Hello and welcome to the very first Connextras: Sights and Sounds.
Today we're gonna be looking at laserdisc players and their operation.
Now we're gonna be looking at three different players with a bonus fourth player.
And we're gonna be starting with a bit of an odd duck.
This is the CLD-M301.
It's the Laserdisc player that has a built-in 5 disc CD changer.
Now, I'm gonna do a separate Sights and Sounds video on this player
because I took a lot of footage of the mechanism.
But I'm starting with it here because it represents a bare-bones Laserdisc player
from the early '90s pretty well.
It makes a few extra noises because of that CD changer mechanism but for the most part
tons of Laserdisc players are gonna sound exactly like this.
Tons of single-sided laserdisc players, that is.
Now a quick programming note before we start, I recorded most of this in mono.
There's a stereo experiment later on that I'll talk about when we get there and all
of the recordings were made with the machines intact, and their covers on.
Because I want this to be representative of what the machine was actually like in overall use.
So, let's get started.
So I'll begin by turning on the television.
And then we will turn on the machine itself.
[various motors pulse briefly]
Gonna open the tray.
[loud whirring as tray opens]
And now I'm gonna place a Laserdisc on the tray and press play.
[same whirr as tray is drawn in]
[various mechanical noises]
[click; disc begins to spin]
[disc is now at speed, laser tracking sounds]
We now have a picture.
[machine hums steadily, faint audio comes from TV]
What I'm gonna do now is press stop.
[disc rapidly comes to a stop]
[similar mechanical noises as when loading]
And now I'll be pressing play with the disc already in the machine.
[same mechanical, spin up, and laser tracking sounds as before]
OK, so the disc that's playing now is a CLV disc.
That's the long-playing disc.
And now I'll skip forward some chapters so you can hear the disc slowing down.
[rapid button presses, disc rapidly slows as laser tracks]
Of course you also heard the seeking noises of the laser as well.
[more high-pitched, warbley seeking sounds]
At this point we are sixteen minutes into the disc so about a little more than a quarter of its runtime.
Now I'm actually skipping backwards.
[rapid button presses, disc speeds up]
And now we're gonna hit eject.
[disc whirrs to a stop]
[mechanical noises as transport shuffles]
[loud whirr as tray moves]
Alright and now I'm putting in a CAV disc.
[same sequence of sounds as before]
[disc spins up]
We have a picture.
Now, for those that don't recall, CAV discs maintain the same rotational speed.
So when we skip ahead to different chapters...
[rapid button presses, quick seeking sound]
the disc did not slow down and so chapter search was very fast.
Another thing to note is that the laserdisc display is showing the frame numbers.
We're currently on frame twenty-nine thousand and something...
instead of runtime.
We just went back to Chapter 4, that's how long it takes,
and we're now at frame ten thousand...
almost eleven thousand.
Now we're back to the beginning.
Chapter search is very, very fast with CAV.
[successive quick search/tracking sounds as we go from one chapter to the next]
[disc slowing down, machine preparing to eject]
OK, so obviously we removed it and...
now we've moved onto the CLD-D502.
Now, this machine has a bit of an issue when it powers up after I haven't used it in a while.
It has a belt that slips.
[similar mechanical sounds to the last player as unit boots]
So when you try to hit open...
[consistent whirring sound]
that's all that happens.
Now, this machine is a both-side play model.
It will play both sides of the disc, that's what's special about it.
And we'll be looking at that process shortly.
But while it's still stuck here,
turns out there's a pretty easy fix.
[bang]
[whir changes pitch as tray is freed]
Just give it a good whack, that's all ya need.
Right now I'm just exercising the disc tray to hopefully keep it from getting stuck again.
So I'm gonna start this machine actually playing a CD.
[tray movement sounds identical to previous machine]
[laser moves]
[disc spins]
[faint tracking noises]
[music]
Now I'm gonna repeat this, but I want you to listen for what it's doing because if you pay close attention
you'll notice that it searches for something before it actually begins playing the CD.
That's because internally what it's doing is it's checking to see if it has a laserdisc
which is a larger diameter, then it moves to the CD.
[laser shuffles]
Hopefully you heard that first little check, there.
It's pretty subtle but there's a slight delay when playing a CD for that reason.
OK so now I'm putting a laserdisc in the tray.
We'll hit play.
[an identical sequence of sounds to the previous player]
[disc spins up]
We have a picture.
And now I'll be doing the same skipping around as I was before.
But this time I'm gonna skip to the very end of the disc to the second-to-last chapter, I believe,
so you'll see how long it takes to seek that far forward.
[rapid button presses]
[Prolonged seeking and tracking noises as disc slows drastically. Player is almost silent at this slow rotational speed]
OK, and now I'm using picture search.
Because this is a more basic player, and a CLV disc, the screen is very glitchy as I'm moving forward.
Everything is broken up top-to-bottom.
[faint ticks as the laser jerks forward]
And now the machine is going to switch sides automatically.
[sudden mechanical noises with a prolonged whirring as laser relocates to top side]
[disc rapidly speeds up]
[speed attained, laser tracks]
And we have a picture.
Now I'm gonna do picture search near the beginning of the disc,
you'll notice it sounds a little bit different.
It's moving much faster.
[same ticks as before, but quieter and more closely spaced]
[disc is also losing speed precipitously]
Now I'm gonna skip ahead some chapters.
And now you can hear the chapter search is slowing down - er the picture search is slowing down a bit.
[ticking sounds closer to first example]
[disc slows and machine prepares to eject it]
[laser is also heard returning to side A]
OK and we just opened and - just heard it eject.
Now we're gonna look at a clip of this machine misbehaving back when I was originally recording the footage
for this video, the original video it was featured in.
This has had some sort of logic issue.
And, uh, it comes and goes, I don't know what causes it but
when you switch to the second side...
[rapid, frantic whirring as the laser has a freak-out]
it should not be doing that.
What it's doing... the laser successfully moved to the top side
but it's continually ramming itself into the end of its track and it doesn't start spinning the disc.
Now, this machine hasn't done it in a while.
I assume maybe it has a bad capacitor.
There's a giant 1 farad capacitor on the board that you can actually see in this shot.
And again, I don't know why it does this but this is a new shot because I restarted, hoping
to make it not do this.
And it does the same exact thing again.
[this time you can hear it knocking against its end]
It's literally hitting the end-stop on its travel like banging its head against the wall.
So I'm gonna try again... try to get it to play side two.
And same deal.
Now, in my desperation I just started fiddling with the thing while it was moving around.
I'm pushing on the actual laser carriage right now and I don't know if this actually fixed it but, um,
it kind of seems like it did 'cause at some point you hear it snap a couple of times.
[snap]
Like that. And now the disc is actually spinning up.
So I don't know if that fixed it but, um, suddenly it's behaving correctly.
And, uh, I will switch it now to side B and it works as it should.
This is just a different angle.
And that time it switched sides successfully.
Alright and this, there's no audio accompanying it because it is a slow-motion shot
of the laser carriage flipping from side A to B.
In the original video I commented on how clever it is that the same motor that moves it back and forth
is responsible for flipping it over.
It has some clever gearing that it can switch to the other side.
You can see that, uh, toothed gear closest to the bottom of the screen.
That moves at the same time as the little worm gear at the back that you can see
so it actually scoots itself around the carousel.
It's pretty ingenious.
This is a different shot and I'm showing going from B to A.
And you can see the laser actually scoot underneath.
Once it flips to side A.
OK you see the laser just there and now when it moves...
just see it right there.
Taking a little peek.
And then this is the same exact thing, just shown from the back to give a bit more of an overview of what's happening
but again in slow-motion.
OK and now we are back to the new recording and we're gonna go through a CAV laserdisc on this machine.
[on-screen Alec mutters "what happened to that other Aladdin disc?"]
Once I find it...
["Umm... hello? Me?"]
[said like the Swedish Chef: "Ver de flurbey?"]
[you're over here? ok...]
[machine ingests disc and spins up as before]
CAV discs are particularly hard with auto-reverse
because the disc is spinning at full speed when it goes to reverse,
so that's why I wanted to show this recording here as well.
But we have the same thing, chapter search is very, very fast.
And picture search is completely silent.
It's an interesting thing about CAV. You don't hear any noise from the transport,
the picture is just perfectly fluid as you're going forward and backward.
And now we will switch to side B with the machine spinning at full speed.
[disc rapidly decelerates, while machine makes various mechanical sounds and laser switches sides]
[disc is now accelerating in the opposite rotation]
[laser begins tracking]
And we have a picture.
So obviously it takes a lot longer for it to switch on a CAV disc
just because the disc is spinning at the full 1,800 RPM when it goes to switch sides.
It only adds a few seconds but it's significant.
[some faint tracking sounds as it seeks to new chapters]
Just doing some more picture search here.
Interesting how the pitch of the motor changed slightly there.
Don't really know why, but now I'm gonna hit eject (or open).
So there you heard it returning the laser to side A and now I'll power it off.
Alright, and now we're gonna do basically the same things we just did but with the stereo audio setup.
I want to know what your thoughts are on this.
Gonna do some chapter searching now.
OK and now I'm gonna skip forward to the end so it auto-reverses,
but I want to know if this mic setup, you think, is better.
I don't have a great way to mount it, that's why I have the tripod in front of the camera
but if you prefer the sound of this mic setup for this purpose let me know.
I know that some people would prefer stereo but I don't know if these mics are actually better.
Certainly they're noisier than the one that's overhead.
We have a picture again.
And by the way, when I say noisier, I noticed a 60 Hz um, there's some sort of interference
on the other mic, but I don't know - that's probably coming from the TV.
I'm not quite sure, but that's probably what it is.
Anyway, we just opened it up.
And ejected the disc.
So now we're gonna talk about, or show, the Pioneer DVL-700.
That is the combination Laserdisc and DVD player.
Right now I'm fixing its sloppy badge.
But I'm gonna power it on and I want you to notice that it has a fan.
It has a cooling fan.
[a very different mechanical/motor sound, less harsh and abrupt. A cooling fan also spins up while the laser moves around a bit ]
Now this thing always defaults to its red laser.
[pronounced whirring with a sort of crinkly sound in the middle]
[new motor noise again, then prolonged as tray opens]
That noise it made before it opened the tray was flipping the infrared laser over... er flipping the red over to infrared
because I hit laserdisc eject.
[disc spinning up - laser sounds are similar but not quite the same as the other models]
The biggest difference with this player as far as laserdisc performance
is it has a newer auto-reverse mechanism and also the transport of the tray is a newer generation.
It's much softer, it's quieter, it's overall a huge improvement.
Now we'll skip forward some chapters.
[same basic noises as before, though the sort of squirrely noises of the laser are more pronounced]
Now here, when I'm doing a picture search, the sound is very similar but the picture is steady because it has a digital frame buffer.
[machine begins to switch sides]
[disc is spinning up but abnormally slowly]
[abrupt stop, and laser returns to original position]
Now what just happened was it tried to switch to side B and failed.
This machine has some bizarre issue where the motor will not spin up fast enough in reverse.
I have no idea why it's like this, it's been like it the entire time I've had it.
And what usually happens is when you try to switch to side B,
it just can't spin up fast enough; it freaks out and locks up.
It won't even open the tray right now because the disc is still spinning.
Finally there it goes.
So that's a very bizarre quirk of this machine.
But now we're going to switch trays from the big laserdisc tray
to the little DVD and CD tray.
You may have noticed it did not switch the lasers around.
It just spat out the little tray.
So what I'm gonna do now is put in a DVD.
And it's going to attempt to play it with the infrared laser first.
[tray moves inward and disc is clamped]
[faint transport noises]
[now laser is switching; similar sound to auto-reverse]
[disc rapidly spins up, and typical DVD-seeking sounds are now heard]
OK so now we have a picture, it's actually playing the DVD.
So if you heard it flip the laser back over, because it had to get back to that red laser.
Now this is the DVD of Spaceballs.
It was the closest-available DVD.
Uh, and I do not have the remote for this machine.
I had programmed a universal remote that managed to work with it but since I don't have the remote it's pretty useless as a DVD player.
I tried to hit Play while Play is selected, and it gave me the little, like
"BAD! NO YOU CAN'T PUSH THIS BUTTON!" symbol, so,
uh yeah this is pretty useless without a remote.
But now I just ejected the disc and I'm gonna repeat it, 'cause I want you to pay attention to how quickly the disc spins up.
[not spinning]
[not spinning...]
[BLAM it's spinning]
The disc just spins up insanely quickly on this machine
because of the fact that it has that massive motor to spin up a laserdisc,
so spinning up a tiny little DVD is a piece of cake.
Right there it switched lasers because I had it open the large laserdisc tray,
and it knows you're gonna play something - if you're trying to play a laserdisc it needs the infrared laser.
Now I'm gonna hit standby.
[laser switches back]
[fan spins down]
And now it's off, and before it powers off it always switches back to the red laser.
Now we're at a different camera angle. It just ejected a CD.
And now I'm putting in a DVD.
It tried to read it with the infrared laser but failed.
And now it's actually reading the disc with the red laser.
It's incredibly fast.
To spin up, that is.
As a DVD player it's actually quite terrible.
We just saw the same exact thing from a different angle.
Now we're gonna eject the large tray and it's gonna change the laser before it opens.
'cuz it knows you're gonna play a laserdisc.
It's gonna go from the red to the infrared.
And so now I put in an actual laserdisc.
But it doesn't mount correctly in the disc clamp.
So it just spits the disc right back out. I don't know if I did that or what, but...
anyway attempt 2...
That actually worked correctly.
Now I'll eject the disc again.
Now I'm gonna switch it to the small tray.
And I'm gonna do the same thing, we're gonna add a DVD.
It's gonna attempt to read it with the infrared laser then switch to the red laser.
And there, it's finally spinning the disc.
I've always thought that the little mini-tray for CDs and DVDs was just a dumb gimmick of Pioneer's but...
whatever, they always did it.
So here's a different angle with, again, the very-fast spin up.
It's a standstill to full speed in less than a second.
Now we're gonna eject the large tray.
And again it switched back to infrared knowing I ejected the large tray.
And we'll put in a laserdisc.
Now I'll show you it attempting to switch sides with it exposed but you'll see just like before it fails.
[it does make an interesting, accelerating warbly noise as it tries to spin up]
[but then gives up]
At this point it's not even trying to slow the disc down.
That machine is just locked up until it stops.
So I reach in the stop the disc.
It's such a bizarre problem with this machine.
OK, and now we are looking at the ancient Magnavox laserdisc player.
[a repetitive fast whirring sound, like a small electric drill]
When you turn it on without a disc it will just do this forever.
It just endlessly tries to spin up nothing.
And this is an extremely basic laserdisc player.
It has a series of LEDs on the front.
And in this state they are all... on in different ways.
They're not quite on at the same brightness. I don't know if this machine is like this always or if my particular example is just weird.
But, yeah.
So when you open the lid it will stop trying to spin up the disc.
And here is me putting in an actual laserdisc and seeing what happens.
[once lid latches, a very loud, slowly accelerating motor starts its thing]
[this player takes quite a while to get to speed]
[a loud, high-pitched sound comes through the loud motor as it tries to track the disc]
[speed is beginning to fall]
[ok but now it's getting faster again]
[oh, never mind, slowing down again]
[wait, she's gainin' speed cap'n!]
[oh dagnabbit]
The lights are behaving strangely as it's going up and down in speed.
[If it weren't so irritating it'd be hypnotic]
Trying to hit "play forward," nothing's making a difference.
[clunk as lid is unlatched]
[motor slowly slows]
[click]
So, I'm looking for another disc to play but with this machine when you open the lid
it has some sort of lock mechanism where it won't allow you to open it until the disc has almost completely stopped.
It's a pretty clever safety feature.
I don't know how it's implemented but you'll hear a click after I hit open.
You might want to pay attention to that. But here's a different disc.
[bbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRrrRRrRRRR
RRRRrrRRRRRrRRRRRAA
AAAAAAGHGGGGGHGHGG]
It's behaving just like it was before.
Now here, when I try to hit search forward, some of a picture actually shows up on the
screen and we're getting some noise coming through.
But it's still wavering on speed.
None of the buttons I'm hitting are doing anything.
Search forward appears to do something...
[we have the same sounds as before but with the added bonus of strange alien radio interference sounds from the TV!]
I'm just hitting more buttons.
So I hit open and you'll hear that click when the disc slows down enough.
[that click]
Right there. Now the lid is actually unlatched.
Right now I'm looking for a couple of laserdiscs, uh, The Aristocats, which is CAV,
it was able to play kind-of OK...
and I also right now am holding Rocky which is a super, super old laserdisc.
It's one of the oldest that I have.
So in case the... with digital sound, something about the newer laserdiscs is freaking it out for some reason
I'm gonna try that very, very old CLV disc and I know that The Aristocats kind of worked before.
So I think that's what I'm trying now...
[once again we're headed into warp]
Yeah, and here the speed actually is steady.
And we can very, very faintly see on the screen
some sorts of shapes but there's something very wrong with the picture, it's almost entirely black um
[laughs] some garbage captioning just came up from the decoder in the TV.
Uh, you can see very, very faint images of the characters from The Aristocats, uh... turned on the index there.
Just... this machine is so frustrating because it's like, it's trying its best but it just can't... can't do anything.
More garbage captions.
Yeah, so I just gave up with this one.
And now our last-ditch effort.
Rocky.
Super, super old disc.
Now that noise that it's making, that just started.
I'm pretty sure that is the laser tracking system waking up.
[noise starts cutting in and out] And here it's doing something it's never done before.
The disc is continuing to get slower.
And the tracking is, like, coming on and offline repeatedly.
This machine is just cursed. [it's speeding up of its own volition]
Sped up all on its own, by the way.
And the lights... it went from Play now to slow motion.
So I'm trying to hit play again and it's not responding.
So I actually turned it off in case the ancient electronics in here might somehow be affected
by turning it off and on again.
Now it's even in a worse state than it was in before.
And if you think it's bad now, just wait.
[a repetitive clicking gets increasing loud]
[it's spinning up again]
[suddenly that clicking has becoming a knocking, dare I say a thumping]
What's happening now is the laser's objective lens is actually hitting the disc.
It's great!
And just in case I tried side two.
Trying everything I can to get this machine to do somethin'.
Oh, I'm also looking at the laser to see if it's moved back to its home position.
We're getting the same behavior, so... this machine, uh, at some point I wanna try to, um,
maybe start replacing some capacitors and see if I can get it to be something more than a giant paperweight, but
it's, um, its behavior is even worse than the last time I tried it.
It sat for two or three years.
I don't think it's come out since I last, um, or I've tried to use it since I last made that video.
But anyway, that's it!
This is Sights and Sounds.
I don't think they're all gonna be this long.
Ahh but... who knows, I'll see.
Just depends on what there is to... what there is to see and talk about.
And listen to.
But thanks very much for watching, I hope you enjoy this concept and I hope that I was
able to execute it to um...
execute it pretty well.
Bye!