Sony G90 - Manual (Page 81)

the red bar.
At the horizontal edge between the cyan bar
and magenta patch (or the magenta bar and cyan
patch) on the VE disc color bars, there were two
or three dark blue scan lines; these were partially
broken up into rows of jiggling dots above and
below the transitions. There was also some bleeding of the left
magenta block into the white block beneath its left corner. Fur-
thermore the color bars displayed some video noise, especially
in the green. The blue scan lines were evident on the 3Dfusion,
but were not broken up into jiggling dots; nor was there any
bleeding of magenta into white or any obvious video noise.
Fortunately, although the color bar tests can be used to
discriminate between doublers, I didn’t find any glaring evi-
dence that the Turboscan’s artifacts significantly affected per-
formance on real-world film sources.
Summary
At first I used the Turboscan for viewing DVDs from the Sony
DVP-7000. Later I discovered the joy of watching line-doubled
laserdiscs from the Pioneer CLD-97. Laserdiscs look very
good through the Turboscan, as long as you don’t have an
anamorphic DVD for comparison. They look softer (owing to
the lower luma bandwidth of LDs) and there is some color
bleed (owing to the lower chroma bandwidth of LDs), but
these are small imperfections, inherent in the laserdisc for-
mat. My current reference source is the 16.9 (“anamorphic”)
DVD progressive-scan output of the 3Dfusion; however the
Turboscan is essential for watching my library of laserdiscs,
many of which will either never make it to DVD or which
aren’t worth the expense of duplicating on DVD. In fact, given
the bargain-basement prices for which laserdiscs can now be
found, the frugal movie fanatic should give serious considera-
tion to the viewing of line-doubled laserdiscs.
There are some things in life that, no matter how well I
understand them, I marvel that they actually work: air-
planes for example. Every time I take a flight, I can’t
believe that I’m really in the air, even though I fully under-
stand the physics. Combination CD/LD/DVD players are
another example. They will play just about every home-the-
ater optical media available, automatically adapting for the
size and format and moving the laser into the appropriate
position.
But why would anyone buy a combi player, given the
increased complexity of the mechanical and electronic sub-
systems? Well, you may have a laserdisc collection or a near-
by rental store that still carries LDs. There are also many
movie titles still available only in that format (Star Wars, for
example). If you want to buy a new laserdisc player, you have
no option; the only ones available are in
combi players (and the only company still
making the player mechanisms is Pioneer). 1
Last issue we looked at the upscale Theta Voyager, based
on the Pioneer 919 combi player. This time we look at Pio-
neer’s top-of-the-line Elite combi player, the DVL-91, to see
what is the best available from the company that has single-
handedly supported the laserdisc market for many years. This
unit will play CDs and CD-Videos (an MPEG-1 video disc more
popular in Asia than the US), but our primary interest is in its
LD and DVD performance.
Look and Feel
The DVL-91 has that special Pioneer Elite look: high-gloss black
enamel, gold trim, and polished rosewood
side panels. It has the usual assortment of
gold-plated outputs on its rear that you
would expect from a component of its
stature: two analog stereo audio, two coaxial
digital audio (one PCM only, one PCM/AC-
3/DTS), one optical audio (PCM/AC-3/DTS),
one AC-3 RF (for LD only), two composite
video, two S-Video (Y/C), one set of compo-
nent video, and an in/out set of connectors
for Pioneer SR control signals. You must
select from the player set-up menus whether
you wish DVD output to be via component or
Y/C-composite; the mode not selected still outputs a luminance
signal (helpful in navigating the menus to switch the type of
o u t-
IEV INTERNATIONAL, INC.
3855 South 500 West, Suite O
Salt Lake City, Utah 84115
Phone: (800) 438-6161
www.iev.com
Source: Reviewer purchase
Serial number: 2134
Price: $2,495
M a n u f a c t u r e r I n f o r m a t i o n
Pioneer Elite DVL-91 Combination CD/LD/DVD Player
1The Faroudja LD1000 laserdisc player mentioned in
Issue 25, based on the Pioneer Elite CLD-99, is no
longer available. The final unit was sold in April 1999.
B I L L C R U C E