Pioneer HLD-X9 Laserdisc Player

[admin]

So after many years of careful waiting, I was able to acquire a coveted laserdisc player to enhance my laserdisc hobby. I had recently acquired an additional 500+ discs from a local seller and was on usaudiomart just "window shopping" audio gear. I decided to see if they had any laserdisc listings an lo and behold there was a player on sale. Not only that, but the location was less than an hour drive from where I live. It peaked my interest even further when I saw that it was one of the top models ever made for the format.

I should probably talk a little about why players in the laserdisc hobby are so important. Unlike other formats like Blu-ray and CD, the picture quality is very highly dependent on the laserdisc player. I'm not suggesting that all CD players are the same, but the relative performance difference is minimal when compared to the performance difference of laserdisc players. This has much to do with the comb filters installed in the units that create the actual video output.

In addition, if you ask 20 audiophiles "what is the best speaker ever created" you may get 20 different answers. In the laserdisc world, you will probably get maybe 2 answers that all 20 people come up with and agree upon. The reason is that the most advanced comb filters came near the end of the laserdisc life cycle, and the development of a red laser pickup made crosstalk between frames much less of an issue. This was only available on late model laserdisc players that also played the Hi-def MUSE format.

So if you can imagine a scenario where the overwhelming majority of audiophiles agree that the best speakers in existence come down to only 2 models, that were made 20-25 years ago, haven't been made since and will never be made again under any circumstance, were only released in Japan, and of course exist only in a finite diminishing number. This is the equivalent of my unit and why I was so excited to buy it.

The gentleman I bought it from is in the process of moving across the country and is downsizing for the move. Over the course of a day we quickly arranged a pickup time and we met half way so I only had to drive about 30 minutes or so. He also threw in a very nice voltage transformer (in Japan they use 100V). Everything went smoothly.

I had it in my system and set up within 48 hours. Really nice unit in "new condition." I've been playing movies (between music listening) and it truly wonderful. The picture is at another level. I've never seen laserdiscs look this sharp. The unit is significantly more quiet as well. Laserdisc players tend to be loud as the discs are heavy, large (the size of LPs), and spun at a high rate.

For a laserdisc aficionado this is a very exciting thing to own. Just thought I share the experience.

[AnotherJohnson]

That’s a beauty. The Japanese always keep the best stuff for their domestic market. I’m excited for you!

Is it really champagne color too? Or is that just the glow from being near high end CJ?

I’ve got to look for those disks I think I have. I’ve never had a laser disk player. Not sure how my mother came to own them.

[admin]

Yes, the color is champagne as well,... although slightly lighter shade than CJ gear. It really is beautiful and has the brushed finish (like CJ).

Fun stuff. It's amazing how many people you find with some discs here and there.

[Wildcat]

That is the most gorgeous LD player I've ever seen!

To think that my first LD player was the ancient top-loading LD-660 which didn't even have a way to jump between chapters...but at the time (the mid 80s) it was exciting to own one.

[admin]

That is the most gorgeous LD player I've ever seen!

To think that my first LD player was the ancient top-loading LD-660 which didn't even have a way to jump between chapters...but at the time (the mid 80s) it was exciting to own one.

Well, if you owned ANY LD player in the 80's, you were the big tech guy on the block!

[Wildcat]

I loved confusing the friends and relatives with those big shiny discs! It was barebones (it was an entry-level model), but built like a tank.

[admin]

It definitely has a wow factor. I often show them to guests and they can't believe it. "That's the largest CD I have ever seen!"

[Wildcat]

Even once the CD finally made its appearance, some were still puzzled as to exactly how a Laserdisc worked. It's analog, but I'd get the question: "So that's digital?" And things got further confusing when they started putting a digital soundtrack onto the discs!

Reminds me, I only have one of those CD-Video discs where they had a laserdisc video track alongside a CD single (like Donald Fagen's "New Frontier"), and still have a handful of those 8-inch LDs with music videos on them.

[paulCJ]

Congrats on the Laserdisc machine! My old laserdisc player seems to not have a good picture quality on the newer tv sets. I still have access to an old Sony tube tv where it was initially connected to.
The latest machine that I like is the Panasonic UB9000 4k blu-ray player that also plays DSD256 files. Ben Webster Live from Copenhagen (music only, from highdeftapetransfers.ca is phenomenal in dsd256 and dsd64)

[admin]

Congrats on the Laserdisc machine! My old laserdisc player seems to not have a good picture quality on the newer tv sets. I still have access to an old Sony tube tv where it was initially connected to.
The latest machine that I like is the Panasonic UB9000 4k blu-ray player that also plays DSD256 files. Ben Webster Live from Copenhagen (music only, from highdeftapetransfers.ca is phenomenal in dsd256 and dsd64)

Laserdisc unfortunately looks less than ideal on modern TV's without a dedicated scaler or some external scaling done with a scaler chip designed for optimal analog to digital up conversion. Without a good scaler you are going to have a bad time with you 1080p/4K screen.

[Wildcat]

I somehow think standard VHS, in SLP (6-hour mode), might be even worse.

Funny how back then, we felt Laserdisc was the best picture we could ever get. Now we have a pair of 4K TVs in the house, and I'm actually toying with getting an OLED for myself. And I think we all dreamt that one day we'd have TVs we could hang on our walls. How times have changed!

[AnotherJohnson]

My early HD video was 16mm film vs 8mm film.

Either one looked better that the B&W picture on an RCA 16” CRT.

Now they both look horrid. I’ve got projectors for 16mm, 16mm w/sound, 8mm, and Super 8mm. And family films dating back to the ‘30s from my grandfathers.

Regarding the laser disks I’ve mentioned as things to send to admin, they have not yet turned up in my searching. They may have been casualties of our recent downsize. I’ll keep looking.

[Wildcat]

My dad shot a few dozen reels of 8mm--that's a project to get those transferred to video. (Last I tried, his Honeywell 8mm projector worked, but things were sluggish and I'm afraid that if the bulb blows, I won't find a replacement. On a positive note, we have a small camera repair shop right at the end of the street if I need someone to ask for parts or repair.)

Plus, I have thousands of my parents' photos, including hundreds of slides. I do have an older film/slide scanner, but it is slow, and use the VueScan software to work with it (since its native software was defective--long story).

I have Hi8 videos I had taken decades ago, early 90s, and again I don't know if either the camera or the Hi8 VCR I own even works anymore. Then I was using a DVCam which recorded to tiny tapes, and the latest was a Canon which shot up to 1080p. Current video devices are a DSLR, GoPro, and whichever phone I'm carrying that day.

I just want to get some of the best of these in a digital format I can use, so I can at leave view them once while I'm still on this earth.

[admin]

There are services online where you can send your old media (photos, film, etc..) and they will convert it to a digital format. They are not very cheap, but it's a question of time and then buying the correct archiving gear (scanners, software, etc...).

An example: https://smoothphotoscanning.com

[Wildcat]

I would probably do it myself, given the volume of film I need to go through. I could make some nice video presentations if I could compile these all together in one place.

Although I need motivation. I still have footage from two Lemons Rallies I did last year that I haven't edited yet.

[admin]

If you have a large number of photos, I would buy a dedicated photo scanner. It's a lot faster to feed the photos into those than putting it on a flat bed and then cropping the scan. They sell scanners for 8mm film as well. They cost about $250 (and up).

It's a balance of whether investing in the equipment is worth it compared to sending it to one of these archiving places. I guess it depends how much material you plan to archive.

[Wildcat]

Good point on the photo scanner--we have two flatbed scanners here, and one has an auto document feeder, but the feeder is more for paper vs. photographs. None of the family photos are probably any larger than 5x7 (most are 4x6 or smaller). For the film, I had one of those mirror boxes that you could point your video camera and film projector into, but I never seemed to have good luck with getting a clear result. I suppose I could tap into my resources and see if I can borrow or buy a used converter/scanner for 8mm film. With the slides and negatives where I can't find photos, I'd probably stick with the film scanner I have already. (I wish I had bought the APS attachment, though--I have a couple dozen rolls of APS film from the 90s.)

For one-off "scans," I've been admiring how well the Photo Scan app on my phone works (it's one of Google's apps). It takes a primary photo, then has you shift the phone to take four additional photos, then those are combined together to create a photo that is square (not keystoned), and as evenly lit as possible, even removing some of the glare. It works in a pinch!

I'd really like a 12-inch scanner for LP jackets, but that's another topic entirely.

[admin]

I hear ya. The problem I find is that each format has special scanners made to really optimize not just the scan but the time it takes to do all these. I just think scanning hundreds of photos in with a flat bed scanner will take forever. Maybe I'm just too inpatient!

As for negatives and 8mm, you will need dedicated scanning equipment. No real way around that. You can try calling some local photo or camera stores and see if they have rental programs. I know some do. If you can rent one of these higher end models for even just one day, you could probably get through it in 1/10th the time it would take you to do these manually yourself with a flatbed scanner (or your phone).

[Wildcat]

Totally agree on the flatbed scanner--it's fine for large photos (of which there are very few), but smaller ones would take forever. That goes beyond impatience into pure frustration! It would be worth having a dedicated scanner for those prints.

The film scanner I have accepts one negative strip or four slides, clipped into a carriage. It's slow, but the scanning can take place while I'm working or doing other tasks. It does pull a lot of detail from slides and negatives, so in that respect it's a fairly good scanner, certainly enough for casual viewing. It was interesting to see slides from the 50s and 60s, and noticed that the Ektachrome slides had a large color shift to magenta where Kodachrome held most of its original color balance (albeit a bit faded). A neat trick that the VueScan software does is let you enter the type of film that was used (brand, type, and I think even the ISO rating), and makes tiny adjustments based on that. It even forces the scanner to use a couple of different types of scanning methods, which take longer but can reduce the "noise" from dust and scratches and improve overall scan quality, which saves time editing in Photoshop.

My favorite camera store was a legend in our area, but they closed the entire store (it was an appliance store, with a camera shop in its own space) back in 2009, with a few of the employees having worked there for decades. The small camera repair shop at the end of our street might know of something--I've never been in there. Looking through the Googles just now, it looks as though he offers a transfer service as well.

Wait...weren't we talking about a Laserdisc player?