These two machines both have the same primary mission.
Their mission, should they choose to accept it,
is to play five compact discs in a row uninterrupted. On the left, we have
a Sony CDP-C235, which accomplishes its mission in a completely ordinary and mundane fashion.
On the right is a Pioneer CLD-M301.
And it has a little robot inside to help it along.
The Sony machine uses a boring ol’ carousel to do its work. When you press eject, after
making a startling amount of creaking noises, the drawer opens with a single CD front and center.
Pressing Disc Skip spins the circular inner portion 72 degrees to present you with
the next disc. Each depression for a disc is handily marked in stylish print.
(Just in case the vacuum fluorescent display wasn’t enough.)
Pressing eject on the Pioneer machine presents you with this monstrous and confusing tray,
littered with tiny little markings, details, and indentations. At least you can see all
the discs at once, I guess. But wait. There’s a 6th spot in the middle. And what’s with
all the little felt pads everywhere? Also, this is just one solid piece of plastic. How’s
the machine supposed to select a disc if it can’t move? Ah, well that explains the robot.
The machine from Pioneer isn’t just a CD player. It’s also a Laserdisc player. Now
if you don’t know what Laserdiscs are, you must be pretty new here, as I’ve made an
entire exhaustive series on the format which should be appearing in the corner pretty soon.
I’ll warn you, it’s a long series.
In two sentences Laserdiscs were the first
consumer optical disc, released in test markets at the tail of 1978 and therefore beating
the CD by nearly 4 years. These 12 inch--
a little late there, are we?--
These 12 inch discs contain up to an hour of near-DVD quality analog video per side, and although they stuck
around until the first year of the new millenium, their market penetration in North America
was an abysmal 2% at its peak which probably explains why you haven’t heard of them before,
if you haven’t.
OK that last sentence was a bit of a runon.
The Compact Disc, released in 1982, was a near-immediate success (unlike Laserdisc).
By 1984, Pioneer was making Laserdisc players that could also play CDs. They wanted in on
that action, and some executive (probably) wisely thought, why not make a twofer, and
maybe spur along the sales of Laserdisc. Sadly it didn’t really help the sales of Laserdisc,
but by the early nineties, the Compact Disc was all the rage. How lame you were if you
didn’t have a CD player by the time Home Improvement hit the airwaves.
Not long into the first years of being on the market, the CD changer was developed to
allow for playing multiple discs at once. I couldn’t find any info on exactly when
the first CD changers were released, but I can tell you that 1991 seems to have been
a pretty important year as this was the first year Pioneer made a machine like this. Not
wanting to miss out on the new wave of CD changers, Pioneer decided, by golly, we can
squeeze that into a Laserdisc player!
And they did! And this is the result. Now, Pioneer faced a bit of an odd problem when
designing a combo CD changer and Laserdisc player.
See in CD changers like this Sony,
the actual CD reader is shoved in a corner inside the machine. The CDs themselves are
brought to it when the carousel turns. But that can’t be done in this machine because
it also needs to be able to play a Laserdisc. For this machine, the actual disc transport
has to be in the center.
So Pioneer, the manufacturer brave enough to design a little ferris wheel to lift the
laser to the top side of a Laserdisc to allow for laying both sides of a single disc, decided
to just use a robotic arm to pick up the disc and bring it to the center. Why not?
Take a look at this in action. This spot here is disc 1. Watch what it does.
(various mechanical sounds)
OK, that’s pretty impressive. Now let’s select disc 5 over here.
(more various mechanical sounds)
I love how this machine works, but it’s hard to get a good view
of what exactly it’s doing. Nothing a screwdriver can’t fix!
At first glance, this may not look like much.
This black plastic circle functions as the upper clamp.
In many optical disc drives, the spindle motor works with a piece like this
to actually clamp the disc down as it spins. Together, they essentially form an optical
disc sandwich. Usually these clamps are pretty loose and spin freely, and sure enough…
so does this one. But you’d be wrong to think this is any ordinary optical drive disc
clamp. This is in fact how the player picks up the CDs.
If I start turning this drive belt by hand, you’ll see that the clamp moves towards
the end of the arm where it would be positioned above a CD. But once it stops, if I keep turning
eventually these three little fingers will pop out here. These hold on to a CD through the center hole.
Holding a CD from the center meant that even the 80mm mini cd was compatible.
Rather ingeniously, the fingers lock in place once the motor reaches its end stop.
When the motor is reversed, the disc clamp returns to the center, bringing the disc along with it.
Only when it’s back to the center and the motor keeps spinning further do the fingers
retract into the clamp and let the disc go. At this point it can play the disc.
When it’s time to put the disc back, the player will first reverse the motor even farther,
which re-engages and locks the fingers. Then it spins forward and travels to the end, with
the fingers locked in place the whole time. This time, running the motor beyond its end
stop disengages the fingers, which lets go of the disc, and then reversing the motor
brings it back to the center.
I’m glad I took this apart because it revealed a very elegant simplicity to this mechanism.
Notice how the drive gear engages with this track. At each end, the track is fragmented.
These sections here can actually move when this pin is released, and are pulled by the
same motor which moves the grabby clamper. These plastic hook things are what actually
engage and disengage the fingers that hold the disc, and they’re attached to these
small moveable sections of track. When the clamp reaches the end of its travel, it hits
the lock pin which frees the small track section and allows it to move. But ingeniously, by
this point the drive gear is already off the stationary track segment, meaning the gear
is only engaged with the moveable piece. With the small section of track now free to move,
the motor works to pull it towards the clamp, which pulls the hook thing along with it.
This pushes or pulls on small tabs above the clamp, and these extend or retract the disc
grabbing fingers. When the motor reverses direction, it first pushes the track back
to it’s normal position where it locks in place, and after the track has stopped moving
and locked in, the gear can now move the disc clamp along the track.
Arranging the track like this allowed for a single motor to move the clamp and engage
the fingers. This is really genius engineering in my humble opinion. It echoes the both side
play mechanism from the CLD-D502--the same motor which moves the laser along the rails
sends it to the top, too. You can see the tracking gear spinning as it reaches the top.
At the end of its travel, it engages with the linear teeth here to move the laser towards
the center of the disc. By the way, I’m pretty sure these could be considered rack
and pinion systems, with this the rack and that the pinion.
As cool as this machine is, it suffers from being both a sub-par Laserdisc player as well
as a sub-par CD changer.
Let’s put the Disc Grabber 9000™ back in place and compare
operation of these two machines.
When compared to a carousel CD changer, the Pioneer machine is significantly slower to
change discs. Let’s do a race. We’ll switch from disc one to disc 2 on both machines.
(even more various mechanical noises)
Yeah that wasn’t even close. Also, the Sony machine
has the advantage of being able to spin the carousel backwards. If you want to go from
disc 1 to disc 5, the Sony machine will simply rotate counterclockwise and get straight to
disc 5. The Pioneer has to travel all the way around to do the same thing. The farthest
the Sony machine ever has to travel is 2 spaces away, whereas the Pioneer will always have
to travel the relative distance between discs. However you could argue that the Pioneer machine
is more convenient to load up, so long as the convoluted tray isn’t a bother, as you
have access to all 5 discs at once.
Oh, but the Sony does have a neat party trick courtesy of its disc tray. You might have
noticed that the access cutouts for the laser transport are slanted. This is to allow for
the disc ex-change system. The Sony will allow you to swap out the other 4 discs while it’s playing the fifth.
The recess for whichever disc is in the back left corner has its cutout
go straight back and lines up with the reader mechanism, allowing room for the laser carriage
to travel beneath it. This means that the disc tray can move outward while it holds
on to the disc it’s playing. The machine is even smart enough to present the discs
two at a time, so that you never even see the spot for the disc it’s currently playing.
Though often times it has to do a bit of a shuffle to reassure itself what position its
actually in before it closes the tray.
Aside from this feature, the Sony is just overall better at being a CD changer. Its
faster, the display is far more comprehensive and there are many more controls on the machine
itself. Perhaps most importantly, it's a heck of a lot quieter. Pioneer again used clever
cost saving and simple engineering, and the machine uses the same motor that drives the
disc tray for lifting and lowering the disc grabber thing. Again I admire the simplicity,
but that motor is loud! And because of the way it operates, it makes a plethora of distinct
noises and in general is just bizarre sounding.
(A plethora of distinct, bizarre sounding noises)
By the way, the Sony machine isn’t a goodwill find, it was the CD player I grew
up with. It’s always made that creaking sound.
(pronounced creaking sound as the disc is lowered)
But its still far less intrusive than all this nonsense.
(yet still more various, bizarre, distinct mechanical noises)
So then, how does it do as a Laserdisc player? Well, it’s not bad. There’s nothing inherently
wrong with its performance, although there are plenty of players with better video performance.
And they combined the CD changing aspect into it rather well. Pioneer actually marketed
the fact that you can leave your favorite CDs in place when you want to play a Laserdisc.
Also perhaps less known is that you can place a 6th CD in the center which it will play,
but it does prevent using the changer. But this means you can leave your 5 favorites
in place, and play a 6th disc individually. I can actually see the appeal for that.
But what the CD changer makes impossible is a both-side play mechanism. There simply is
no way to fit the top rails for the laser and this robot thing in the same case without
extensive modification of both systems. You can see that the construction of these machines
is very similar, with the one on the right having a both side play mechanism rather than
a disc changer. I think the only way to combine these two systems together would be to stack
them and design a claw-machine like apparatus to grab a CD through this space. Even if they
pulled it off, the machine would likely be hideously expensive and comically tall.
So, to buy this machine means getting a less-than-ideal Laserdisc player and a less-than-ideal CD
changer. Now, I understand that there were plenty of single side machines being sold
that didn’t even have a CD changer inside. Both Side Play was really a high-end item.
But then you have to ask, is its clunky CD changer worth it?
To that, I’d say yeah...
This was a pretty clever move by Pioneer. They seem to have
priced this model just a hundred dollars higher than a basic Laserdisc player.
Abe’s of Maine apparently wanted just seventy bucks more for it over a CLD-S201, a basic Laserdisc
player. That made it significantly cheaper than buying two devices. But, and this is
a BIG but, it was still more than double the price of a basic CD changer. In fact, it’s
more expensive than ANY of these CD changers, including the Sony CDP-C910 which accommodates
10 CDs in a cartridge magazine.
I think Pioneer’s intent with these machines was to try and ride the wave of the CD changer
and spur sales of Laserdiscs at the same time. Laserdisc did receive a bit of a boom in the
late 80’s and early 90’s as the home theater scene came into light. If someone was looking
for a CD changer, why not take a look at a machine that can play Laserdiscs, too?
But I’m sure it was still a hard sell. And not just because of the price. Unless you
had already integrated your TV into your home stereo, having a CD player hooked into your
TV isn’t exactly ideal. I suppose it’s nice, but it won’t sound great. That said,
this player does produce a neat graphic on screen when changing discs. Yipee.
Oh, and one last unsettling thing. Laserdisc are heavy and spin at very high speeds--up
to 30 revolutions per second, or 1,800 RPM. I am not a fan of how close the disc changing
mechanism is to the disc’s surface. That sharp metal thing is awfully close to that
scratchable disc. In fact, this machine has the tightest clearances I’ve ever seen in
a Laserdisc player. With a Laserdisc playing above a tray full of CDs, it’s not even
a centimeter above them. That’s a tad scary.
Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this video. If this is your first time running
across the channel and you like what you saw, please consider subscribing! And a big thank
you to everyone who’s subscribed. This channel just passed 100,000 subscribers! I never really
thought that would happen, and I’m truly blown away. The folks on Patreon deserve huge
thanks for making that possible--it’s with your support that I’ve been able to go part
time at work and make videos more regularly. Without that, I’m sure this wouldn’t have
happened. If you’d like to become one of the awesome people who make this channel possible,
please check out my Patreon page. There’s a link on your screen, or you can find it
down below in the description. As always, thanks for your consideration,
and I’ll see you next time.
(sound of the Disc Grabber 9000™ traveling back and forth)