Laserdisc - Exploring the World's First Pioneer Laserdisc Player - The Soundtracker
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- Опубліковано 25 гру 2022
- The Pioneer VP-1000, is the very first "Laserdisc" player. Laserdisc was a term made by Pioneer for Laservision (a.k.a. Discovision,) which is the actual name of the Laserdisc format. "Laserdisc" was just such a popular term for the format that the name stuck, the same way most people call tissues "Kleenex." Let's see what an early player can do!
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That is a great catalog. Makes the unit look like the player is from another world.
"As an initial purchaser of LaserDisc, you are a special customer indeed."
Hah, yeah, the documentation from this player is pretty on-the-nose.
They saw us coming on the short bus. 😅
A very nice review, thank you. I had one after getting a Magnavox 8000 in December '78. This was in the Atlanta test market and the machines worked well. (Essentially these first machines were handmade and after a year, they offered me a new one to take the old one back and see what the wear was like) The discs back then were probably 75% defective with the CAV DiscoVision discs so there was a frustration with it. New discs became nearly non-existent until Pioneer hit the market with that machine and I sold the magnavox for the Pioneer one, which I thought played better.
I like the old retro look of the first Laserdisc Player from Pioneer. It's really hard to find one in mint condition. I liked the demonstration.
I had one of these that a local shop I worked for gave me back in 1985. Worked great. Wish I would have kept it. We also sold Magnavox and I remember the Magnavox demo disc with Leonard Nimoy and the talking rock. VCA-001 is listed as a high voltage block. This was the power supply for the helium-neon laser. My memory is a bit foggy on this, but I think we maybe service one with this fault.
Great long play video!!! ❤
We hired the players and films back In the 70's. It was the Phillips top loader. Buying was beyond our means at the time, as my wages were £25 per week In the UK. I still have some Laserdisc's, just nothing to play them on. I have Toshiba CED players that sill work, and 400 disc's to put In them. This was playing Films from Vinyl Records. I keep all the Documentation and recipes In the box's as well. Nice to know they are still out there and working.
This is refreshing for me, I had almost forgotten renting a player was a possibility. My family wound up doing that once when we were between VCRs, and it was a similar situation, not a lot of money in the house and you only spend on what you need when you don't have a lot.
I've started collecting a lot of formats because I've been interested in how home video has changed over the years, and it's easy to find working units that many are willing to part with because they want to declutter. I'm glad so many have still kept working, and it's a real bonus to find documentation as well :) I'm curious, do you still throw a CED on every now and then?
@@OfficialSoundtracker Hi Glad It made You remember the time You had to Rent Machines and The Films. Yes I still watch films on CED, as some of the titles never came out on anything else so far. I had a Sony C7 Betamax Machine, but the heads went on It, Impossible to find replacements, pity I loved that player. I still have a Toshiba Super VHS 6 heads and still working.
I bought one when they first came out in December 1980. It asking sub the software had failure issues. Pioneer came out with an update. It was the vp 1000a. Pioneer swapped the unit for me for free. It worked for years until the power supply for the helium neon failed.
Thank you.
Soo damn unreal to see something that has the internals of a CD player inside, but 70s woodgrain and 300 Ohm antenna terminals outside. This thing is like from a alternate timeline. I found your video because I heard these players use a real laser tube instead of a laser diode. I was hoping you would show the insides, but anyway interesting video!
Great review, I had no idea laserdisc came out in 78. My mother's best friend from high school was a regional manager for Pioneer in the Toronto area, I remember she had a lasrdisc player that could play 3 different sizes of discs, Laserdisc, CDs and a size in between that I don't think ever made it into production.
Thanks very much!! I was surprised too when I first started reading about it, discs were In production from 1978 to 2001, when DVD took over the market.
And that is awesome, I love hearing stories like this. I have a few other players that have similar cutouts, they play CDs, 12 inch (full size LD) And another size thst is less common, 8" LD. the 8" ones were usually promo material or Music videos, I have only come across one in my collection. Perhaps I should use it :)
Yeah. December 1978.
Awesome player, and heavy AF.
Agreed, it may lack a lot of features of modern players but it has very quickly become my favorite. And yes, it's like 40 lbs!
Excellent video, thanks for sharing! Big LD fan, subbed your channel :)
Thanks very much! I'm a big LD fan as well, and have a few other players I want to showcase, so there's a lot more Laserdisc stuff coming up! I'm curious, what is your main machine? Lately I've been using a Denon LA-2300
@@OfficialSoundtracker I'm in the UK so our top player was the cld-d925 which is my main, then I have a few backs ups a cld-s315 single sides and a PAL only cld-1200 :)
This is an excellent video. Well done.
Ah, so that adaptor sounds like a demodulator They must have modulated the pcm signal on development discs, similarly to how they modulated AC3-RF for Dolby Digital.
Either way, they figured it out for us in later players! 👍😎🇦🇺
Thanks very much! And yes, the speculation amongst some groups that I've posted the video in seems to be that they wanted to have adaptors which was why the full unaltered video signal was being sent out of that port. I wonder what it would have been like if pcm also required an external demodulator like AC3, Do you think anyone would have bothered with an adapter, or just used the analog tracks?
And same, part of what makes LD so interesting is the amount of effort put into the changes, and I'm glad so many made it to the format!
_"Ah, so that adaptor sounds like a demodulator They must have modulated the pcm signal on development discs, similarly to how they modulated AC3-RF for Dolby Digital."_
Well, yes and no.
The "adaptor output" was for connecting the player to a PCM processor in the event you were playing a digital audio LaserDisc ... of a kind that was never made.
Here's the deal: at the time that the VP-1000 was made, home video cassettes could be used to make digital audio recordings. However, using a VCR with a PCM processor to make a digital sound recording meant sacrificing the video signal, since the PCM signal was modulated into a form that could be recorded as a video signal. Therefore, the digital audio replaces the video.
It was considered that digital audio albums on LaserDisc was possible in this manner, so the VP-1000 was made available with an "adaptor output" jack. All that such a jack was is a video output but without any video processing, such as video dropout compensation, as all that would do is get in the way of the PCM processor.
This wound up being unused ... and obsolete ... once a way was figured out to encode digital audio in a subcarrier rather than replacing the video with it, which meant that digital sound was available alongside the video instead of digital sound replacing the video.
Caught this quite late. But PCM adapters output a B&W "checkerboard-and-bar" pattern that is modulated by the input audio. This is recorded onto videotape (and the reverse on playback). This was used to master early CDs, since it was the only way (at the time) to store the equivalent of 650MB.
So, it's assumed the Pioneer had planned video-only LDs w/ just such content encoded on them. And I'd bet that they dropped the idea when the CD was announced.
I have the 2nd generation pioneer ld-1100 1982 I love it
I've only ever seen them in photos, but I love the design of those as well, Pioneer made some great players.
I can imagine this being sold in the department store in the Dawn of the Dead shopping mall.
5:21 The original logo for the system was interesting, I think better than what they settled on. I think also HU block was actually HV Block as voltage could be an issue.
I only ever saw a laserdisk player once, a store demonstration of a Philips machine in 1981.
I'm curious, what was the demonstration like? Did they have a rep there or just a player showing a demo disc?
@@OfficialSoundtracker Can't remember seeing any reps there, but it was a special display stand with signage for the Philips Laserdisc. And it was showing on a large TV, the Death Star attack and blowing up scene from Star Wars.
We had no intention of buying, as our family was already renting a VHS VCR.
Your video is awesome and so appreciated. I also own a VP 1000, bought it at the electronics store where I worked. How can I troubleshoot a problem I have that it does not want to start on the first time I press play? It wants to just open up and not start to spin.
That demo disc mentioned must have been “Laserdisc- What it Is and How it Works.” Must explain why there’s a decent number of copies out there. If you sent in that warranty card you also got the Sears 1981 catalog on disc which is much harder to find now.
Use to repair these things years ago and use oscilloscope to calibrate them too. Still have a laserdisc player too. This one in this video needs a service because I bet it needs some components looked at and the laser path needs checking, etc.
Probably so, it's about 42 years old, and probably overdue for a servicing. I wish I had the equipment and the knowhow to take care of it, because I'd really like to see it in it's full glory.
I'm curious, can you tell me anything about the "Replace the H.U. Block" towards the end? I mentioned finding paperwork with the player in the video, and I've been dying to know what that bit was that was replaced.
@@OfficialSoundtracker yeah the HU block is the laser unit. Helium unit block which was used in these early players. It could do with a clean re oil parts and capacitor check, they are the main things that can leak and cause damage. If it’s had it’s HU block change then it must of had a service, because you can’t just change it without it being set up on an oscilloscope if you know what one of them is ? But you need one to put a laserdisc player at tip top.
Well, yes and no about this being the world's first Pioneer LaserDisc player.
The VP-1000 was Pioneer's first consumer LaserDisc player, but Pioneer's very first LaserDisc player that was ever mass-produced was the PR-7820.
Yep,the PR-7820 was technically their first LD player!It was branded as MGA at the time,but produced by Pioneer!It was released in 1978/1979.
From the description of the PCM output you read from that website, it sounds like they were planning to encode the PCM audio onto the video signal, not the audio signal. Which means such a disc would be audio-only. Clearly no such format was ever developed.
You may be right, if I remember correctly there are PCM adapters for some VHS and Betamax machines, and the PCM signal is recorded onto the video band in those cases for the higher bandwidth available. Maybe early prototypes were trying to use the video band as the standard due to the other PCM Adapters on the market at the time?
@@OfficialSoundtracker
There are plenty of videos outthere on PCM adapters to use with VCRs.
PCM adapters would generate a video feed for VCRs to record. The image almost resembled the "snow" you'd see, when your tuner hadn't been tuned into a station, but it would be contain elements in the picture, which the adapter would be able to read as digital data to use to recreate the sound recorded to the VCR.
That is why you were able to see Zorro play on your TV - it's basically a video output intended for a PCM adapter.
But since Compact Disc was already close to come to fruition, I guess there was no need to produce software for the VP1000 to play.
Also, PCM adapters found a more fitting home with VCRs, since you were able to record your own material to tape. And it didn't matter whether it was a mono or hifi unit, as long as it could produce a nice, clean image.
💥💥💥💥🤘🤘🤘🤘
It's not an hu block. It's an hv block. Hv meaning high voltage. High voltage was needed for the helium nein laser.
this is entertaining and informative and thank you for sharing , but dude , for the love of god ,please change the batteries in your smoke detector before recording videos .
Thanks, I appreciate it! And sorry about that, I was hoping I could get away with the mic not picking up the chirp. They've since been replaced.
Ffs change your smoke alarm battery
Exactly the kind of autistic LaserDisc content I’m looking for, but for the love of God replace the batteries in your smoke alarm!!!
Hah, thanks :D And I needed to pick up new ones, the alarms are still beeping even with new batteries.
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