable has probably been supplemented by half a dozen other issues such as incorrect configuration settings, cables loosened, components broken, components missing, incorrect components replaced, alignment issues. The list just goes on.

I remember when my first CD player (a early Denon model from 1987) broke in 1990. It was always quite prone to skipping but I decided to try to get it repaired as it had been quite expensive to purchase originally. It took the shop a few weeks to fix and upon arrival it did play discs successfully however it made a grinding noise every time it clamped a CD. It was scratching a concentric mark on the lower surface of each disc inserted!! So I opened the case to look inside. To my horror was the most amateur repair I had ever set eyes on. A plastic part had been superglued back on and they had forgotten to replace a rubber ring which is why it was scratching my discs. To be fair there was so much plastic inside this machine that I felt it was unrepairable. I guess my point is sometimes even an authorized repair shop can't make a decent job of a repair if the unit isn't that well made to begin with. Thankfully laserdisc players seem to have a bit more guts inside them to work with because of the hefty motors needed to spin the heavy discs and stronger chasis.

I ended up replacing that CD player with a Marantz which is still in use today and was built like a tank in comparison. It has never skipped once in 27+ years.


Last edited by laserdisc_fan on 08 Apr 2017, 20:36, edited 2 times in total.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 08 Apr 2017, 18:02 
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"Don't fix it, if it ain't broke!" - That's what being said over and over. :o
I always reflect the pros and cons based on my experience and the possibility of fixing a player that has broken down for several reasons. The basic belt exchange and lubrication might be a cause enough for people not getting their player up and running afterwards. It is sad to see that so many beautiful players are being sold for parts or thrown in the dumpster.
I have been lucky with my repairs and I have fixed them. I even had to use a hammer to straighten out the player chassis that got bumped in shipping, I fixed that one as well even though I would consider it as an radical act of repair. :thumbup:
I always respect electronics and leave the adjustable pots as they are in the first place. If I want the best possible outcome by tweaking, I'll get an reputable technician and provide him with the service manual and what else that is needed.
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 Post subject: Re: There has been a sharp increase in broken LD players....
PostPosted: 09 Apr 2017, 04:19 
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I would say the first thing you do when you get a new LD player is to tweak the pots. It's the advice I got here and it really paid off.
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