Quite an amazing player and a great repair. I can tell that you were happy to get it working by how you were talking and possibly a sigh of relief as well. So lucky that that the ribbon didn't get damaged when it got twisted.
Looking to buy one of these, so watched your video to see whether a repairs might be possible given my limited capabilities. I enjoy your videos. I have Reel to Reels and DVD/VCR's & electronics, vintage thru to present day digital My wife's office is next to mine and she now recognizes your voice because I watch heaps of your repairs "Are you watching that Canadian guy, again". Keep up the good work!
Just wanted to say I enjoy your repairs on laser disc and vcr machines. I always wanted a laser disc back in the day, couldn't afford it. I like the mechanical aspects of them. It's nice to disconnect and enjoy vintage physical media. I appreciate the work you do to keep them out of landfills.
Cheers, Dave! Nice to see our Canadian Tire dollars hard at work. My dad once told me about when he was in Portugal while in the forces back in the early '70s. Some of the servicemen (not him :) were giving the ladies of the night Canadian Tire money and telling them they were actual Canadian dollars. Needless to say, the commanding officer was made aware and said enlisted men had to pay the actual funds. Not sure if it was an actual bank or an irate pimp who was point man.
Another great deal! At first, I thought that since it could play both sides of the disc, it would have two lasers, one for the top and the bottom. Didn't expect to see a single laser that flips itself around to play the other side! So it came down to adjusting the spindle height and tilt adjustments, amazing!
I loved Laserdiscs, too. Had quite a collection back in the day, with an original Pioneer single-sided player then upgraded to a dual-sided (auto reverse) player. When it died nobody in town began to know how to fix them, and by then DVDs were taking over. Alas.
@12:00 Sometimes causes problems??? ha ! I love it when they install the cable to such exacting tolerance there is strain on the cable for it's whole life. - like 3 more millimeters would be such a dividend issue.
The problem is that, if the ribbon were any longer, it would droop onto the disc when playing the beginning of Side B. There's a little springy wire catch at the bottom rear of the chassis that keeps some tension on the ribbon to prevent that from happening. If you were to make the ribbon longer, it would defeat the purpose of that retention, or you would have to pull the ribbon more, defeating the purpose of a longer ribbon. The only real solution would be to have an upper cable guide as well -- but then you have to clear that when the pickup goes through the C-shaped guide in the back to flip upside down.
I have a Sony MDP-MR1 C-Quick Reverse (Auto reverse) working great. Only issue mine had was the glue had leaked slightly on the magnet and caused the disc to stick when try to eject which was easily cleaned.
That has been the case on three different MDP-600 / A1s that I've worked on. If anyone reading has a Sony player, take the retaining bracket off, and use some strong cleaner on that magnet bearing surface of the clamp. Right around the edges, the glue leaks down and is super sticky. It's an easy fix once you know what the problem is.
Maybe those ribbon cables are more robust than we assume they are. That thing was folded over on top of itself as well as crunched-looking. Great diagnosis and fix, Dave. Although I am wondering, does the side flip mechanism usually make that grating noise? It doesn’t sound right…but what do I know? Thanks for recording and posting.👍
Yeah most laser just do make some strange noises as they're doing their thing especially the auto reverse ones but as they're spitting up they make all kinds of weird noises this one here one of them little deers there's a little plastic gear in there and the mechanism that spins around as it's clamping the desk and it sounds like one of the little gears is maybe a little bit loud as it's clamping down the disk. That's always a concern is that the plastic gears break but this one here they're not it's working. Sometimes the clamp bearing on the top also can get a bit noisy just from sitting around but I've run several movies through it at this point I've been going through some of my old collection of movies watching them and it's playing them all good end to end and reversing at the end of the first side. I've run five or six movies through it so far. We just watching a neat one last night called 49th parallel to like a war propaganda movie from but 1941 1942 somewhere in there about Germans you both sailors that got sunk off the coast of Canada trying to take sanction in the USA at that point in time was neutral in world war II. One thing I've discovered with this unit is because I don't have the remote control I can't select the audio output and the last person that selected audio output on this set it to the analog output so even when the disc has digital audio it is outputting the analog sound. Not that there's anything wrong with the analog sound because it sounds fantastic but on this specific disc the left channel has the movie sound because it was a mono movie and the right channel has the narators commentary which is kind of neat because they talk about the making of the film. That was one of the strengths of laser disc when it was still in production was that there were many releases of films that were exclusive on the laser format and we never released on VHS or dvd. I've got countless discs that have special features that you'll never find anywhere other than on LaserDisc. it's one of the reasons I try to keep as many working players as I can is I've got all these old desks most I have never even seen because I was given a collection never have time to sit down and watch them but once in awhile I'll put one on and watch some old gem from you know the 1940s or 1950s and I tell you some of these old classics are certainly worth the second look.
Great and interesting video. You have become my favorite repairer on TH-cam. Your videos are high quality, your comments are interesting and entertaining, and you obviously know what you are doing. Since you like Laser Discs, I have a unit I wish you would take a look at for me. It’s truly unique. It was Sony’s best when it was released. It plays CLV discs with the ability to pause, FF and RR without loosing the picture, because it uses digital storage to achieve the effects. It’s a CD CDV LD PLAYER model number MDP 510. It simply stopped working decades ago. Would you be interested in attempting to repair it for me. It has a unique remote with a jog shuttle dial. I can send pictures if you wish. Thanks!!
@@stevenmann9769 well there are certainly different features like I think my mdp 555sa has a better picture then this empty 800 it has a time-based corrector built in which really cleans up the video coming off the desk and allows for things such as slow motion and free frame on even the clv discs. And just overall has a better picture it has a 3D comb filter which gives excellent results on S-Video even though laserdist was a composite format I have a pioneer that also has digital memory in it and the time-based cracker and it also happens to play DVDs as well so it's kind of the ultimate player I should compare the MVP 555 with my pioneer and see which one looks better because they both have very good picture. This mdp 800 it's analog all the way from the laser pickup to the output there's not much in the way of processing done so if you have a disc that's getting a bit noisy it shows whereas my mdp555 when I have been playing some discs that have a bit of laser rot tends to look better and I'm starting to use that player for some of my old discs that look pretty rough on some of my other players and it actually they look quite good on the 555
@@12voltvids Interesting. I have a CLD 503 & 2950 as well as a karaoke disc player. The 2950 is good as I can play PAL discs too. No video processing on these, so I need to make sure I keep my discs nice and clean. I thoroughly recommend the boxed sets that appeared in the early to late 90s. I have a copy of Alien that is fantastic video quality and most importantly, not screwed around by the film company. Most of the reasons why I kept laserdisc as a format, was to enjoy original theatrical releases. So many streaming versions have been bastardized by the film companies...
@@stevenmann9769 that's right you can get the director's cut on laser and it was not available on the other formats. I have many collectible discs as my neighbors son who passed away a few years ago was in the film business. He was an animator for Pixar and his name is in the credits on movies such as toy story cars and finding Nemo. Unfortunately he and other people on his crew got rare cancers, speculation is it was from long-term exposure at close range to the CRT monitors of the day used in animation but that's for another discussion. Anyway he collected many of the director's cut box sets. When he passed his parents who lived just down the street from me offered me his collection of movies and his old laserdisc player. I have the three Star wars original ones Star wars empire strikes back and return of the Jedi director cut I have many of the old classics like chariots of fire the three back to the Future movies one I just watch called 49th parallel probably over 100 movies. Including all the original Disney catalog before the sensors started removing elements of the films to make them more politically correct. It is true though old Walt was quite the racist and that was pretty evident by the old cartoons that you won't find today. I have an old Mickey mouse cartoon on 8 mm film where Mickey mouse puts on black face by putting a firecracker in his mouth and lighting it. Again you try that today and the cancel culture of today will hunt you down.
Very cool old system. I have never seen one in person. Well I lie a bit, back when I was an Army Recruiter we went from an early vhs type cassette player which was, instead a Super 8mm movie projector built into a sort of suitcase so we could show videos in school libraries or even prospects homes. As I left recruiting and became s CIVILIAN once more, we were just being introduced to a sort of laser disk machine which was much earlier and well did not work much better then the super 8 suitcase machines. Sales aids you know.
Hi from Sydney I have the Sony Karoke Model MDP-A660K Bought it from a Chinese friend complete with Karaoke Discs & Sony Golden Microphone lol! Being PAL here it only has a composite video output. but TV is multisysytem anyway..Mosy discs sold here were NTSC.back in the 80s.
It was cool to see that Sony demo with Shotover jet featured, a local jetboat company here in Queenstown, New Zealand. Do you happen to have this demo archived on your channel already?
No I haven't archived that demo I guess I probably could for some of the scenes from that demo disc. Have to be careful though because some of the music may be pull a copyright. I know some of the tracks they're using John Tesh for the background music and there's some live performances on the disk. I have a laser disc of an IMAX film that was shot on the space shuttle Challenger before it blew up obviously I should locate that one it was pretty cool and when they showed the launch of that shuttle this was shot on IMAX but this sound you crank the volume up and it has the windows shaking I remember watching it once when there was no one home and I let the volume get a little bit loud I had the windows open because it was a summer day and all the neighbors were out on the street wondering what all that roar was.
@@12voltvids Ahh yes, thats fair enough. The youtube bots can be savage. That Challenger footage would be awesome to see as well, bet those amps were cranking!
Yes I'm fully aware what the tilt does it's to line the laser up so that it's perpendicular to the tracks. There's no focus gain or tracking gain adjustment on this player this one is digital. The earlier players yes but this one was a later generation where all that was done digitally so there are no adjustments they're literally three adjustments on the board tilt for a side tilt for b-side and Master clock and that's it everything else done digitally. The digital adjustments for the focus and tracking game maybe adjustable using a special remote just like with the camcorders use the special servicing remote to set up digital adjustments however once they were set at the factory they should never need to be readjusted.
@@12voltvids Nope. I have the service manuals for a few of the MDP models. There's tilt, and some analog stuff (video level, etc.) There are what looks like they might be tiny pots on the laser module itself, but there's not mention of them in the service manual. So I would assume that tweaking those converts a working laser into a not-working laser.
@@nickwallette6201 In the video circuit there are video level and black level, one in the syscon (clock) and the tilt controls. The ones on the laser block set laser current and fuxing with them will likely kill the laser.
That's awesome. Sort of makes me want to find a "broken" LD player and try to revive it... didn't have any luck with a CD player I tried to save but at least these are big
I thought I had scored a 8 track recorder today saw an ad for one advertised for $1. Figured that would be a good score for something to show off on the channel when I contacted the guy he came back and said it was $180. I told him to keep it and then reported them Facebook for deceptive pricing. I say good luck now for him selling it to anyone else because everyone else will see that he had put an incorrect price in the listing.
It seems DVD players have a real knack for croaking. I've gotten two Sony DVD players (trying to find something to play SACDs) that both have dead lasers. In one case, replacing the laser itself (not even the whole drive mech, just the sled!) got it working when it previously wouldn't detect anything but CDs. The other ... still waiting on a replacement laser. It would play SL DVDs, but didn't seem to be able to focus on SACDs, and IIRC, had some issues with DL DVD as well. What's odd is that, on both drives, you could still see the red dot through the disc just fine. I guess it's just the wrong shade of red now. :-P
@4:30 third prong can act as support stablizer... No harm. nice use of the Canuckistanian dollars - I don't find the staff at Canadian Tire that great, if I choose to ride my bike there and have a backpack on , they treat me like a criminal. Then I ask why they aren't taking away the purses from the women if they are so concerned about people with bags. A few times that has trumped their demands as well as asking who's liable for MY items going missing behind the counter. I'm obviously not there to rip them off anyways.. they are there to rip me off and make me feel guilty about nothing. True stories.
I have spent many hours cursing Auto Reverse players, the early ones were very picky to get a good picture from both sides. The later players with digital tracking were a lot easier, with fewer adjustments to go out of alignment. A lot of tech's hated the Sony players, if any gears broke they are difficult to rebuild. I still like laserdisc, and as i have said, as soon as any players are available at a sensible price i buy them, some you can get working provided the laser is good, others have broken gears and it's always the same ones that break. Fo $10 and bit of tweaking you can't complain, there are very few people with the gear and skills to repair and set up broken players. I was lucky to have been trained by Pioneer, and still have the test discs and manuals for most models, some spares are now very hard to find. Pioneer europe is no more, and Pioneer Japan has limited stocks of parts only for the Japan market models. The format has done well, and hopefully will continue for a few more years.
Well done :-D It looks like a bloody nightmare to get it into a balanced happy state. That ribbon is horrible. Pity you didn't have the setup manual so you could connect your oscilliscope and see what's going on. I still think laser pickups are dodgy as hell !.
No I don't have service manual and I don't feel like looking for one. However on these machines the server was digital so there's no setup to do. There's no focus gain our focus balance or tracking adjustments, only tilt for side a and side B. If I were to look at the I pattern I could maximize it with the tilt but since this is an analog device not a digital device I don't need to use a scope because I have a big 42-in screen sitting right next to me or I can see the noise. the only thing that would be better than what I was using would have been a CRT monitor. Being an analog signal you see the signal to noise ratio take a dump when your alignment is off. Same goes for the LaserDisc players that were not digital tracking where you had focus gain and balance and tracking game and balance you could see it on the screen. With CD players and DVD players as a signal is digital you don't notice it being off slightly until it's so far off that it's mistracking and the audio is breaking up or the picture is breaking up. That's why you need to use a scope so that you can maximize your signal looking at the analog signal that comes off the disc. And yes even CD and DVD the signal that comes off the disc is analog. A lot of people don't realize that but it actually is. The digital signal on a compact disc for example is not recorded as ones and zeros as it would be if it was a digital file. The digital signal is converted into a pulse width modulated signal through what is called EFM. They used to refer to that as 8 to 14 modulation but what it really was was converting the 8-Bit video into a frequency modulated encoded waveform. You see with optical recording there's a minimum pit length which on CD is basically three bits. So you cannot have the laser modulating on off on off on off on off on off on off like that that's duration is too short it can be a minimum of three so three ones or three zero is the minimum. With digital audio it would be possible to have a waveform that was 101010 etc so that's converted so that it can be nothing shorter than three zeros or three ones so you can have four zeros and 10 or five ones and nine zeros or whatever right but it all added up to 14 bits. The 8-Bit data was turned into the equivalent of 14 bits so that you could never have fewer than three on either end 8 to 14 modulation. That 8 to 14 modulation now represents a pulse width modulation scheme which is actually what is on the disc. In the CD player that was turned back into an 8-bit chunk you had two eight bits to make up 1 16 bit sample. Analog laser disc on the other hand it's just an FM carrier just like how the video is modulated on a video tape, but on video tape the luminance is modulated by an FM carrier and the chroma was converted down and recorded it at lower frequency on laser disc it's the composite signal with the chroma still at the 3.579545 megahertz subcarrier frequency. There was two other carriers placed on the desk as well for the two analog FM soundtracks and then they squeezed in a digital carrier as well for the digital soundtrack that most of the later discs had. If I'm not mistaken and I haven't researched this so I might be talking out of my ass but if I remember some early papers I read on the digital sound it was placed in the vertical interval ahead of the closed caption data in the first few lines they stored the digital information in the header. I should drag down my pulse cross monitor so we can look in it vertical interval and see it. Anyway being an analog format you can see any Miss tracking on the screen very easily it shows up as noisy color because the color is the highest frequencies that were recorded and any mistracking of the beam will pick up crosstalk from adjacent tracks before you'll see it in the main video signal. I'm sure if I put my scope on there I could find tune it a little bit better but realistically the screen does a pretty good job.
@@12voltvids I think you've got the EFM details backwards. The problem with literal encoding of bits is that there's no bit clock to reference, so the timing has to be recovered from the signal. The signal is made up of transitions, rather than specific states (land vs. pit), where a one is encoded as a transition, and a zero is encoded as no-transition. A transition provides a clock tick as well as a data bit, but when there are multiple zero bits, there are no transitions, the timing free-wheels, and things can slip further out of sync until it's unable to determine how many bits have passed. This is particularly important in CLV, since you can't even determine timing by the rotation of the disc, as the rotation speed is dictated by the pace of the data stream, and the number of rotations per unit-time isn't relevant. This is a problem in MANY digital encoding schemes, and there are various ways to deal with it. Serial communications like RS-232 require framing where you're guaranteed to have a start bit and potentially one or more stop bits to book-end the bit slots. This ensures a once-per-frame minimum of transitions to keep timing synchronized. NRZ / NRZI is another form, which requires that a transition occur every so often. Since you can't dictate the content, one way to ensure the presence of ones is to insert a transition after so-many non-transitions -- but then the bitrate is variable. (USB uses this, for instance.) Another option is to just expand the length of encoded values so that the bit patterns don't correspond directly to X bits, but form a look-up table solely made up of entries that have adequate transitions. It makes the encoding more verbose -- hence 8 bits in, 14 bits out. It often gets confused as a parity scheme, but it's not actually payload redundancy that adds the extra bits, it's just that you can't use all the binary combinations in that 2^14 set since you have to avoid the codes that contain all zeroes, or would butt up against an adjacent code that starts or ends with zeroes. The expanded coding guarantees there won't be a long stretch of no transitions in a similar way to how UUencode guarantees the ability to send 8-bit binary values within communications channels that are only 7-bit capable (or only 7-bit safe without inadvertently sending control codes), and so on.
I can almost guarantee that thing's got some bad caps in it. I'm working on MDP-600 #3 right now and it's 2 for 3 with bad caps. The remaining one was a parts unit that I didn't bother checking, but I'm sure it's bad too. #3 is so bad that I had to remove the tilt and sled motor driver ICs, sand down the PCB, and replace some Swiss cheese traces with wire. All the caps in the servo section of the board were gone, a few in the audio section, half of them in the power supply PCB, and the lone one on the tilt motor PCB. It would "play" before the repair, but it couldn't track the disc worth a crap. I ran out of time after surgery and replacing all hundred-something caps in it (just in case!), and it still has a problem somewhere that prevents the disc from spinning up at all now. The power section of the main board is also whining a little, so I'm sure that's related. I'll get to it when some summer projects let up, but at least it's not cancerous anymore.
Quite an amazing player and a great repair. I can tell that you were happy to get it working by how you were talking and possibly a sigh of relief as well. So lucky that that the ribbon didn't get damaged when it got twisted.
Looking to buy one of these, so watched your video to see whether a repairs might be possible given my limited capabilities.
I enjoy your videos. I have Reel to Reels and DVD/VCR's & electronics, vintage thru to present day digital
My wife's office is next to mine and she now recognizes your voice because I watch heaps of your repairs "Are you watching that Canadian guy, again".
Keep up the good work!
Just wanted to say I enjoy your repairs on laser disc and vcr machines. I always wanted a laser disc back in the day, couldn't afford it. I like the mechanical aspects of them. It's nice to disconnect and enjoy vintage physical media. I appreciate the work you do to keep them out of landfills.
Cheers, Dave! Nice to see our Canadian Tire dollars hard at work. My dad once told me about when he was in Portugal while in the forces back in the early '70s. Some of the servicemen (not him :) were giving the ladies of the night Canadian Tire money and telling them they were actual Canadian dollars. Needless to say, the commanding officer was made aware and said enlisted men had to pay the actual funds. Not sure if it was an actual bank or an irate pimp who was point man.
Well they were partially correct. They were Canadian Dollars if you spent them at Canadian Tire. I don't see a problem here! :)
Another great deal! At first, I thought that since it could play both sides of the disc, it would have two lasers, one for the top and the bottom. Didn't expect to see a single laser that flips itself around to play the other side! So it came down to adjusting the spindle height and tilt adjustments, amazing!
Hi Dave, congratulations, you are so professional and did great job.
I loved Laserdiscs, too. Had quite a collection back in the day, with an original Pioneer single-sided player then upgraded to a dual-sided (auto reverse) player. When it died nobody in town began to know how to fix them, and by then DVDs were taking over. Alas.
Fabulous job!
@12:00 Sometimes causes problems??? ha ! I love it when they install the cable to such exacting tolerance there is strain on the cable for it's whole life. - like 3 more millimeters would be such a dividend issue.
The problem is that, if the ribbon were any longer, it would droop onto the disc when playing the beginning of Side B. There's a little springy wire catch at the bottom rear of the chassis that keeps some tension on the ribbon to prevent that from happening. If you were to make the ribbon longer, it would defeat the purpose of that retention, or you would have to pull the ribbon more, defeating the purpose of a longer ribbon. The only real solution would be to have an upper cable guide as well -- but then you have to clear that when the pickup goes through the C-shaped guide in the back to flip upside down.
@@nickwallette6201 I don't mean with this unit.. on other applications. Cheers.
I have a Sony MDP-MR1 C-Quick Reverse (Auto reverse) working great. Only issue mine had was the glue had leaked slightly on the magnet and caused the disc to stick when try to eject which was easily cleaned.
That has been the case on three different MDP-600 / A1s that I've worked on. If anyone reading has a Sony player, take the retaining bracket off, and use some strong cleaner on that magnet bearing surface of the clamp. Right around the edges, the glue leaks down and is super sticky. It's an easy fix once you know what the problem is.
There was a screw that was blocking the magic eye that flips to side A and and B it near the center motor, I think it is a bit too high.
Maybe those ribbon cables are more robust than we assume they are. That thing was folded over on top of itself as well as crunched-looking. Great diagnosis and fix, Dave. Although I am wondering, does the side flip mechanism usually make that grating noise? It doesn’t sound right…but what do I know? Thanks for recording and posting.👍
Yeah most laser just do make some strange noises as they're doing their thing especially the auto reverse ones but as they're spitting up they make all kinds of weird noises this one here one of them little deers there's a little plastic gear in there and the mechanism that spins around as it's clamping the desk and it sounds like one of the little gears is maybe a little bit loud as it's clamping down the disk. That's always a concern is that the plastic gears break but this one here they're not it's working. Sometimes the clamp bearing on the top also can get a bit noisy just from sitting around but I've run several movies through it at this point I've been going through some of my old collection of movies watching them and it's playing them all good end to end and reversing at the end of the first side. I've run five or six movies through it so far. We just watching a neat one last night called 49th parallel to like a war propaganda movie from but 1941 1942 somewhere in there about Germans you both sailors that got sunk off the coast of Canada trying to take sanction in the USA at that point in time was neutral in world war II. One thing I've discovered with this unit is because I don't have the remote control I can't select the audio output and the last person that selected audio output on this set it to the analog output so even when the disc has digital audio it is outputting the analog sound. Not that there's anything wrong with the analog sound because it sounds fantastic but on this specific disc the left channel has the movie sound because it was a mono movie and the right channel has the narators commentary which is kind of neat because they talk about the making of the film. That was one of the strengths of laser disc when it was still in production was that there were many releases of films that were exclusive on the laser format and we never released on VHS or dvd. I've got countless discs that have special features that you'll never find anywhere other than on LaserDisc. it's one of the reasons I try to keep as many working players as I can is I've got all these old desks most I have never even seen because I was given a collection never have time to sit down and watch them but once in awhile I'll put one on and watch some old gem from you know the 1940s or 1950s and I tell you some of these old classics are certainly worth the second look.
Great and interesting video. You have become my favorite repairer on TH-cam. Your videos are high quality, your comments are interesting and entertaining, and you obviously know what you are doing.
Since you like Laser Discs, I have a unit I wish you would take a look at for me. It’s truly unique. It was Sony’s best when it was released. It plays CLV discs with the ability to pause, FF and RR without loosing the picture, because it uses digital storage to achieve the effects.
It’s a CD CDV LD PLAYER model number MDP 510. It simply stopped working decades ago.
Would you be interested in attempting to repair it for me. It has a unique remote with a jog shuttle dial. I can send pictures if you wish.
Thanks!!
I need to find an old LD disc for testing out my anti skate on my turntable! They say to use an old laser disc to test the anti skate!
Cool laser disc!!!! By 2001 laser disc had completely replaced by DVD.
Not really, but were on the decline. Many hard d=core laserdisk owners didn't want DVD due to compression artifacts
I have 3 of them, all Pioneer, I love 'em too.
I have 3 pioneer, an auto reverse, auto reverse with DVD and Karoke, Panasonic, Yamaha, and 2 Sony's the 2 I just recently fixed.
@@12voltvids Is one brand better than the other in terms of quality of build, maintenance etc?
@@stevenmann9769 well there are certainly different features like I think my mdp 555sa has a better picture then this empty 800 it has a time-based corrector built in which really cleans up the video coming off the desk and allows for things such as slow motion and free frame on even the clv discs. And just overall has a better picture it has a 3D comb filter which gives excellent results on S-Video even though laserdist was a composite format I have a pioneer that also has digital memory in it and the time-based cracker and it also happens to play DVDs as well so it's kind of the ultimate player I should compare the MVP 555 with my pioneer and see which one looks better because they both have very good picture. This mdp 800 it's analog all the way from the laser pickup to the output there's not much in the way of processing done so if you have a disc that's getting a bit noisy it shows whereas my mdp555 when I have been playing some discs that have a bit of laser rot tends to look better and I'm starting to use that player for some of my old discs that look pretty rough on some of my other players and it actually they look quite good on the 555
@@12voltvids Interesting. I have a CLD 503 & 2950 as well as a karaoke disc player. The 2950 is good as I can play PAL discs too. No video processing on these, so I need to make sure I keep my discs nice and clean. I thoroughly recommend the boxed sets that appeared in the early to late 90s. I have a copy of Alien that is fantastic video quality and most importantly, not screwed around by the film company. Most of the reasons why I kept laserdisc as a format, was to enjoy original theatrical releases. So many streaming versions have been bastardized by the film companies...
@@stevenmann9769 that's right you can get the director's cut on laser and it was not available on the other formats. I have many collectible discs as my neighbors son who passed away a few years ago was in the film business. He was an animator for Pixar and his name is in the credits on movies such as toy story cars and finding Nemo. Unfortunately he and other people on his crew got rare cancers, speculation is it was from long-term exposure at close range to the CRT monitors of the day used in animation but that's for another discussion. Anyway he collected many of the director's cut box sets. When he passed his parents who lived just down the street from me offered me his collection of movies and his old laserdisc player.
I have the three Star wars original ones Star wars empire strikes back and return of the Jedi director cut I have many of the old classics like chariots of fire the three back to the Future movies one I just watch called 49th parallel probably over 100 movies. Including all the original Disney catalog before the sensors started removing elements of the films to make them more politically correct. It is true though old Walt was quite the racist and that was pretty evident by the old cartoons that you won't find today. I have an old Mickey mouse cartoon on 8 mm film where Mickey mouse puts on black face by putting a firecracker in his mouth and lighting it. Again you try that today and the cancel culture of today will hunt you down.
Very cool old system. I have never seen one in person. Well I lie a bit, back when I was an Army Recruiter we went from an early vhs type cassette player which was, instead a Super 8mm movie projector built into a sort of suitcase so we could show videos in school libraries or even prospects homes. As I left recruiting and became s CIVILIAN once more, we were just being introduced to a sort of laser disk machine which was much earlier and well did not work much better then the super 8 suitcase machines. Sales aids you know.
Hi from Sydney I have the Sony Karoke Model MDP-A660K Bought it from a Chinese friend complete with Karaoke Discs & Sony Golden Microphone lol! Being PAL here it only has a composite video output. but TV is multisysytem anyway..Mosy discs sold here were NTSC.back in the 80s.
It was cool to see that Sony demo with Shotover jet featured, a local jetboat company here in Queenstown, New Zealand. Do you happen to have this demo archived on your channel already?
No I haven't archived that demo I guess I probably could for some of the scenes from that demo disc. Have to be careful though because some of the music may be pull a copyright. I know some of the tracks they're using John Tesh for the background music and there's some live performances on the disk.
I have a laser disc of an IMAX film that was shot on the space shuttle Challenger before it blew up obviously I should locate that one it was pretty cool and when they showed the launch of that shuttle this was shot on IMAX but this sound you crank the volume up and it has the windows shaking I remember watching it once when there was no one home and I let the volume get a little bit loud I had the windows open because it was a summer day and all the neighbors were out on the street wondering what all that roar was.
@@12voltvids Ahh yes, thats fair enough. The youtube bots can be savage. That Challenger footage would be awesome to see as well, bet those amps were cranking!
I wonder if dropping it would knock it out of alignment like that...
Doubt it was dropped. There would be aparant damage.
Hi David, The tilt is for crosstalk. You should check the focus gain.
Yes I'm fully aware what the tilt does it's to line the laser up so that it's perpendicular to the tracks. There's no focus gain or tracking gain adjustment on this player this one is digital. The earlier players yes but this one was a later generation where all that was done digitally so there are no adjustments they're literally three adjustments on the board tilt for a side tilt for b-side and Master clock and that's it everything else done digitally.
The digital adjustments for the focus and tracking game maybe adjustable using a special remote just like with the camcorders use the special servicing remote to set up digital adjustments however once they were set at the factory they should never need to be readjusted.
@@12voltvids Nope. I have the service manuals for a few of the MDP models. There's tilt, and some analog stuff (video level, etc.) There are what looks like they might be tiny pots on the laser module itself, but there's not mention of them in the service manual. So I would assume that tweaking those converts a working laser into a not-working laser.
@@nickwallette6201 In the video circuit there are video level and black level, one in the syscon (clock) and the tilt controls. The ones on the laser block set laser current and fuxing with them will likely kill the laser.
@@12voltvids Oh I see. I did not Sony did something for newer LD player to stop us fixing it. Thanks
@@alanwong3980 no, the focus and tracking are set automatically. Like all modern machines.
That's awesome. Sort of makes me want to find a "broken" LD player and try to revive it... didn't have any luck with a CD player I tried to save but at least these are big
I thought I had scored a 8 track recorder today saw an ad for one advertised for $1. Figured that would be a good score for something to show off on the channel when I contacted the guy he came back and said it was $180. I told him to keep it and then reported them Facebook for deceptive pricing. I say good luck now for him selling it to anyone else because everyone else will see that he had put an incorrect price in the listing.
It seems DVD players have a real knack for croaking. I've gotten two Sony DVD players (trying to find something to play SACDs) that both have dead lasers. In one case, replacing the laser itself (not even the whole drive mech, just the sled!) got it working when it previously wouldn't detect anything but CDs. The other ... still waiting on a replacement laser. It would play SL DVDs, but didn't seem to be able to focus on SACDs, and IIRC, had some issues with DL DVD as well.
What's odd is that, on both drives, you could still see the red dot through the disc just fine. I guess it's just the wrong shade of red now. :-P
Old tech is so fascinatinc man...
You have an analytical mind.
Canadian Tire doesn't even give you money anymore when you pay with cash. Everything is through their credit card.
I have video 8 videorecorder i have working battery but when i turn the power button nothing happeneds so can you help me?
Possibly.
Hi. 12voltsvideo.
Which one is the phase blue or brown?
Brown is hot. Oops i should have said live.
well done
i have one of these and some discs i will sell it works do you want it?
@4:30 third prong can act as support stablizer... No harm. nice use of the Canuckistanian dollars - I don't find the staff at Canadian Tire that great, if I choose to ride my bike there and have a backpack on , they treat me like a criminal. Then I ask why they aren't taking away the purses from the women if they are so concerned about people with bags. A few times that has trumped their demands as well as asking who's liable for MY items going missing behind the counter. I'm obviously not there to rip them off anyways.. they are there to rip me off and make me feel guilty about nothing. True stories.
Wow you went to Laser World ! 😂 Is that Sony thing? My Pioneer does not say that.
Mines not playin either side
I have spent many hours cursing Auto Reverse players, the early ones were very picky to get a good picture from both sides.
The later players with digital tracking were a lot easier, with fewer adjustments to go out of alignment.
A lot of tech's hated the Sony players, if any gears broke they are difficult to rebuild.
I still like laserdisc, and as i have said, as soon as any players are available at a sensible price i buy them,
some you can get working provided the laser is good, others have broken gears and it's always the same ones that break.
Fo $10 and bit of tweaking you can't complain, there are very few people with the gear and skills to repair and set up
broken players.
I was lucky to have been trained by Pioneer, and still have the test discs and manuals for most models, some spares
are now very hard to find.
Pioneer europe is no more, and Pioneer Japan has limited stocks of parts only for the Japan market models.
The format has done well, and hopefully will continue for a few more years.
Well done :-D
It looks like a bloody nightmare to get it into a balanced happy state.
That ribbon is horrible.
Pity you didn't have the setup manual so you could connect your oscilliscope and see what's going on.
I still think laser pickups are dodgy as hell !.
No I don't have service manual and I don't feel like looking for one. However on these machines the server was digital so there's no setup to do. There's no focus gain our focus balance or tracking adjustments, only tilt for side a and side B. If I were to look at the I pattern I could maximize it with the tilt but since this is an analog device not a digital device I don't need to use a scope because I have a big 42-in screen sitting right next to me or I can see the noise. the only thing that would be better than what I was using would have been a CRT monitor. Being an analog signal you see the signal to noise ratio take a dump when your alignment is off. Same goes for the LaserDisc players that were not digital tracking where you had focus gain and balance and tracking game and balance you could see it on the screen. With CD players and DVD players as a signal is digital you don't notice it being off slightly until it's so far off that it's mistracking and the audio is breaking up or the picture is breaking up. That's why you need to use a scope so that you can maximize your signal looking at the analog signal that comes off the disc. And yes even CD and DVD the signal that comes off the disc is analog. A lot of people don't realize that but it actually is. The digital signal on a compact disc for example is not recorded as ones and zeros as it would be if it was a digital file. The digital signal is converted into a pulse width modulated signal through what is called EFM. They used to refer to that as 8 to 14 modulation but what it really was was converting the 8-Bit video into a frequency modulated encoded waveform. You see with optical recording there's a minimum pit length which on CD is basically three bits. So you cannot have the laser modulating on off on off on off on off on off on off like that that's duration is too short it can be a minimum of three so three ones or three zero is the minimum. With digital audio it would be possible to have a waveform that was 101010 etc so that's converted so that it can be nothing shorter than three zeros or three ones so you can have four zeros and 10 or five ones and nine zeros or whatever right but it all added up to 14 bits. The 8-Bit data was turned into the equivalent of 14 bits so that you could never have fewer than three on either end 8 to 14 modulation. That 8 to 14 modulation now represents a pulse width modulation scheme which is actually what is on the disc. In the CD player that was turned back into an 8-bit chunk you had two eight bits to make up 1 16 bit sample. Analog laser disc on the other hand it's just an FM carrier just like how the video is modulated on a video tape, but on video tape the luminance is modulated by an FM carrier and the chroma was converted down and recorded it at lower frequency on laser disc it's the composite signal with the chroma still at the 3.579545 megahertz subcarrier frequency. There was two other carriers placed on the desk as well for the two analog FM soundtracks and then they squeezed in a digital carrier as well for the digital soundtrack that most of the later discs had. If I'm not mistaken and I haven't researched this so I might be talking out of my ass but if I remember some early papers I read on the digital sound it was placed in the vertical interval ahead of the closed caption data in the first few lines they stored the digital information in the header. I should drag down my pulse cross monitor so we can look in it vertical interval and see it. Anyway being an analog format you can see any Miss tracking on the screen very easily it shows up as noisy color because the color is the highest frequencies that were recorded and any mistracking of the beam will pick up crosstalk from adjacent tracks before you'll see it in the main video signal. I'm sure if I put my scope on there I could find tune it a little bit better but realistically the screen does a pretty good job.
@@12voltvids I think you've got the EFM details backwards. The problem with literal encoding of bits is that there's no bit clock to reference, so the timing has to be recovered from the signal. The signal is made up of transitions, rather than specific states (land vs. pit), where a one is encoded as a transition, and a zero is encoded as no-transition. A transition provides a clock tick as well as a data bit, but when there are multiple zero bits, there are no transitions, the timing free-wheels, and things can slip further out of sync until it's unable to determine how many bits have passed. This is particularly important in CLV, since you can't even determine timing by the rotation of the disc, as the rotation speed is dictated by the pace of the data stream, and the number of rotations per unit-time isn't relevant.
This is a problem in MANY digital encoding schemes, and there are various ways to deal with it. Serial communications like RS-232 require framing where you're guaranteed to have a start bit and potentially one or more stop bits to book-end the bit slots. This ensures a once-per-frame minimum of transitions to keep timing synchronized.
NRZ / NRZI is another form, which requires that a transition occur every so often. Since you can't dictate the content, one way to ensure the presence of ones is to insert a transition after so-many non-transitions -- but then the bitrate is variable. (USB uses this, for instance.)
Another option is to just expand the length of encoded values so that the bit patterns don't correspond directly to X bits, but form a look-up table solely made up of entries that have adequate transitions. It makes the encoding more verbose -- hence 8 bits in, 14 bits out. It often gets confused as a parity scheme, but it's not actually payload redundancy that adds the extra bits, it's just that you can't use all the binary combinations in that 2^14 set since you have to avoid the codes that contain all zeroes, or would butt up against an adjacent code that starts or ends with zeroes.
The expanded coding guarantees there won't be a long stretch of no transitions in a similar way to how UUencode guarantees the ability to send 8-bit binary values within communications channels that are only 7-bit capable (or only 7-bit safe without inadvertently sending control codes), and so on.
@@marky4332 i've found Hifi engine to be really handy :-D
Denon avr 1804 amplifier clicking and tricking sound all control panel
eBay has those cables, send dimensions
Don't need it.
I wouldn't mind hearing some karaoke 🎤
Trust me, you don't want to hear that. I wouldn't make you suffer.
CT money FTW!
I am glad I never bought one of those.
I'm glad I only paid $10 for it.
I can almost guarantee that thing's got some bad caps in it. I'm working on MDP-600 #3 right now and it's 2 for 3 with bad caps. The remaining one was a parts unit that I didn't bother checking, but I'm sure it's bad too. #3 is so bad that I had to remove the tilt and sled motor driver ICs, sand down the PCB, and replace some Swiss cheese traces with wire. All the caps in the servo section of the board were gone, a few in the audio section, half of them in the power supply PCB, and the lone one on the tilt motor PCB.
It would "play" before the repair, but it couldn't track the disc worth a crap. I ran out of time after surgery and replacing all hundred-something caps in it (just in case!), and it still has a problem somewhere that prevents the disc from spinning up at all now. The power section of the main board is also whining a little, so I'm sure that's related. I'll get to it when some summer projects let up, but at least it's not cancerous anymore.
Well they haven't reared their ugly heads yet, but I am extensively running it now to see if something will fail in the short term.
I might as well be in the record books for the only person in town to run in to a police car on a motorized bike.