I am guessing a McIntosh LD player is the type of machine cararte would have tried to sell in the past. It sounds right up his street.
As the saying goes 'a fool and their money are easily parted'. Just hope no one got burned.

The McIntosh is still a nice player. Quality and "looks". What it ends up selling for is another story. Far from a player to be dismissed though.

These are nothing comparing to goldmund auido gear. They used a stock pioneer dvd player which was $150 retail inside a fancy box and marked it up $10000 yes with 4 zeros. No modification what so ever. Marketed as high end cd player.
I love the theta bd player btw. They made some mods to it, it wasn't a stock oppo 83 but nothing to make amazingly better of course.

Theta started the whole modded LaserDisc transport craze - their Theta Data I and II are nothing more than low cost Magnavox LaserDisc players dropped into a steel box - theta even left the Magnavox front panel on them - and they were the very bottom of the line players - the ones you would find at Price Club for $299. Theta did NOTHING to them, but they charged a HEFTY premium, claiming they were better at playing CD's due to their heavy build, as if a CD were an LP and affected by minor vibration and such.

What's amazing is the fact that Lexicon was still doing this with that $500 Oppo Bluray deck in a $3k Lexicon box. In the laserdisc days, it must have been easier to put out such efforts without the mass exposure afforded by the internet. As soon as someone opened up that Lexicon, an online powder keg just exploded.

Sorry to zombie up an old thread, but my perspective seemed a relevant contrast to some of the sentiment here.

I own a McIntosh MLD-7020 as my primary/only LD player, and it was the third player I've owned in my history as an LD hobbyist. (The initial ones were an intro-level Pioneer (I forget the model number, it was a $300 special at Magnolia Hi-Fi back in the mid-90s, didn't even have digital outputs), then a Pioneer DVL-919 that I acquired in the early 00's.) The McIntosh MLD-7020 came into my life in early 2011, and I chose it not because of the mystical McIntosh mojo (as difficult as this might be to believe, I was naive to that at the time). Instead, it was a purely pragmatic decision, where that model became the best candidate when deciding to purchase an LD player with better PQ than the DVL-919.

This was after much research on the cost-performance benefits of the various models (CLD-97, CLD-99, X9, S9, X0, etc.), where I finally settled on the CLD-97 equivalent as my personal sweet spot (plus it helps that I'm charmed by its brick-like form factor). Sure, the X9/X0/etc. have indisputably better PQ, but for me the cost bump was past the point of diminishing returns. Once I decided on the CLD-97/MLD-7020, I needed to consider: (1) I already had an investment in a considerable number of DTS/DD LDs and an RF decoder, and (2) you might find this lame, but my custom-built AV cabinet only has 18" of width clearance; with the wood panels installed, the CLD-97 exceeds that by a quarter inch or so, while the MLD-7020 has some room to spare. Plus, it's trivial to find glowing recommendations for the MLD-7020 online. One could argue that they're all brandstruck, but given the glowing amount of feedback there is online for the CLD-97, I don't think that's the case.

So I kept watch for a while, and when I found an MLD-7020 (with original remote and manual) via eBay for $800 that was local enough for an in-person pick-up, it seemed meant to happen. For comparison, at the time the going price for a CLD-97 was about $600+, depending on condition.

Even if the prices cited in this thread are accurate ($400 vs. $800), I don't think the MLD-7020 is that much over-priced, if at all, at least for someone who wants a unit with a built-in AC-3 RF output. While I don't know what today's cost is for having such an upgrade custom-installed in a CLD-97, I suspect that after paying for parts and labor, plus shipping/transport/insurance both ways, plus the time/cost involved with properly packing a big LD player for foolproof shipping, plus inconvenience, peace of mind, etc., any difference would be in the noise. Of course, if you want a Pioneer, this isn't a Pioneer (at least on the outside), but for me, having the exact functionality I wanted as an out-of-the-box turnkey purchase was worth the price bump.

As I mentioned, I was naive to McIntosh's snob-appeal at the time, and it's actually become a minor embarrassment, as friends will come over and say, "Ooooh! A McIntosh! I didn't know you were into that kind of thing." While I have no issue with AV components that look good (and the MLD-7020 certainly looks good, especially with its lights aglow), conspicuous consumption is the last thing on my mind when it comes to my HT setup. In fact, I'm fairly brand-loyal to Pioneer, so the McIntosh seems awkwardly out of place among all the other Pioneer components that surround it.

All of that said, I totally love this LD player. It's solid, it plays well, it's quiet, it has great PQ (given that it's LD, of course), it has terrific SQ, it's not too exotic to find parts for it, it doesn't need a voltage transformer, and its presence in my home theater has elevated my enjoyment of laserdiscs more than ever before. I tried out some low-level video processors, to see if I could eke out some better video performance, and nothing passed a blinded A/B test. My only gripe is that I wish its fluorescent display was Pioneer Elite amber instead of McIntosh cyan. If I ever find the opportunity to salvage the display from a non-working CLD-97, it would be a fun project to swap it out.