Halo from Sun Valley,
Problem--our original LD system was a rear projection tv powered by Pioneer Amp/dolby surround sound systerm using a Pioneer CLD-S201 LD/CD player (late 1980s). Purchased 45 LDs of hi quality vintage. Like many, sold the Pioneer Amp (groan), tv and speakers---but kept LD player. Now with newere 1080p flat screen Samsung and Yamaha sound sound I am not having much luck. The LD player only uses RCA (white, red, yellow) for sound and video. Tried numerous variations such as the two audio cables to Yamaha and video direct to TV, etc etc. Finally did get a really crummy picture with ok sound but just from the tv.

We love the collection but am unable to integrate the old with the new---might be signal match, impedence, who knows. Anyhelp appreciated.

Thanks and the forum and site reflect a lot of work!

I know there are a few people here that have gotten good results by somehow passing their video signal through an upscaling dvd player. I have mine hooked up through s-video and my player and tv do pretty well just with that, so i haven't taken the upscaling route yet, so i'm not sure exactly what you need to do to get it to work. as for the sound, i don't see why you wouldn't be able to hook it up through your yamaha system. what is the model of your yamaha?

You can try the "passing through a DVD recorder" option as many people do that. You can also get a good scaler vs using the crappy one in the TV and you should have better results. They sell scalers specifically designed for this. If you have a high end receiver (unlikely if it's a Yamaha) those will often have good scaler chips so you can pass it into the receiver and then hdmi it out to the TV.

Also, this thread probably should have been placed in the "Technical questions, Repair, Troubleshooting, Advices" or "Amps, Speakers, Displays" categories as this has been brought up many time there.

I agree but was that a subtle jab at Yamaha? Of course I'm biased because I own a Yamaha receiver but their line includes some lower priced affordable units all the way up to their flagship $2,000 11.2 beast which is as good as just about anything put out by the other names (Onkyo, Denon, Pioneer, etc.). I wouldn't say it's a given that a receiver lacks upscaling just because it's a Yamaha.

Yeah, sorry about the phrasing, I didn't want to imply that Yamaha doesn't make good electronics (but upon reading my post it does make it sound like that was what I was implying). I should have said that most budget receivers regardless of manufacturer don't have great scalers in them. Usually the flagship products of these brands WILL have good scalers as the budget allows for them to buy quality chips. If your receiver cost around $2k (like my onkyo TX-SR875) then it "should" have descent scaling built in.

It would be very helpful to have the model numbers of the receiver & television, so we can see what options are available.

I do the dvd passthrough and it works great. I use a Phillips Ripper and have the Svideo sent through it. I have it upscaled to 1080i and can see the difference.

I have the yamaha advantage rx-a3000(last years flagship) the comb filter on it is poorer than on my cld-97. It doesnt deinterlace analog sources well and the noise reduction only blur the image on analog. Excelent 1080i to 1080p deinterlacing and mosquito noise reduction on digital sources. A3000 uses the hqv vida chip for deinterlacing/scaling/noise reduction. No aspect ratio management so you have to use your tv to zoom to lbx content. The comb filter is 3d but not motion adaptive. Denon/marantz receivers use the same comb filter but abt 2010/5 chip for deinterlacing and scaling.

Sorry to hear that. You would figure that a high end receiver like that would have a much better comb filter. I guess you could always try to find a high end scaler on ebay/videogon, sometimes they have good deals on used ones. Let us know what you settle on.

Also, as a side note: I just modified my CLD-97 with an AC3 output mod. You may be interested in this as it's great to have 5.1 surround sound from movies with AC3 soundtracks. I made a full step by step instruction guide with tons of pictures. You can check out my thread on that at:
http://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1110

A lot of ppl say modern electronics have better comb filter than the best ld player.this might have been true for video devices of late 90s and early 00s but anything in the last 5-6 years beside few are complete junk for analog video. Including high end receivers,video processors(i.e. dvdo edge) tv sets none of them have decent comb filters or analog to digital converters. I find the svideo out on decent ld players look the best on newer digital displays.
I spent a lot of time and money on laserdisc equipment. I tried multiple external comb filters like highly regarded entech,camelot tech,faroudja nrs etc...even tried pioneer,rca,panasonic vcr/dvd combos, any improvement also brought unwanted artifacts or digitised look. Everyone has a different eye for this kind of thing but i consider my eyes highly trained. I worked for a number of av stores including magnolia av with pro 2(highest) cert,isf,pro installer level 3. I have seen every display out there from last decade in different viewing environments. So to my eyes these above did not do much.
I settled on cld-97 svideo into dvdo vp30 with abt102 here dvdo does color mngmt and increase sharpness aspect ratio mngmt deinterlace and upscale to 1080p59.93fps then feed into yamaha reciever via hdmi.yamaha passtru this signal untouched to pioneer elite kuro plasma monitor. Pio displays 1080p 59.93 fps in pure mode with no enhancments.
My primary player is a mcintosh mld 7020 which is a cld 97 with rf out added by mcintosh.my second player is a cld 97 with rf out added by msb technologies. I habe a panasonic lx1000u which i want to add the rf out sometime down the road.
I now have a crystalio 2 on reserve for next month. Its highly adjustable 3d 5 line motion adaptive comb and chroma trap filter is highly regarded. Cld97+crystalio 2+pioneer plasma is I believe as good as the pic from ld can be. One could use hld-x0 instead of the 97 but buying a x0 is not within my reach for now.

One receiver I can recommend is the Onkyo TX-SR875. This is what I use and the picture looks wonderful on a big 150" projector screen. It has that nice analog look, but without any digital artifacting. This was also the top of the line when it came out a few years ago but now can be bought used for a few hundred dollars. It also supports all the latest audio codecs for Blu-ray, so it's definitely not a legacy device and can be used as your primary receiver.

beside that Onkyo recievers also offers very good feature sets,probably the best for the money.

If you are ever in the southern New Hampshire area, a demo can be arranged!

I wonder if you could send me your settings of the DVDO VP30, I have a VP50, but really would like to see, if different settings would help. So,mif you have some spare time, I ´d dreally appreciate this !

My pioneer cld97 is serviced by Kurtis Bahr. He aligned and tweaked this player for best performance for the previous owner few months before I bought it from him. I also have a Mcintosh mld 7020 which is a cld97 clone. i can see a big difference from tweaked pioneer to none tweaked one. So I highly recommend getting your player serviced by either Duncan or Bahr. I will soon take my panasonic 1000u and mcintosh to Kurtis for performance service.
I use the tweaked cld97 svideo into vp30. Soon as film starts I disable dnr on cld97 which is on front panel only.It set on by default you can onky disable it after you have video on screen.
I have the joe kane video essentials ld and I self calibrated the contrast and color. I have the sharpness setting at max. Contrast and color are different on every display.these you need a calibratio disc.they should be around -10 at the end. Hue is unchanged .
Original Aspect ratio setting is 4:3. Active aspect ratio either 1.33,1.66,1.78 depends on films format. Deinterlacer you can set to auto. I switch to film on movies and video on tv show or anime(most cases). Output is set to 1080p60hz. Color space rgb. Frame convertion unlocked 59.94hz.
Since my setup is not 100% complete, I have not taken the time to tweak it to best but I believe its pretty close to perfect. Dvdo doesnt make Ld sharper or noise free. I had alot of jaggies before from bad de interlacing. Those are gone. Im convinced Im getting the best possible progressove video from ld. Its aslo reasonbly sharp. I really would like have little more color depth. Especialy on flesh tones.I dont think VPs can help that much. i know hldx0 can do better than my cld97 in color depth.
Make sure you disable every noise reduction or enhancement off on your reciever tv etc... as those just blurr image on analog video.

I m 30mins to nashua. We should trade lds,dvds,bds etc. Im sure you have some you want to get rid of. I have like 500+ ld. About 300+ of them I dont mind parting with. There might be some that you may like. I am open for trade/exchange not care for getting money for them.

I sent you a PM.

@sustance: Thanx alot for your settings, I´m always curious how different settings will look, so asap I´m gonna try the ones you submitted!