DVL-909 Repair Notes

The unit was purchased on Ebay for about $10.  The seller basically said he pulled it out of storage and it just didn't work.  Images in the listing showed both the LD and DVD trays ejected.


When it arrived, as per usual, the packing job was not adequate to protect the unit from damage.

The machine powered up but the tray would not eject.

Disassembled the unit and found the tray was jammed by the yellow switch lever that switches the eject mode from LD to DVD.  It had evidently received a shock hard enough to push it up into the workings of the tray itself.  Carefully prying it loose allowed the tray to be manually ejected by finger-turning the pulley just under the left side of the tray at the front of the unit.

The next issue I noticed was that the pickup had received a shock hard enough to move the left side up above its track so that the entire LD pickup was sitting at about a 30 degree angle.  Miraculously the motor holder was not damaged at all.  I removed the LD tray, then  removed the bottom rail screw to loosen the rail and free the LD pickup, replaced the pickup onto its track correctly then re-fastened the rail screw.

After replacing the parts and restoring power, the player was able to properly eject both trays with button presses, and the pickup moved freely along the track.  The player also correctly switched between the LD and DVD pickups.

The next issue - and probably the one noticed by the seller, was that the spindle motor was not engaging.  A simple continuity test of the pickup motor's socket (green and white wire going to the power supply) revealed that the motor was not making contact internally.

To remove the spindle motor, it was necessary to disassemble the top of the player and remove the entire pickup assembly.  The procedure was to remove the ribbon cables and sockets from the board to the right of the H-bar, remove the H-bar, remove the narrower of the two ribbon cables toward the front of the player (the wider one simply routes under the pickup assembly to the power supply - not necessary to remove it), the spindle motor socket, and the two ribbon cables toward the back of the assembly.  The "box" toward the rear of the assembly was removed, and the springs holding the assembly up were unfastened from their holders.  The pickup assembly is held in by six screws - these screws are slightly longer than the other screws and should be kept separate. The two screws toward the front are recessed very deeply and require a longer philips head screwdriver than typical to remove.

Once the assembly was removed I removed the three screws securing the spindle motor, removed the power wires from the routing clips and very carefully worked the spindle motor out of the assembly.

Once removed, I used a metal cutting wheel and dremel to cut a slot in the motor, and grind down the tension clips holding the bottom of the motor in place.  Once pried open I noted that the motor brushes were completely corroded.  After a vain attempt to repair the brushes with solder, the motor only worked for a short time before failing again.  Round about that point I noticed that Pioneer evidently used the same spindle motor in quite a few different models of LD player.  I was able to take the spindle motor from a different player with an electrical failure (a CLD-D605) and install it in the DVL-909.

With the replacement spindle motor installed and the player re-assembled, it was able to play Laserdiscs again.  Inserting a DVD caused the unit to switch to the DVD pickup, however the pickup was not functioning correctly, so it would simply report "NO DISC".  LD playback seemed normal except for side B playback where it would "skip" during the first couple minutes of playback.  Fast forwarding past the first couple of minutes resulted in normal playback for the rest of the disc.

My research into the skipping problem led me down several false paths.  I checked the upper gear track for debris and cleaned it with a toothbrush.  I cleaned and re-greased the upper rails and track.  When none of these things helped, it was suggested the M-holder (the plastic piece that holds the motor and the plastic gears that move the pickup) was damaged.  This seemed plausible because the pickup had been forced out of alignment violently during shipment - although I could see nothing wrong with it, it was possible it was cracked somehow.  I found a place called "Donberg" in Ireland that still stocked the M-Holder and the gears that go with it, and ordered replacements.

When the new parts arrived, I removed the LD pickup, thoroughly cleaned it, including removing the ribbon cable and cleaning it with Deoxit.  After installing the new M-holder and gears, the skipping during the first couple minutes of side-B persisted.  I removed the plastic upper rail and thoroughly cleaned it.  I readjusted the centering screw on the upper part of the pickup, but still the issue persisted.  The plastic rail is attached with clips and it hangs about half a millimeter from the top of the pickup assembly when installed.  Manipulating this by pulling the plastic gear guide up during playback seemed to allow the player to get past the skipping, but propping it up with twist ties did not allow it to play normally.

Eventually I discovered the problem was the little lever that acts as a brake and triggers the limit switch on the upper pickup assembly.  The brake was wedging itself against the pickup creating just enough tension to prevent it from moving normally during playback.  After trying to lubricate it with no success, I carefully removed the lever and examined the end which makes contact with the pickup.  There was a clear scuff mark where it had been wedging against the pickup.  I very carefully filed it down - barely enough to level off the top, then used a dremel polishing wheel and some polishing compound to smooth it completely.

This is looking up at the upper track.  The brake lever, circled in red, moves forward (to the right as this image is oriented) when the pickup reaches the limit of travel. The brake is supposed to both stop the pickup from moving and depress the limit switch. In this case the surface of the brake that came into contact with the pickup was sticking, preventing the pickup from moving back (to the left as this image is oriented) smoothly and causing the image to video to "skip" back randomly during the first couple of minutes of side B playback.

After re-assembly the system developed a new fault - the LD pickup became stuck in the rotator at the rear of the pickup assembly.  It would bounce back and forth furiously for a few seconds and give up.  I disassembled the upper part of the unit to get room to work then manually turned the worm gear on the pickup motor to get it back onto the track.  It gave quite a bit of resistance like some debris had become stuck in the gear track.  Although I never did see anything, I cleaned the section where it had become stuck thoroughly with a toothbrush and that seemed to clear the problem up.

Once the LD pickup stopped getting stuck in the rotator, I was able to confirm that the side-B skipping problem had also been resolved.

I noticed that the DVD pickup moved somewhat erratically and would occasionally get stuck when positioned all the way forward.  Getting the pickup out was a little tricky because the player does not like to eject the LD tray while the DVD pickup is on the bottom.  Getting it out required that I place a DVD in the player and wait for it to move the DVD pickup forward, remove the power cord, remove the crossbar and spindle clamp, then remove the DVD by hand, plug the player back in, then press the LD eject button and quickly remove power before the pickup makes it all the way back into the rotator, then manually eject the tray. This could probably have been done more easily via the service menu, but I did not have a means of using the menu at that point.

I removed the DVD pickup, then removed and cleaned its M-Holder and gears.  Next I used Deoxit to clean the ribbon cable and socket.  I used a q-tip with alcohol to clean the disc sensors and gently swab the dust off of the lens.  Once re-assembled the DVD playback functioned normally.

Unfortunately the front panel of the player offers no way of pressing "Enter" on a DVD, and the player came without a remote control.  Fortunately, however, Pioneer likes to re-use remote codes, and I was able to use the remote from my DV-525 DVD player to not only interact with DVD menus, but also access the on-screen player settings.

For the Love of Laserdisc

Why Laserdisc?

Plenty of obsolete formats garner a following because of nostalgia (I can't fathom why else anyone would actually like 8-track cassettes), and a few of them remain popular long after the sun sets on their era because they remain superior in one way or another to the thing that replaced them.

Laserdiscs kind of fit in both categories.  I didn't grow up with laserdiscs.  Heck, I only ever remember seeing a laserdisc player once when I was growing up.  But I sure knew what it was when I saw it.

Dipping My Toe

In the late 90's when DVD was on its meteoric rise as the replacement for both Laserdisc and the vastly more popular VHS, I dabbled a little with laserdiscs.  Being a 12 inch disc format just like vinyl records, the disc jackets featured a whole square foot of artwork.  They were just cool to look at.  So, like a lot of people, I bought a handful of laserdiscs before I even had a player to play them with.

Some time in the late 90's, My wife and I stopped into a rental store that was liquidating its laserdisc stock.  Most of it had been picked over by the time we arrived, but I managed to pick up the whole Ninja Turtles trilogy for about $15.  Sometime later I was browsing the case at a Goodwill and found a sealed copy of the T2 special edition (it was exclusive to LD at the time).

A buddy from work was a real AV enthusiast and was constantly educating me on the virtues of Laserdisc, and DVD.  With Laserdisc being replaced by DVD, people were selling their players like crazy so I picked out a player on ebay and eagerly waited for it to arrive.  My buddy lent me a couple of discs to break in the new player.  One of them was Con Air - I can't recall the other.

Well, the player arrived, I got it all set up, watched one movie, started a second and the player broke.  After a heated discussion with the seller I sent the player back and decided not to jump into the format after all.

Six months later I had switched jobs and was recounting the experience to a co-worker who offered to sell me his barely-used Laserdisc player for $100.  I took him up on it and I've had a great working player ever since.

Even so, I didn't really do a lot of collecting.  I picked up a couple odds and ends.  When the Transformers: The Movie was re-released by Pioneer Japan, I somehow got wind of it and ordered a copy which is still sealed to this day.  When browsing the LD collection at a local used record store I found a copy of Anne of Avonlea for my wife.  You get the idea.

Another Angle

About four years ago, I decided that I really wanted to try out the Pioneer LaserActive system - basically they made a Laserdisc player with an expansion port for video game hardware modules.  There was a Sega Genesis/Sega CD version and a TurboGrafx/TGCD version.  In addition to being able to play cartridge and CD games on the player, it was also possible to play special games on Laserdisc.  Because Laserdisc is an analog format, these games haven't really been emulated, and can't really be copied so unlike just about every other video game on the planet, these games can really only be played on real hardware from retail discs.  As you might imagine, these games and players are pretty rare and expensive.  I only own one game.

Renewed Interest

Earlier this summer a friend from work asked me if I knew where his buddy might buy a laserdisc player.  The buddy had just bought a copy of the Star Wars Definitive Edition on Laserdisc and didn't have a player to play it on.  I had been looking for an excuse to come over to his house and see his theater setup (140-inch screen was all I needed to know), so I offered to bring one of my players over so we could all watch some un-"fixed" Star Wars.

The experience turned out to be immensely fun and educational.  Firstly the deluxe box set of the Star Wars trilogy was just really really cool.  Secondly the ability of modern A/V equipment to clean up and scale composite video from a Laserdisc to 1080p is surprisingly good.

The theater was equipped with a contemporary Onkyo receiver that was 1 model different from the one I use.  I had never bothered to connect a LD player to mine because I assumed the picture would look like crap no matter what I did.  I incorrectly assumed this because my primary hobby is video games and connecting old video games to modern AV equipment usually does result in extremely poor picture quality.  I have to use a lot of specialized AV equipment to get a good picture out of old game systems on new TVs.  In the back of my mind I knew this was because old game consoles took advantage of characteristics of CRT televisions that weren't necessarily part of the video specification of the time.  When non-CRT televisions became the standard these tricks no longer worked because the scalers built in to modern TVs and AV receivers were not designed to process the out-of-spec signal.  What never connected with that knowledge until I was sitting in my friend's theater watching Star Wars on his 140-inch screen and wondering how it could look so good, was that this is EXACTLY what those scalers are designed to handle.  And boy do they do it well.

The event also opened up discussions where I was able to share my knowledge of the LD format - how it's recorded in composite and not RGB, how the CAV and CLV formats work etc... This got me onto the topic of AC-3 (also known as Dolby Digital) and DTS audio and basically where the Laserdisc technology peaked before its obsolescence.  Having these facts rattling around again reminded me that I had always regretted in the tiniest way never having been able to experience everything LD had to offer.  So, of course, 2016 was the perfect year to rectify that.

Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS

The LD format had a long and storied history and evolved quite a bit along the way.  The fact that the designers were able to take what started as a fully analog format and add digital audio, and then later multi-channel digital audio (Dolby Digital and DTS both supported up to 6 discrete channels of audio) spoke volumes about the versatility of the technology.  What was originally only able to handle less than 30 minutes per side of grainy muddy video was stretched and stretched and refined until ultimately each side could contain up to an hour of high-quality video.  But this evolution was not without its price.  The very first players couldn't play digital audio.  While most players manufactured from the early 80's onward do support digital audio, only a handful of them support AC-3 and DTS, and there's a huge catch even with the ones that do.

AC-3 is recorded on the disc on one of the analog audio tracks as a matrixed radio frequency signal.  It sounds like static when played as analog audio.  In order to actually get discrete 6-channel audio (so-called "5.1" because it carries 5 full frequency channels and a subwoofer channel with just the low-end frequencies) from AC-3 one was required employ a number of devices at once.  Firstly the player had to recognize the AC-3 signal and output it as radio-frequency (RF) instead of analog sound.  Secondly the RF signal needed to be demodulated - that is taken from matrixed RF to a digital bitstream.  Because it would make the players more costly and the number of discs to actually use AC-3 was relatively low, the circuitry needed to demodulate the AC-3 RF signal was never built into the players.  Instead users either had to buy an external demodulator (which weren't cheap) or buy an A/V receiver with the circuitry built in (also not cheap because it was a feature reserved for high-end receivers).  And finally, the digital bitstream had to be decoded - that is turned back into multiple analog audio channels to be output from your surround speakers.  Fortunately that last step is something that pretty much every digital A/V receiver ever released is capable of doing because the digital bitstream output by the decoder is the same format used by DVDs with a DD soundtrack.

To make things even stranger, competing with AC-3 was DTS.  DTS was also a 5.1 channel format but a decidedly simpler one.  Instead of using an RF-encoded analog audio track, DTS used both of the digital stereo tracks to carry a bitstream which could then be decoded by pretty much any A/V receiver.  This had the dual advantages of much higher bandwidth than AC-3 and the player didn't need any proprietary circuitry or really even be aware of DTS to support it - it just had to provide a digital audio output.  Higher bandwidth is a big deal with audio formats because less compression is needed, and less compression means wider dynamic range and higher fidelity.  Because of this DTS laserdiscs are among the most sought-after and most expensive ones to find used.

In order to support both DTS and AC-3, you would have to use two distinct digital outputs from a compatible LD player - an AC-3 RF output, and a digital audio output.

Plunging In, Head First

After doing my research and shopping around, I settled on a plan to start enjoying the full digital surround sound experience on Laserdisc.

First I followed this extremely helpful list of AC-3 RF Audio Gear: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/90-receivers-amps-processors/652457-list-ac-3-rf-audio-gear.html

The most cost-efficient (but least space-efficient) way to demodulate the RF signal was to buy an old AV receiver which not only had the demoduator built in, but also featured a digital audio output.  Many of the higher-end models featured audio pre-outs so the receiver could be used as a preamplifier for external high-end amplifiers.

I found such an AV receiver on Ebay for a reasonable price and pulled the trigger.

Next I needed to get an LD player that supported AC-3 AND had a digital audio output.  There may be a handy list out there for that combination, but if there is I couldn't find it.  Instead I browsed through tons of Ebay listings and built a list of eligible models based on photos of the backs of the players.

I settled on a model, found a good deal and bought it.

My collection only had a single movie encoded with AC-3 (Braveheart), and none with DTS.  The cheapest thing I could find with a DTS soundtrack was Con Air!  How cool was that?

Lastly I needed to work out how to cable everything together.  I dug through my boxes of old cable and scraped together just enough to connect everything up and test with (that is to say, on the floor in front of my other receiver).  Then I headed over to Monoprice to order new cable in the required lengths so I could install it permanently.

About a week later, everything arrived on the same day.

Fixing Your Player Is Part of the Fun

Unsurprisingly the LD player was non-functional when it arrived.  If you ever get a wild hair to get into this hobby, this is just something you need to get used to. These players are old, and while they may be sturdy, they do not ship well.  The shipper had done an amazing job packing it, but the loading mechanism was stuck - probably because of a decade of sitting idle on a shelf somewhere.  I dismantled the player and started down a rabbit hole that was deceptively deep.  After studying the mechanism and getting a rough idea how it was supposed to work I managed to get it free, but this only led to the next failure. I'll spare the gory details and just say that I was able to get the player functioning again after about 30 minutes of tinkering.

By that evening I had experienced my first AC-3 laserdisc, and it was fantastic.  The Dolby Digital track on Braveheart sounded better than anything I had heard since seeing the film in the theater.  When I looked into why this might be, I discovered that, in practice, the AC-3 tracks on LD are generally far less compressed than they are on DVD.  The difference is amazing.  As to why it sounded better than even the Blu-ray release, I have to chalk that up to mixing.  My theory is that since AC-3 was a new and high-end feature during the heyday of Laserdisc, the audio was mastered with a slant towards showing off - adding a little extra reverb here or there or putting your subwoofer through its paces to remind you you're listening to "surround" sound.  Whereas with Blu-ray, discrete multi-channel audio is old hat, and the format has nothing to prove.  Either way, in my opinion, the audio really really shines on these babies.

All that was left, it seemed, was to collect a few choice discs and keep on enjoying.  One of the best places to buy LD's is discountlaserdisc.com.  The guy who runs it is great to talk to and he really goes the extra mile to make sure everything he sells is in good condition.  The prices are quite good as well.  The site inventory isn't always up-to-date so if you're looking for something he doesn't have listed, just ask - he might have it.

Buying laserdiscs on eBay is a bit of a mixed bag.  Out of 20 or so films I've bought that way, about 5 were defective in some way.  Oddly most of the "sealed" discs I've bought have turned out bad - which leads me into the next important thing about Laserdiscs. This hobby is not for the faint of heart. Getting into Laserdiscs, just like vinyl, will re-acquaint you (or acquaint you for the first time) with analog format idiosyncrasies that our all-digital lives have sheltered you from. In just the handful of collecting that I've done in the past year, I've come across about every major kind of flaw of the format. When you consider that I have about 40 films altogether, that's a pretty high failure rate.

There is no error correction for the video stream. Any dirt, smudge or scratch that will refracts the laser will show up in the image.

Crosstalk

The discs are so large that the possibility of warping is much higher than CD/DVD/BD sized discs - so much so that Laserdisc players incorporate a "tilt" mechanism that adjusts the angle of the laser to try to keep it perpendicular as the disc is playing.  A small amount of warping is normal as keeping a surface area that large perfectly flat is pretty tricky, but a lot of people made the situation worse by stacking them horizontally for storage.  These things are pretty heavy and stacking more than 7 or 8 of them this way will cause the ones on the bottom to warp under the weight.  When a disc is too warped or the tilt mechanism drifts out of alignment it leads to a picture artifact called crosstalk.  Crosstalk results in herring-bone like warps in the picture, and when it's really bad, the picture will flicker and roll - sometimes even superimposing two different images.

The Dreaded "Laser Rot"

Unlike modern optical disc formats the layers of which are fused by heating the acrylic plastic until it melts together, Laserdisc layers were actually glued together.  The reason this is significant is that if the disc wasn't manufactured properly, over time the glue will lose its seal, allowing tiny amounts of oxygen to leak into the edges of the disc and oxidize the aluminum reflective layer where the information is etched onto the disc.  This creates little bubbles in the track that refract the laser and prevent it from properly reading the information.  The result comes out in the picture as bright speckles or dots.  This is known as "laser rot" and among LD enthusiasts is like the bubonic plague.  The worst part of it is that it's a progressive degeneration.  A disc can play fine once, but a year later be so degraded it can't be read at all.

Contrary to superstition (yes, there is a lot of actual superstition about laser rot), not all bright speckles or dots are actually laser rot.  Laser rot is characterized by being worse at the beginning or the end of a disc side (where the physical edges of the disc are) and usually persists for several seconds to several minutes and clears up the farther the laser is from the edges of the disc.  The occasional random bright dot is not laser rot.  It's usually a manufacturing impurity or a spec of dirt on the disc surface.  The reason it's important to distinguish the two is that rot will usually get worse, but the occasional bright dot will not.

Hedging Your Bets

In perusing forms and ebay auctions, I didn't immediately understand why so many people kept 5 or 6 players around at any given point.

After about 3 months of light use, my shiny new LD player broke down.  Upon seeking support, I was surprised by how much information I was able to find online about troubleshooting and repair.  The Laserdisc collector community is an unusual to say the least.  The heyday of Laserdisc enthusiasm was largely pre-internet, and a lot of the information I was able to track down came from mid-90's style web pages with static html, blinking gifs and visitor counters.  For some players, service and user manuals are available freely to download, and others are hoarded like the last box of twinkies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  And there are still a ton of good places to go to get advice like the forums at lddb.com and www.vintage-radio.net. 

I couldn't find a service manual for my particular model of player, but I did find one that was just a couple of model numbers off and it gave me some decent clues about what to look for and a general idea of how the player worked.  As annoying as it was not to be able to watch all of the discs I had been buying up, the process of trying to fix the player was actually quite cathartic. At this point I've torn the thing down and put it back together so many times I could probably do it blindfolded in the dark.  In all I ended up buying 3 players in various states of disrepair, and from three broken players I ended up with 2 working units.  With time, patience and not a small amount of prayer, I might eventually fix the third player as well.

The Previous Frontier

It's probably been said already -  this is a rewarding hobby just not one for the faint of heart.  In my lifetime I've purchased about 7 Laserdisc players via Ebay, and only two of them arrived in working condition.  (I've so far been able to repair all but one of them). Out of 50 films I've bought three had laser rot to various extents (all were perfectly watchable despite) and three had been ruined by being stacked horizontally for too long.  Despite the difficulty, working on the players and watching the films in this archaic but surprisingly good format has been some of the most fun I've ever had watching movies at home.  If you don't mind working for it, and don't have to see every movie in the highest fidelity possible, definitely consider dipping your toe into the retro world of Laserdisc.