A Tale of Two Pioneer Laserdisc Players CLD M90 & D406

In this cool video, we peel back the covers of two unique players: One with cool 2 sided play and AC3 and one with a SUPER COOL 5 disc CD changer inside! Yes, I said the word "cool" way too much. So cool.
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[@frankowalker4662]

I like the mechanism on the mutidisc player. So cool. I bought a Laserdisc player from ebay about 3 years ago with about 100 movies. They cost a lot of money over here in the UK. It was shipped in shrink wrap only, no box or padding. The discs were shrink wrapped to the top of the player with the mains plug was underneath the player. I don't know if you've ever seen an English mains plug, they are sturdy and chunky. When I unwrapped it, the plug was shattered and had been pushed up in to the disc mechanism breaking at least 3 stand offs and the laser pickup was not attached to anything. I contacted the seller who compleatly ignored all my and ebay's emails then dissapeared. I'm still so pissed off with the whole situation that I've never even looked at the player or discs since. 😢 This is the first time I've even been able to talk about it.

[@michaelturner4457]

You didn't file a claim with Ebay, for damaged items?

[@frankowalker4662]

@@michaelturner4457 Yes I did, however it was in the middle of the pandemic and lockdown in the 2nd week of December. Aparrently emails were being lost or discarded and I was given the run around by everyone. So I just cut my losses, put it down as an experience to learn from and gave up. I never buy anything from November to January now.

[@juanfrancisco4274]

I'm so sorry

[@s-achan7981]

I have near 200 LDs and accturally have two exact same models of LD players as you discussed here!! They are connected to two different TVs in my home for playing LDs for the old times' sake. I do have an extra Realistic MD-1000 (made in 1990) sitting on the my shelf as a spare. These functional LD players are gradually harder to find.

[@Choralone422]

I too have a soft spot for Laserdisc even though I have never owned a LD player. It was always such a cool format to learn about and see in action at my local hi-fi store. I always thought it was shame it never gained wider acceptance and the relative high price sure did not help that!

[@pHD77]

The price had actually start to come down during the mid-nineties. Sadly for LaserDisc, DVD came along and ruined what could have been the mainstream era of LD.

[@richard-riku]

In Europe we also had 8inch and 12inch CD video disks. There is no room on a PAL disk for both analogue + digital audio so they used a different name for the 8 and 12 inch laserdiscs with digital audio in europe (not calling them "laserdisc" but "CD Video" instead - despite them being massively larger than a CD) this is because they were not backwards compatible with old non digital audio laserdisc players. With NTSC there was no need for renaming because there was room for digital audio + analogue audio on the same disk.

[@michaelturner4457]

In the UK I only ever saw Laserdisk in a shop once, at Woolworths in 1981. So of course I've never heard anything about it since, apart from being aware of LD been used in some coin-op games like Dragon's Lair. But I'm not surprised they chose a better name from "DISCO VISION". DISCO was really a 1970s fad, with movies like Saturday Night Fever, and it rapidly faded in the 80s.

[@pHD77]

I guess they thought it was a clever name, playing on both the name of a music genre, that in the mid 70s was rather big, but also played on the fact video was stored on the disc. I mean, Disc-O-Vision... C'mon 😁

[@MovieGuy846]

I still have my M90 and loving it even more after I got around to finally mod it for AC3-RF and Digital Out. Now I’m enjoying it as a transport to play my small collection of DTS encoded CDs’ as well as DD and DTS LD movies 🙂.

[@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777]

I own an industrial Pioneer Laserdisc player and it is a champ ! :) thanks for the intersting video i never see the more Modern decks.

[@databits]

Thanks for watching!

[@DasFSi]

Wow, I thought it'd just be two heads, was not expecting the crazy somersault thing. I guess back then it was cheaper than adding another laser head to the device

[@MovieGuy846]

It wasn’t necessary to have two laser assemblies since the disc has to reverse direction during side change and thus there would always be a break in the playback. Thus, no advantage in adding a 2nd laser unless there could be a seamless transition which would have been impossible.

[@erikmolnar6585]

I'm surprised no LDs ever have an S video output. I have a CLD 990, and I always figured it was due to it being a budget model. I actually won it on an eBay auction around 2007 for 20 bucks plus shipping (maybe $10). I did have a player that I bought in 94, but I gave it to a friend along with all my discs to a friend the day after buying my first DVD player in 1998. It's unfortunate because I had all the horrible releases like Invasion of the Space Preachers 😐. Anyway, I love your work. I am certainly a person who loves all things media myself.

[@Craig_Spurlock]

Nice, I had two D406's in my time, solid player. I also still have my Harman/Kardon AVR85, which has the AC-3 RF input.

[@MatroxMillennium]

I have the M-90 myself! I've been on the lookout for a double-sided player but haven't managed to pick one up yet.

[@WindomRettes]

Cool Beans!

[@m3snusteve]

9:00 Suzanne Vega - Luka

[@HD7100]

If a CAV disc is warped when the laser gets somewhere from the middle of the disc gradually moving out towards the edge the closer it gets to the edge the picture will jitter and start skipping frames. On a CLV disc you will see a vertical line of noise in the picture that gets worse as the laser gets near the outer edge of the disc.

[@jamesmoss3424]

The M90 is an excellent one. 😀👍💿

[@jamesmoss3424]

I like Kingdom Come it's an great 80's heavy metal band. 😀👍🤘🎸

[@bpalpha]

They really should've put two separate laser pick ups in place rather than come up with Rube Goldberg devices to perform the task. I still have some great laserdiscs, including the original theatrical release of Star Wars trilogy, but I stupidly trashed my player once it started acting up. First in in-home discrete multichannel surround sound!

[@LASERDISCDREAM]

I wonder if these disco vision movies can able to play just a regular laser disc player or has to be the early laser vision player to play them.

[@hicknopunk]

Easy to play them. They just lack a digital audio track or lack AC3.

[@michaelturner4457]

Might be good luck if you can find a disco vision that will play at all, one that isn't afflicted with bad laser rot.

[@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777]

The 406 has richer color but it could be boosted? I would rather have neutral which the M90 does appear to be. would have to see a color plate run through.

[@jjplano]

cool video! =) do you happen to have at hand the spare piece number for the laser module of the M90?? I'm trying to help a friend get one, and he doesn't know how to check (and I can't help, I'm a few states apart). thanks!

[@dant5464]

7:45 Mickey Bubbles

[@databits]

Terrific singer. Perfect pitch.

[@mvevitsis]

CD changers are the peak of electromechanical jank. It's a wonder they even work at all (strictly speaking a fixed laser pickup would be superior for combating read errors and jitter in optical media applications, but Sony tried that and they weren't very reliable either).

[@michaelturner4457]

I don't think that all CD changers were bad. After all CD changers do use the same laser pickups, tracking mechanisms, and spindle motors as single CD players do.

[@Madness832]

I'd be curious as to whether that DiscoVision disc is still watchable.

[@jamesburke2759]

I never knew a Video Single Disc existed. that brings me back to my original question i had 10 years ago. Can we burn a VSD for our Laserdisc players with a pc? ive always wanted to put something super modern through my player.

[@marcusdamberger]

I've had the same thought. The question would be can a laserdisc laser reader pickup burned CD tracks? Are the track pitch the same between formats, i.e. would a CD spiral track be close enough, and would the LD player care? I've never looked that up. However, the RPM's between a CD playing and a laserdisc is much different, with CD's between 200-500rpm between inner to outside edge. While Laserdisc start at around 1800rpm for NTSC discs and slow down to about 600 near the end. CD's are CLV while Laserdiscs can be ended in CLV or CAV. I think you would have to have some kind of custom software that would control the disc drive in the CD and feed it raw ended information. The software would also need to compensate for the encoded video information at 3 times the max 600rpm speed a CD normally runs at and slow down as you got closer to the end of the video. However, multispeed drives probably could do this I would think. 1800rpm is only 3x 600 max speed of a CD. Also, on a 5cm disc I think you would only get about 20mins like one of these VSD discs are.

[@jamesburke2759]

@@marcusdamberger It HAS to be possible! how did they make those VSD discs? I never knew that LD players would spin them at up to 600 RPM that's crazy compared to my INSANE 100x PC CD Rom in the 90s that broke some of my cds. how does a laserdisc player define the difference between a VSD and a CD? it has to just be a line of code on the disc like how a Sega Dremcast determines a CD Audio from a 1GB GD Rom (Which this could possibly be) and that can be burnt and emulated and re created on a standard 700mb CDR . 20 mins is more than enough for something like a simpsons episode.

[@kaitlyn__L]

It’s analogue video encoding just like Laserdisc, so your CD burner probably can’t do it - it requires continuously variable distance between the pits, whereas CD used fixed pit sizes and spacing.

[@jamesburke2759]

@@kaitlyn__L so maybe it was done with an actual laserdisc burner? perhaps there is a way of modifying a DVD/VHS Burner to raw write a input to disc. id really like to see a side by side closeup of underside of the disc vs a normal cd or dvd. I thought audio CD's in the 80s were made like that and thats why you can burn an audio cd vs data cd for ancient cd players to read burnt discs.

[@eugenioarpayoglou]

The images have the same quality. One has the color a little more saturated.

[@boredmillionaire9914]

right