OFFERING: for parts/not working Pioneer DVL-V888 Laserdisc player

[bob]

So, I picked up a laserdisc player today at a thrift store.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work.
When it turns on, I get the Pioneer splash screen, but then it just perpetually reboots itself after a few seconds.  Anyway, I have no use for it, but figured somebody here may want to tinker with it.  I don't know much about these things, nor do I have much interest in a broken machine.  I doubt anybody wants it, but I know some people here like these electronics.
Cosmetically, it's in excellent shape.  I can post a pic later if interested, I'm just not near it right now.

It's the model "DVL-V888".  LD/Karaoke/DVD.  No remote.  Anybody want it?
Obviously it's a bit heavy.  I'm only asking for the $25 I paid, plus actual shipping based on zip code.

Box will be estimated at 22lbs. with dimensions of 19"x18"x17" if you want to check UPS.com.


EDIT:  shit, I just checked, this thing may not be worth the cost of shipping.  oh well.

[wilykat]

Unfortunately laserdisc player can break down easy.  If it's not the power supply issue (and sounds like you have a failing power supply), the spindle can go bad.  Either it'd squeal loudly or just won't spin.

[xcrement5x]

If the laser is useful for another unit you might be better off just pulling that out.

[PCEngineHell]

It seems like I was always told that the DVD/LD combi units were some of the worst in reliability, so it may not be worth fixing. I ended up avoiding those players outright due to their bad rep in the LD scene. If someone already has the exact same player though, would probably be a great pick up for the spare parts. Those parts dont grow on trees, so you have to get them when you can.

[SephirothTNH]

It seems like I was always told that the DVD/LD combi units were some of the worst in reliability...

I seem to recall David Letterman complaining about his DVD/LD combo.

[BigusSchmuck]

It seems like I was always told that the DVD/LD combi units were some of the worst in reliability, so it may not be worth fixing. I ended up avoiding those players outright due to their bad rep in the LD scene. If someone already has the exact same player though, would probably be a great pick up for the spare parts. Those parts dont grow on trees, so you have to get them when you can.

Well shoot, there goes that idea lol. Oh well, got a Laseractive, that's laserdiscky enough for us.

[SignOfZeta]

LD players are a tricky business these days. It costs more to ship them than they are usually worth, parts are finally starting to dry up, and there is a small but significant chance of breakage to matter how you ship and who the courier is.

Personally, I know of no reason to say the LD/DVD combo decks are any more fragile than other machines. I assume they are very similar mechanically speaking to the basic 90s player. I just know that none of them were really the best at playing LD and all of them are terrible DVD players when compared to something like a PS3.

I'd assume it's fixable, but what little LD repair info I have in my head applies only to other machines. I don't have time for karaoke decks. The fact that it even has a "splash screen" and that it can "reboot" implies that it's a significantly different machine than anything I've opened up.

There are two really  smart LD repair guys left that I know of and they both hang out on lddb.com. Maybe you can check with them. It's likely that the LD playback on this thing is several notches up from a Laseractive so if you can fix it cheap (ie: less than $50) it might be worth it. It's ALWAYS good to have spare LD players around.

[xcrement5x]

It's ALWAYS good to have spare LD players around.

Welllll, I would argue that's debatable. It's easy to get overwhelmed since they are not small.  I think I've got like 6 LD player in my house right now, plus an unhappy wife :O

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, I have a 99, a 603, a 504, an LD-W1, and at least one industrial deck still. There are probably some more I forgot about. I have a nice collection of discs and I want to be able to watch them for at least another decade. By then someone will just make a flatbed scanner that instantly turns an LD into an MPEG (you'll still have to flip it) and actual players won't matter.

[wildfruit]

For the uninitiated: Can anyone tell me is there any benefit of owning LD these days?

[SignOfZeta]

IMO, there are two main reasons to get into LD in 2015.

1) you are a huge fan of something overly well represented on LD, such as anime from the 70-90s, open matte transfers, Formula 1 documentaries, or terrible music videos.

2) you like movies in general and you live somewhere where you can easily pick up hundreds of LDs for like $1 each.

Unless you are in one of those groups then LD is usually a scene comprised of collectards, junk hoarders, and "indoors kids" obsessed with obsolete formats.

I got into LD because it was the format to buy anime on 20 years ago. That's the main reason I'm still into it, but I also like more obscure movies, from Kung Fu to Criterion, and if you live in LA or someplace with an actual economy the Craigslist postings often have people dumping MSRP $10,000 worth of LDs for $40. It's a great way to get a film education fast and cheap, and many of those titles haven't been released since.

If you live in like Possum Pouch Arkansas then any LDs you happen to find are probably just going to be Speed, 007, Hunt for Red October, Forest Gump, whatever. With the $1 bin at Walmart being what it is, I don't see any reason to watch this common stuff on LD.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

You forgot one:

3) you want to play mediocre LA games, want to have a reasonably compact way to play both PCE and MD games, and you hate money.

[PCEngineHell]

If you live in like Possum Pouch Arkansas then any LDs you happen to find are probably just going to be Speed, 007, Hunt for Red October, Forest Gump, whatever. With the $1 bin at Walmart being what it is, I don't see any reason to watch this common stuff on LD.

Actually no, there were, and still are quite a few LD collectors here in Arkansas. So if you frequent the used music stores or places like Vintage Stock you will find stuff. I found lots of anime ld's at Vintage. In fact that is where I found the Salamander import ld. Every now and then LD collections pop up on CL here too. The problem is though that they will not let the stuff go cheap most of the time.

One of the worst sellers of the stuff is the guy that owns Arkansas Record and Cd Exchange. He is one of those guys that will look up ebay prices, find the highest one, then say thats what he wants to sell it for. I have not been to his place in years, but I am sure he is still stuck with a lot of the stuff. He had a lot of good films, just wanted way way too much for them. The few pawnshops I know of too that have large stashes of LD's in the back are the same way.

Something you are probably overlooking Zeta is the cost of living here is much lower then it is in like say California. People here had, and still have, quite a bit of disposable income, so specialty movie stores did well here, like Hastings or Suncoast. Every Suncoast we had usually had a large assortment of LD collectors working there or frequenting it. Seems like one of the Suncoast employees had Song of the South even.

I guess that was considered one of the more high dollar rare ones. He had a lot of other rare ones too, but that one was the one that stuck out in my mind the most because the guy only kept it due to its rarity. He hated the film 100 percent.

[BigusSchmuck]

Something you are probably overlooking Zeta is the cost of living here is much lower then it is in like say California. People here had, and still have, quite a bit of disposable income, so specialty movie stores did well here, like Hastings or Suncoast. Every Suncoast we had usually had a large assortment of LD collectors working there or frequenting it. Seems like one of the Suncoast employees had Song of the South even.

I'm surprised anyone knows about Hastings and Suncoast. I used to work at Hastings back in the day in Eastern Washington. Pretty crazy even during the early 2000s they had Laserdisc stuff. Used mind you, but still pretty neat. I also recall Hastings selling those Laserdisc and DVD player combos for quite a bit of dough. Anyway, not to further derail this thread I would be interested in the parts, but we are in the process of moving and my wife would kill me if I brought in some more vintage electronics.

[wildfruit]

Ok thanks chaps. It's a format I didn't really know anything about beyond it existing.

[PCEngineHell]

Something you are probably overlooking Zeta is the cost of living here is much lower then it is in like say California. People here had, and still have, quite a bit of disposable income, so specialty movie stores did well here, like Hastings or Suncoast. Every Suncoast we had usually had a large assortment of LD collectors working there or frequenting it. Seems like one of the Suncoast employees had Song of the South even.

I'm surprised anyone knows about Hastings and Suncoast. I used to work at Hastings back in the day in Eastern Washington. Pretty crazy even during the early 2000s they had Laserdisc stuff. Used mind you, but still pretty neat. I also recall Hastings selling those Laserdisc and DVD player combos for quite a bit of dough. Anyway, not to further derail this thread I would be interested in the parts, but we are in the process of moving and my wife would kill me if I brought in some more vintage electronics.

Yeah I wish I could remember if that guy had the JP or Hong Kong LD of Song of the South. He told me which and that it wasn't released here, it was just so long ago. I actually forgot the name of the thing for awhile there, I just remembered it was supposed to be a super racist Disney movie from what he said.

I had never even heard of it before he told me about it, and its not something I thought about much back then. I have yet to see it, but he implied it was a pretty racist piece of work, so not anything I would ever care to watch. This guy was a manager at Suncoast. He had a lot of imported ld's. Most of the Suncoast employees I talked to were into anime, so that was another reason why they collected LD.

Speaking of an awesome LD set, the Tron and Toy Story box sets. I dont really care for Disney at all, but those two boxsets were really good.

[turboswimbz]

Something you are probably overlooking Zeta is the cost of living here is much lower then it is in like say California. People here had, and still have, quite a bit of disposable income, so specialty movie stores did well here, like Hastings or Suncoast. Every Suncoast we had usually had a large assortment of LD collectors working there or frequenting it. Seems like one of the Suncoast employees had Song of the South even.

I'm surprised anyone knows about Hastings and Suncoast.

We still have a couple of Suncoast stores here.  although they are not quite what they once were.

[SignOfZeta]

Having a Suncoast is one thing, having 12 of them, and a Dave's Laser or a Ken Krane's or Mikado or Laser Perceptions, and thousands of guys actually buying that stuff constantly, is another. It's not a matter of the movies existing in your state, it's a matter of having 60 copies of Yojimbo in a 2 mile radius, making them all worthless. That's the kind of opourtunity I'm talking about. Then you've got it made.

When LD was really kicking ass, most of the hardcore collectors were middle class guys in their 50s. Many of them have since passed on and those collections are like gold. Nothing that has "eBay worth" usually, but those are the dudes with all the Criterion/Janus stuff, the classical/opera stuff, and the most enduring movies in general. Sure, they still bought all that 007 crap, but they also bought Zardoz, and that's what makes their collections the coolest.

Funny thing: Camelot Music stocked Song of the South when it got the early 90s reprint. It was like $68, IIRC. My issue with the movie isn't that it's racist, but that it's shrill and annoying and almost totally uninteresting. I'm not a giant Disney fan, but they've done much better.

[xcrement5x]

Nice! I grew up and worked in part of the Musicland family so Suncoast, Sam Goody, and Media Play are a large part of my formative years.  I remember seeing anime LDs back then and even on clearance they were like $10 which was too much for my high school eyes when we could just swap tapes and dub them, I regret not grabbing some but oh well how would I have known I'd enjoy LD later.

Like Zeta said you can get some pretty interesting collections for cheap if you are on watch.   I got the old collection of a film critic and it's full of very interesting releases.  Most of them are "dollar wise" not worth but, but interesting to watch.  Others, like the special edition of "The Alamo" are pretty sought after since they've never been released in their entirety on another format.  Sadly there's too many titles for me to keep in my home so I'll probably dump a large portion of them in the near future.

[bob]

This one i got came with the disney movie "Gus" with Don Knots.