Just purchased and works except during laserdisc play has lines flickering through picture. They are kind of a broken line that goes across picture and seems to roll from bottom to top. Picture otherwise looks fine. Nothing wrong with audio as well. No distortion in video other than lines. They seem to get lighter as disc gets closer to end (outer) of disc. Discs do not show this on my other player. Lines are not there in menu or blue screen with disc not playing. Lines are not there during DVD playback. Guy I bought from said someone told him something about capacitors. I was thinking what he described in ad was bad disc as he only had one disc. But it is definitely something in player.

It could be a case of dried caps on the LD video board. I assume every disc you play has these exact same symptoms? Also, what is the other player you have that doesn’t show the symptom?

Yes it is every disc. Other player is a Pioneer CLD-S201.

I might assume a bad cap(s) on LD board that does the digital video processing but not sure. Maybe Kurtis could chime in when he can.

Not sure but I assume the 201 is a pure analog player for video which explains why the 909 is having an issue.

Not meaning to hijack thread but I've a similar issue with a DVL-919. Lines across the screen. By about 15-20 minutes into a disc the problem goes away. CAV discs don't seem to be affected anywhere near as much. DVD and Video CD (VCD) playback not affected.

Just to add - not sure if a coincidence or not but this problem seemed to start after I had played a disc on it which I only later paid close attention to that it was somewhat warped. It made an irregular noise almost at the end of playing side 1, which is when I took it out.
Ever since then this particular problem persists.

Maybe a laser adjustment issue?

Yeah, sounds like crosstalk brought on by alignment being out of spec.

I'm assuming I may need to adjust the potentiometer/s ?

Maybe not you. Someone who knows *exactly* what they are doing. Messing around with that stuff will likely just kill DVD playback as well. You want a guy with a scope and a test disc and the correct procedure on hand. Maybe you have what it takes to be that person. Most don’t. I do mechanical repairs to my players but never mess with alignment. This is mostly because I don’t have time to get into proper LD repair and I’ve seen firsthand how alignment that’s *perfect* is massively better than something that’s %95 there. Analog stuff is more resilient against sketchy signals in some ways and much less in others. When it comes to tracking the disc LD needs to be perfect.

And no, marking the position of the pots beforehand will not ensure against disaster. It’s virtually impossible to adjust a decades old pot that’s never moved and then return it exactly to its previous value.

^^

I take your point. Even though I have previously adjusted a white screw which fixed an issue of skipping and looping at the beginning of every disc on side B, this looks to be a job better suited to an experienced hand.

Without knowing what you are doing, when you adjust something for a single disc you will mess it up for another group of discs.
Thus causing more problems on discs that may have never had or should have problems.

If doing this you really need to find a good portion of discs you own, i.e. 200 of your discs are fine and 5 are bad.

Good luck, you can wing it to adjust players but it may make it worse in the long run.

I imagine there aren't many people with LD player repair experience in South Africa, so someone who can use an oscilloscope and can put the player into test mode (with a programmable remote or IR blaster, I think there's also a way to do it by shorting certain points on the player) might be enough. I was able to make some minor adjustments (centering and tangential) to my 919 and get it back to nearly flawless playback that way. One of the service manuals (check the ones for the DVL-919 as well as the 909, IIRC the 909 one was pretty basic) should have adjustment directions. Just be sure you don't turn the adjustment pots too far, and don't turn them blindly.