Anybody do a portable Laserdisk mod?

[Blacksheep32]

A friend of mine is a videophile -collects Betas, Laserdisks, videomedia, etc. I was thinking of making a portable Laserdisk player in a retro 50s bomb shelter type case (I know Laser is from the 80s but I'm going for the Fallout look.) Anybody make a portable like this before? Suggestions for a player?

[weaponepsilon]

...okay. Never heard of anyone making one, but points for creativity.

You perhaps could try to go for one that resembles a portable record player in design. As for brand...

[Triton]

Laserdisc is basically the anathema of a portable media format, for one thing the discs are the size of 33rpm LP records but thicker and heavier. second reason why this is a bit of a silly idea is the complexity of the laserdisc players themselves. the ones with automatic disc flipping have a LOT of moving parts in them, and in the older players they actually use CO2 lasers my Pioneer CLD-D704 weighs 19 pounds and some of the heavier machines can weigh up to nearly 30 pounds. i suppose recasing one would be possible but it would still be far from portable in any realistic terms

[Blacksheep32]

Agreed Triton, in fact there would be in my estimation so much loss of quality in making the device a portable viewer that it isn't worth it. It would mostly be for the challenge and in order to allow the media to be shared. The mod I'm thinking would retain the output jacks to connect it to someones television and the model I was looking at was a basic Pioneer model CL104 I think, not sure.

[Triton]

the thing about laserdisc is the quality of the video output is highly dependent on the player, not the actual media. you have to keep in mind that laserdisc, while being similar to CDs, is still analog video. DVD is digital so any DVD looks pretty much the same on any DVD player, this is not the case with LD. dont bother with any players from the 80s as they are going to have the lowest quality video, same with the LD/DVD combos because they usually used lower end hardware to make the combo units (jack of all trades, master of none if you will) pioneer had the best machines so be on the lookout for anything from the mid 90s, the elite units are typically higher quality than the standard ones and heavier, and use the more advanced comb filters. if you're connecting it to a modern CRT or a quality LCD/plasma etc S video will be your best bet, because it uses the comb filter in the TV instead of the players filter

i'm probably the resident LD guru on this forum so if you have any questions feel free to ask! and craigslist is probably the best place to find a player, i got my boxed CLD-D704 for 70$ with 32 movies! and the D704 is the highest quality non elite LD model that was released in america. to get a better one you have to get one of the last elite models from the states (model 79 an 99 iirc) or a japanese one