DVL-909 Laserdisc Player anyone know anything about them?

HrutkayMods · April 27, 2016

Hello I was just curious if anyone knew about my DVL-909 player or Laserdiscs in general lol.

I have been an enthusiast of LD for six or seven years now after I got a free player from my high school that was being tossed out , and I decided to buy myself a proper player finally. It appears to have never been used a lot in fact the internals are mint and superclean. It's not the greatest laserdisc player on earth by any means but it will play any laserdisc on earth including PAL (minus MUSE and my CD-Vs although it is advertised as being able to play CD-V I think? But in any CD playback capable player apparently it can't read the laserdisc part of CD-V). Although it's not a reason why I bought the player ( I actually bought it strictly for Laserdisc playback and the occasional very early DVD) it is a combo player for LD/DVD/VCD/CD, so it has two lasers in it to switch between LD and DVD, The thing is it can play new DVDs with no problem switching the laser over immediately after it sees it, but older DVDs ( like really early ones which had about the same quality of LD and were out the same time this player was out) Will not switch over, and I have to put a new DVD in to switch the laser and then put the old DVD in to play it back. I actually like watching early DVDs on it it feels more authentic. I also would like it to be able to play VCD and CD, but for some reason it acts like it is an early DVD and won't do anything, although it can see that it has a CD in it and will even identify it as such (it uses the LD laser to play back CDs) it just won't spin up the disc and play? I've taken the system apart and everything seems to be working fine, it just seems to be strictly a LD/DVD Player and I have no clue why? LD playback is totally clear with no tracking issues or ghosting, and DVD playback is awesome too (when it works) although like I said I only play back very old DVDs on it. So I know the lasers should be okay. I doubt many people know about this player or even what a laserdisc is, I figure I would ask and maybe I will get lucky with some person that has a clue lol... Help?

Omon_Ra · April 27, 2016

Damn, last I remember seeing them was in college (2004-8). I was a film studies major so some of the older, but not too old, films were on LD. I just remember them being fragile as all hell and really finicky to get to work. And the quality was pretty poor compared to even a VHS; but that may be more of the scan/film itself than LaserDisk.

HrutkayMods · April 27, 2016

37 minutes ago, Omon_Ra said:

Damn, last I remember seeing them was in college (2004-8). I was a film studies major so some of the older, but not too old, films were on LD. I just remember them being fragile as all hell and really finicky to get to work. And the quality was pretty poor compared to even a VHS; but that may be more of the scan/film itself than LaserDisk.

Actually LD quality is about twice the resolution of most VHS types (not including D-VHS because it's basically a 1080i dual layer Blu-ray on tape). If you hook it up properly and have a good quality player it is amazing quality. I have it hooked up to my 4K TV though my 4K 60Hz capable HTPC. The tuner card does amazing deinterlacing and is superior to to the crappy converter box I tried (apparently it didn't have deinterlacing). Wow the video quality! In fact LD quality is almost the same as early DVD if not a little better especially on later LDs.

Omon_Ra · April 27, 2016

7 hours ago, HrutkayMods said:

-snip-

Yeah, like I said, this was 2004-2008, and the films we were watching were kind of oddball ones that for whatever reason were only on LaserDisc. Probably not the best scans and I know not the best projectors/screens. Some were much better than VHS, others were about on par with them. It just was funny seeing the professors try and not drop the damn things loading them. And the look on some of my fellow classmates when they saw one was totally worth it. The confusion/horror

HrutkayMods · April 27, 2016

35 minutes ago, Omon_Ra said:

Yeah, like I said, this was 2004-2008, and the films we were watching were kind of oddball ones that for whatever reason were only on LaserDisc. Probably not the best scans and I know not the best projectors/screens. Some were much better than VHS, others were about on par with them. It just was funny seeing the professors try and not drop the damn things loading them. And the look on some of my fellow classmates when they saw one was totally worth it. The confusion/horror

Yeah seeing my friends' reactions have been priceless