LD player overview

Contents

Also available is the at a glance guide to the range of LD players available.

Introduction

Within the European and Australiasian LaserDisc player markets there are only a relatively limited number of models available, so the choice is relatively straight forward. The main hardware manufacturers are Sony and Pioneer. Both of these companies offer dual-standard players in their standard range, with Pioneer also offering a single standard PAL-only player at a lower price point. Denon have also recently entered the market with a badge-engineered version of the Pioneer CLD-D515 called the LA-2300.

The types of players

There are two main types of LaserDisc player on offer, the limited featured single side play combi (LD & CD) players such as the Pioneer CLD-D315, and the dual side play combi players such as the Sony MDP-850 and Pioneer CLD-D515 and CLD-D925. All of these players offer access to all the standard LaserDisc features such as time search, on-screen displays, and advanced trick play facilities on the active play discs (in the case of the CLD-S315 only in NTSC). The dual side players can automatically continue to the second side of a LaserDisc after a short (~10 second) side change interuption; with the single side players, you have to turn the disc over by hand after each side has completed. Perhaps the biggest difference between manufacturers is the lack of PAL analogue sound disc replay from the cheaper Pioneer players (the CLD-D515 and CLD-D925 do have it), confusingly despite their ability to play NTSC analogue sound discs. All of the players provide composite video outputs, Pioneer's CLD-D925 also offers S-video output, while the Sony players offer the option of an RGB output instead. S-video outputs can be added to the Sony players by third parties.

After many years of waiting the Pioneer CLD-D925 finally offers the digital effect features previously only found on the upmarket NTSC-only LaserDisc players. This allows freeze frames (well freeze fields actually) and slow motion on all discs, not just on those mastered for Active Play. The picture quality of the CLV freeze field is not as good as the freeze frame produced on CAV discs, but it does remove an annoying limitation. In addition, all of the Pioneer range capable of playing NTSC discs are now also fitted with AC-3 RF outputs to allow use of the latest 5.1 descrete channel sound systems. These provide six independant channels of sound in much the same way as SDDS, dts, and Dolby SR-D do in cinemas. AC-3 outputs can be retro-fitted to older players either by third party companies, or by using blueprints and doing the work yourself.

Both Pioneer and Sony also offer computer controllable multi-standard LaserDisc players through their commercial and industrial video divisions. These tend to be considerably more expensive than the domestic players, typically around UK#1,200; and are intended for use in interactive video applications.

The Important Features

PAL/NTSC dual standard LaserDiscs exist in the two main TV standards in use around the world, namely PAL and NTSC. In the normal way of things these two would be incompatible and unable to play on players designed for the other standard. However, the market for LaserDisc is much less developed in the PAL areas of the World (Europe, Australasia, Africa) and needed the ability to import titles from NTSC markets such as the USA and Japan to make the product attractive. In the late 1980s players started appearing that could play both PAL and NTSC LaserDiscs, and these have now become the norm in PAL territories. Most of these players can actually replay NTSC material on any reasonably recent PAL TV set using a range of special tricks.

Both Sides Play Since LaserDiscs carry about an hour of program per side in Long Play (CLV), most films need to be spread over both sides of the disc. While many experienced LD owners, especially those with single side play players, will tell you this is not a serious problem, it does never-the-less interupt the viewing experience. A number of players now include a dual-side play feature which means that the LaserDisc player can play both sides of the disc without you having to turn it over in the middle. Some of these mechanisms are now very fast with only a few seconds of black while the player changes sides.

AC-3 RF Outputs In recent years there have been major changes to the nature of cinema sound systems with the introduction of quality assurance programs like THX and of new digital multi-channel sound systems such as Dolby SR-D, SDDS, and dts. In parallel with this there has been an effort to bring these improvements to Home Cinema as well; THX-certifed home cinema equipment and Dolby AC-3. Dolby AC-3 is a system that allows a full discrete 5.1 channel sound source direct into the home. At present, NTSC LaserDisc is the only system to support AC-3, doing it by replacing one of the obsolete analogue sound channels. A seperate decoder is needed but this has to be fed by a raw "off-disc" signal, hence the need for players to include an AC-3 output in order to take advantage of the AC-3 soundtrack. The existing Digital Stereo/Surround soundtrack is completely unaffected and will work fine on all existing machines.

CLV Digital Effects LaserDisc provides unparalleled slow motion and still frame pictures on discs designed to be played in this way, the so-called Active Play discs. However on the more standard long play discs, none of these features are available. This feature uses a digital field memory to store the image retrieved from the disc and to repeat it allowing the full range of slow motion and freeze frame effects to be used on all discs.

S-Video Output With all High Resolution video sources there are problems when the fine detail information in the picture intermixes with the colour information causing undesirable patterning. For SuperVHS and Hi-8 video formats, which also have a high enough resolution to suffer from this problem, a new connection standard was invented called S-Video that keeps the picture and colour information seperate all the way to the TV. Modern high end LaserDisc players now feature special processing circuits which allow the two parts of the picture to be seperated properly and they then provide the seperated S-Video output in the same way as SuperVHS VCRs do.

Modified Versions

The first dual-standard player, the Pioneer CLD-1450, lacked a pure NTSC output for political reasons and a number of companies started offering modified versions of the machine that provided it. Two of these modifiers have continued to work on later machines, and can offer upgraded versions of the current players. These upgrades include reinstatment of the PAL analogue audio replay on older Pioneer players, the addition of a comb-filtered S-video output to Sony players, and the provision of NTSC 4.43 outputs on Pioneer players for video projectors and TVs that require that version of NTSC. In addition, they can also add AC-3 digital outputs to such players to allow use of the new 5.1 multi-channel surround system.

The main two companies are VideoTech of Oxford, England and Video World Electronics of Swanage, England. While both companies will supply new machines already fitted with their modifications, they will sometimes (subject to workload) accept machines bought elsewhere for modification. Reinstatement of the PAL Analogue Disc replay typically costs UK#60, while the S-Video output can be as much as UK#180 depending on model.

More information on the players

Pioneer

(Pioneer also have the CLD-S310 PAL only machine and several computer controlled industrial LD players. Pioneer list details of these on their industrial products web site)

Sony

(Sony also have a computer controlled industrial LD player)

Denon

Other References

In addition, the details and pictures on the previous generations of players are still available.

other documents


Choose: LaserDisc News Introduction Europe LD Web Index
B.King@ee.surrey.ac.uk
12th June 1996