so I've finally gone of the deep end and want to invest into a top tier player. i'm even (mostly) willing to pay collector prices. but not sure if the extra hundreds are worth it for a hld-x player. how much better are the hld-x players compared to the cld-97 and its clones? is there a player that comes even within even 90% of the picture quality of any of these players that are much cheaper?

I don’t have an HLD but as far as I can tell they don’t seem to be worth the extra $ for picture quality alone, especially since an X0 can be ten times the price of a 97/99/R7G. Depending on the rest of your setup the difference may be impossible to detect.

I agree with Zeta.

Based on the cost of any of the HLD units and also the complicated nature of maintaining them should something go wrong (fewer spare parts available for them), you'd be better off w/ a CLD-97 or even the LD-S1 & LD-S2.

Highly dependent on how revealing the rest of your setup is. The player alone isn’t worth it.

I would start with the best display you can buy. Oleds are the way to go on modern displays and last generation pioneer or panasonic plasmas for used stuff. A modern Oled will also benefit any other format you may watch. The infinite contrast is simply amazing.

If you can add a Lumagen Radiance 2144 or Crystalio II, you might like the video on any ordinary player. Radiance will improve all other source excluding 4K, CII is antiquated and good for LD only.

You can always take it further with a hld x0 and reach LD nirvana but as I said upgrading others components will probably give you more improvements than the player alone and they will benefit all formats.

I know these aren’t cheap but the last %10 improvement is always an exponential cost add on.

IMO the X9 isn't worth hundreds more, the X0 would be worth hundreds more... but it's thousands more, and is potentially a white elephant if something goes wrong (even Pioneer Japan can't always fix them now)

Do you have any experience / knowledge with Pioneer repairing?

"OLEDs are pretty good, for a modern display"

I love it, we have regressed so much.

OLED blows away everything else. Especially with other modern stuff like substance said. Directly compare it to anything and it's very apparent. I know you won't go away from HD CRTs (your choice, I like them myself even) but it's not regression.

Nope - I'm in the US. mimylovesjapan on this forum has a broken X0, and apparently Pioneer Japan can't replace pickups.

On the plus side, the CLD-97 is already 80-90% as good, at least when well calibrated

Thank you all very much! I wish I had more to say but this really helped!