Uh-Oh it's the rein-o wishlist paradigm again! I wish to win lotto - chances are it won't happen, it's still on my wishlist though!

Agreed this is essentially fantasy - if it has any remote chance then maybe by the non-spin solutions hypothesised above (and doesn't that spoil all the fun anyway?). Tend to think that hoping for a new LD player is like hoping for a new MD player.

Exactly. When LD was “big” they had a total user base of like one million...buying decks that were mostly $600-1600. Back when you could get a new Golf GTI for $14k and minimum wage was $3.35/hour.

Now some kids who bought their entire LD collection for %99 off retail want to bring down the “high” cost of LD ownership!?!

Well I guess you are right, for some people who have internet access 5 bucks is a dream and a wish

3D printers are the only hope to make new chasis for LD players but the optical units must be refurbished by the same original brand or a specialized new company

3D printers are hugely overated and not really needed or even useful in the manufacture of %99 of things. LD player chassis are mostly made of stamped steel, which is 150 year old technology. Any old infrared laser design will do if you’re making a new thing so there’s no need to refurbish anything. Lasers of this basic type are still in very wide production.

3D printers are definitely useful for making spares of some existing player parts.

I got the impression that the optical units used for LD players were of a different type used for CDs; both using the same type of laser but the LD units requiring additional tracking mechanisms etc which made them more expensive. I always assumed that this was why you could get CD changers with multiple optical units but a crazy side switching mechanism in LD players to use the same unit for both sides.

You’re almost certainly right about that.

LOL. Star Trek is dead but you live in hope of a new LD player?? And better build than an X9? Is this some kind of new found optimistic outlook on life?

Hope to be proven wrong but a new production LD player is pretty much a pipe dream.

The engineer teams who designed and mass-produced these Players all retired a long time ago and their teams got terminated early 2000's anyway.

Analog video design is a lost art -- SONY couldn't fix a MUSE Decoder only years after selling them -- and almost everything is digital now.

We have to make sure we can salvage working parts from broken players to keep them running as long as possible.
My next coding time (from November when I move back to France without a daily job) will be to work on the Player database + parts. A long time overdue project!

As seen a couple times here recently, we're getting into the 20~30 years of lime time and it's definitely time for a refresh of capacitance with newer parts.

Julien

I think we'll see a new player at some point if only to play the old discs. There are enough people out there who would welcome a new machine. OK it would be a digital output machine with excellent quality but yes it's not going to have the build of a X9 or S9, that's for sure. A cheap and cheerful machine that does the job.

You sound awfully optimistic.

There's really no precedent for this sort of thing. The oldest commercial storage mediums around are things like phonograph cylinders or wire recordings, both of which are read by relatively simple mechanical devices that a sufficiently talented hobbyist can repair and maintain at home, so there's no need to manufacture new players for them - meanwhile the slightly newer 78rpm records and quarter inch tape are supported by modern devices thanks to the related devices making a comeback so accomodating them to existing systems is easy.

Something like Laserdisc in the other hand would require the entire hardware to be modified specifically for it. Implementing LD support to something like a blu-ray or DVD player design would require dedicated circuitry to interpret the signal, it's own drive motor to spin up the large, heavy discs, the entire case and tray would need to be much larger to accomodate it...you'd pretty much have to build a whole another player inside the chassis for it.

I'm not sure one can even make an educated guess on what the demand would be for a new machine (especially a machine like LD that was always a niche format that barely hit 10% market penetration @ it's peek).

Anyway, speaking for myself, I would not be on that list for a new player simply because there are enough used machines out there that really are in decent enough condition to keep going for a long time (most machines I have run into were barely used so there's always plenty of life in them). At worst, when my players hit 50 years old, then I'll worry about replacing aged caps but that's probably it (I don't run my machines enough to be too worried about worn laser pick-ups or spindle motors).

If you have a newer 50x 70x player then the spindle will go faster than an older player.

But in reality I wouldn't be able to spend more than 150 on a player since there are NO new discs or movies and now that I have 4 players now I should be fine until.

Brand New LD Player or otherwise, we'll likely never see CE gear ever again that radiates anything like this caliber of 80's Techno-Sexiness;



even SONY had their moments;



and... Techno-Sexiness and High-Class... in perfect harmony?!? Whatever Next?

I have bought and acquired many LDs in the past 10 years or so. Ultimately settled on around 450-500 to keep. Gave away most and sold few. I primarily kept the ones that I though would never be released on a better version/format. I rarely buy LDs anymore. Being a very early adopter for both, I am so used to Blu-rays and now UHD discs, the jump (down) in quality is intolerable. I watch LDs only if it is a monumental film for me and exist only on LD (in that cut and/or frame). In the past 3 years most of those films in my LD collection have been released on Blu-ray despite my unlikely anticipation. Now I belive maybe a handfull will be exclusive to LD in very near future. I see less and less reasons to spin LDs at this point.

Now there is another crowd here who likes to collect rare and interesting titles. I don't have anything against that. From what I have seen, they have very little interest in the players. I know there are users here with vast collections and some of their LDs are worth over a $1000 individually. I see them spin these discs on a DVL-919 or alike but not a HLD-X0 or LD-S2 as most of you would expect. No fancy scalar or front projection display either. Again, nothing against this.

What I am trying to say is, those purist (like me) who are looking for the best presentation for titles which exist only on LD might be interested in new(if better) player but they have less and less reasons to be interested with each LD losing its exclusivity to Blu-ray. Then you have the hardcore LD collectors who doesn't seem to care about the current good players anyway.

So who will exactly buy this new player?

I will admit, I have a fascination for technology and for the sake of science I would probably buy one no matter the price. Maybe a few others like me, I doubt more than a handfull. If they could come up with a player for under $300 which wouldn't be top of the line but in the range of CLD-504 or alike. Then it would see a few hundred units. The selling point simply be its a newly manufacted machine, more likely to survive many years. Now do the math. $300 a piece, maybe sold a 500 unit (unlikely), you have $150,000 to R&D, manufacture and profit from.

I'll second that.....



My equipment rack is made up of a mix of components covering the last four decades but one can tell how build quality and styling of components have changed over the years.

I definitely need to get a bigger TV.

The BD player only is not on the rack !

whatchya mean EVEN Sony??!

Sony players always had the better looks:

Don't know about LD players, but Sony builded the best CD players in the 80's.
Here a picture of my 557ESD 18Kg of pure metal, ceramic, etc. Great time.


Too bad they decided to lower the quality of their machines from the end of 90's. But after the end of the economic bubble in Japan, they had no choice.
But Pioneer did the same choice when they decided to work with Onkyo.

indeed, the CDP-557/707ESD was/is one of the most gorgeously-styled, gloriously overbuilt CD players in an all-to-brief period fairly replete with them.




quite right; i did somehow forget about those, probably just about the best-looking, best built LDP SONY ever produced.

still and all, SONY never was nearly as dedicated to the format as PIONEER was. nevertheless, SONY did indeed field a few superlative models,
even if they seem to be so rare in the U.S. that they can be easily mistaken for being Japanese-market only...





Amen!!! i see you've got an MITSUBISHI HS-U80 S-VHS as well!! one of the best-built VHS decks ever made.
my own copy lacks the decal on the main control panel door, but is otherwise complete, save for the original Service Manual. HARD to find;