PANASONIC LX K780U LASER DISC LD PLAYER KARAOKE REVERSE Start Price USD 199.99 Current Price USD 199.99 Time Left 20 days 5 hours 59 minutes Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Thursday, October 30, 2008 End Time Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Location Point Roberts WA USA See more about 'PANASONIC LX K780U LASER DISC LD PLAYER KARAOKE REVERSE' Description PANASONIC LX K780U LASER DISC LD PLAYER KARAOKE REVERSE >>>>> --> PANASONIC LX H670 LASER DISC LD PLAYER BOTH SIDES PLAY PANASONIC LX H670 LASER DISC LD PLAYER BOTH SIDES PLAY KARAOKE AUTO REVERSE>>>>PANASONIC LX K780U MULTI LASER DISC LD PLAYER BOTH SIDES PLAY >>MADE IN JAPANMain Features: Auto-reverse  Scan mode  Programmable playback  Still/step playback  Front panel shuttle dial for reverse/forward direction  Front panel headphone jack + volume  Font panel Multi-function display  On-screen display  Technical specifications:  Output (video) : NTSC  Power consumption: 38W (power off, 6 W)  Power source: AC 110-120V 50-60hz  Video signal output: Composite  Audio signal output: Analog audio  Frequency response: 4Hz – 20 KHz  S/N Ratio: 115dB  Dynamic Range: 96dB  Wow and flutter: below measurable limit  Total harmonic distortion: 0.003%  Headphone connector: 32 ohm (30mV), impedance: 8 ohm or more-Plays Laser Discs (Movies or Karaoke with key change or mike input ), CD Videos and Compact Discs-Power off and on button . Phones jack and phones volume control. -Plays Stereo Multiplex and Hi Fi multiplex. -has digital servo and advanced digital tbc-Disc a or B button-Plays all size discs from smallest 3 inch to 12 inch full size laser discs Via CD or CDV or LD. -Skip reverse button, Pause, Play Stop and skip forward . -It has 20 scene selector buttons as well as stop /eject button and play button. -On the back the unit has Stereo rca audio out jacks as well as video out rca jack . -MADE IN JAPAN-It is 110 volts AC. -It plays NTSC-late model made in 1995 This player is in VERY NICE condition, with no dents, no chips, no cracks, little or no surface wear or scuffs from normal use. The faceplate is clean and shiny, with crisp, clear lettering and text. All buttons, knobs, and jacks are intact and solid and functional. The tray moves easily and smoothly, the picture is very clear. This set has obviously been VERY well cared-for, and is in GREAT shape. This player is from the era when Panasonic was making some of the VERY BEST laserdisc equipment in the world. Extremely nice condition Laserdisc players, those beautiful players that we had before DVD players. While Laserdiscs are a dead technology there is still a lot of good things to be said about them. Some Laserdisc sound better than their DVD counterparts. Some Laserdiscs used full bitrate sound instead of the compressed format found on most DVDs. While the picture quality on Laserdiscs isn't as good as that found on modern DVD players the picture quality is still quite good, far better than VHS. One of the best reasons to pick up a Laserdisc player is because there are still plenty of movies that have never been released on DVD that are available on Laserdisc. Some of these movies most likely will never be released on DVD as well. Another great reason is cost. You can easily pick up movies on Laserdisc for dirt cheap. You are often able to buy people's entire collection of discs for a fraction of the cost that they cost new. I have bought collections of over 100 titles for less than twenty dollars. If you are in the market to buy a Laserdisc player you have come to the right place. If you are new to the world of Laserdisc I highly suggest giving this Laserdisc guide a read. I am sure you will find the information contained within very helpful. There are many different Laserdisc players out there. Generally speaking, the later the model was produced the better it's going to be. Some things to look for when buying a Laserdisc player are: Auto-flip Laserdiscs can only hold about an hours worth of of information per disc side. Because of this you will usually have to flip over the disc at some point to continue to watching the movie. Laserdisc players with auto-flip will automatically flip the disc (actually, they just flip the laser) making it so you don't have to get up and do it manually. AC-3 Out In order to enjoy true discreet surround sound your Laserdisc player will have to have an AC-3 out. In order to utilize this output your receiver will need to have a built in RF Demodulator (chances are your receiver will not have this unless it is quite old) or you will need an external RF Demodulator. Digital audio out In order to listen to DTS encoded laserdiscs and to get the most out of the PCM soundtrack your player will need to have a digital out for sound. This could either be an optical or coaxial digital output which is separate from the AC-3 output. Laserdisc players differ from DVD players in that the player can make a huge impact on the picture quality. Now I am not saying that a good DVD player doesn't look any better than a cheap one, but the difference between a great Laserdisc player and a bad one is much larger than the difference between two DVD players of different quality. There were over 17,000 Laserdisc movies released in the US. Many of these cult movies, movies from earlier ages and music Laserdiscs have never made it to DVD and some of them may never. Since Laserdisc is a dead technology about the only place to buy them these days is used. By far the best place to find them is on eBay which is where the products that appear on this page are from. Since these products are on eBay the inventory is constantly changing and new players are being added all the time so make sure you come back often. CheersHISTORY OF THE LASERDISC FORMATThe format first appeared in Atlanta and a few other test markets in 1978. At that point it was being pushed by Phillips / Magnavox and MCA. The discs were marketed under the name Disco-Vision. The early Magnavox players were called Magna-Vision. The players were all single-side, top-loaders. The video output was an RF (radio frequency) cable to go to a TV's antenna input and also carried a mono audio track. Until about 1990 most players gave you the option of using RF output or composite video output. Most of the early players also featured a pair of jacks to export high quality analog stereo sound to an amplifier or home stereo system. The early DiscoVision discs were generally defective. They were all CAV (discs that only fit 30 minutes per side, more info about CAV is explained below). They all suffered from manufacturing defects. If they were playable they had some degree of spots in the picture caused by air inside the disc. Air inside a Laserdisc will cause it to rot (rot means the oxygen in the air breaks down the aluminum substrate that contains the pits that contain the program information that the players read.) The picture gets more and more spots that appear over time and the audio gets pops and other abnormalities. Eventually, they figured out how to vacuum out the air during the disc manufacturing process, but it took a few more years to figure out that the glue they were using to seal the two plastic halves that covered the aluminum substrate was gradually oxidizing and releasing oxygen into the discs. It's a good rule of thumb to avoid Laserdiscs dated 1984 and older unless you can demo it and see that it's still playable. By 1982 most discs were CLV, up to 1 hour per side, more about CLV later. In 1981, after DiscoVision was stalled, Pioneer became involved in making players and discs and the format began to move towards it's modern incarnation. A few years later composite video outputs appeared and in 1986 Pioneer's first statement player, the LD-S1 even featured S-Video output and an optical digital output to send the digital audio stream of the new Digital Sound (PCM) discs to an outboard digital to analog converter. A few years later, the first LD/CD combo-players appeared. By 1988 Pioneer's entire line, except the statement player LD-S2 and the LD-W1 (auto-flip, double disc player that played four sides in succession), was made up of CD/LD combo-players. Also, in 1988 I found out about discs that had OAR (original aspect ratio) and started buying them. If there were OAR discs before that, they were few and I didn't know about them. Anyway, the gradual shift to mostly proper OAR discs began. Players stayed pretty much the same, with only small improvements like a small drawer for CD's, until 1994 when Pioneer released the HLD-X0 in Japan. It was the first player to feature an AC-3 (Audio Coder #3, the original name for Dolby Digital) output. In 1995 Pioneer's entire U.S. lineup, except the budget model CLD-S104, featured an special AC-3 RF output, allowing people with proper decoders to experience multiple channel surround sound at home! More about AC-3 RF later. In 1997 Pioneer introduced their ultimate combo-players that handled LD's, CD's, and DVD's. Pioneer is no longer manufacturing LD players for the U.S. A few dealers still have DVL-919 or the ELite DVL-91 (DVD/LD combination players) in stock. In Japan where the LD format was far more popular, Pioneer is making the last production runs of LD players now (spring 2002). Pioneer has announced that 1 June 2002 is the official end of the Laserdisc format. They'll provide service for many years to come, undoubtedly. Other manufacturers quit offering LD players in the U.S. between 1994 and 1996. That pretty much brings us up to the present and it's time to move on to the technical specs of the format. LASERDISC TERMSCAV = Constant Angular Velocity is also called "Standard Play". CAV discs or sides are limited to 30 minutes a side. The frames of CAV discs correspond to the actual film frames. So, when you pause, or still frame, on a disc the image you is one of the film's frames. CAV is often used on disc sides that contain extra or special materials. It's perfect for displaying images of things like movie posters or pictures of the set or cast. CAV discs/sides have a running frame count instead of running time in the player's display. CAV discs/sides allow the user to use all the format's playback features which include: frame by frame advance, still frame, and multi-speed. CAV discs are a great way to study how films are put together. Many people don't like them for casual viewing since the disc must be changed more often. Many CLV disc sets have one side, typically the last side, in the CAV format. CAV picture quality is said to exceed CLV picture quality by 1 to 2%, but it's never been readily apparent to me. CLV = Constant Linear Velocity discs, sometimes called "Extended Play" can typically hold up to one hour per side, a very few have exceeded that. But, most LD users will never see that (It's rare for US discs to exceed 60 minutes, but a little more common on Japanese LD's) The overwhelming majority of discs are CLV. Using basic LD players, CLV disc's don't allow the use of the player's still frame or frame advance. You cannot view the film's actual frames on CLV discs. They are not available. Some nicer player have Digital Field Memory (DFM). Using DFM one can use still frame and frame advance to see still images but they are not the film's actual frames. Since about 1990 nearly all higher-end players have featured DFM. DIGITAL SOUND When an LD is thusly labeled it means it has a PCM digital audio track which could be mono, stereo, or Pro-Logic. In the laserdisc world, "Digital Sound" does not mean 5.1 Dolby Digital or DTS. CX NOISE REDUCTION CX noise reduction was used on analog Laserdiscs or the alternative analog soundtrack that is present on Digital Sound Laserdiscs. I think it's something along the lines of various Dolby noise reduction systems (A, B, C, ect.). I think it simply raises the signal above the noise floor like Dolby does. The sound on analog sound laserdiscs is generally pretty good. TRICK PLAY Is a term that generally refers to Digital Field Memory (see above in CLV) or other special playback functions. Some nicer players, like the CLD-99, have STROBE playback. It drops some of the frames but maintains the sound. The image will look like a series of stills. Many camcorders have similar functions. The Panasonic LX-1000U even has an odd paint function that will give the image a chalky, animated look. AC-3, THE LONG FORM.... AC-3 = AUDIO CODER #3, it's the original name for Dolby Digital on Laserdics. The last count I heard was that there were over 800 AC-3 Laserdiscs released in the U.S. I think CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER was the first. The first one I got was STARGATE. AC-3 has caused beaucoups of confusion with more than a few LD newbies. Here, I'll explain it. The original LD format specifications included a stereo analog soundtrack plus analog left and analog right options. In the mid '80's the digital audio channel was added to the LD specifications. After Digital Sound appeared Pioneer insisted that all Laserdiscs maintain an analog soundtrack to maintain compatibility with older players that only supported analog sound. Now, in 1994 when Pioneer added AC-3 surround sound to the Laserdisc specifications they wanted to maintain compatibility with as many of the older players as possible. The only players that would not be able to play the AC-3 encoded discs would be the very early players that only had an RF output for video and analog sound, that was routed into a TV's antenna input. The analog right channel was the channel that was routed into the player's RF output. Pioneer decided there were not that many people still using players with only RF output. They obviously wanted to maintain the digital PCM tracks and wanted to maintain the analog left channel for commentary or an alternative language. So they came up with a system to transform the digital AC-3 signal into an analog signal (like a computer modem does to transmit digital info over an analog phone line) and they placed the AC-3 sound in the analog right channel. A new dedicated AC-3 RF output had to be added to players. You cannot plug a AC-3 RF digital output straight into an ordinary modern Dolby Digital input on a receiver or preamp. The AC-3 signal must be extracted (called demodulated) from the analog carrier. Some older or higher-end receivers have an input with an RF demodulator built-in to perform this function. If a receiver does not have this special RF input, you can obtain an outboard RF demodulator to perform the function. You send the AC-3 RF line into the little box and it turns that analog signal back into a digital stream. That output creates a Dolby Digital bitstream that is compatible with regular modern digital inputs. The good part of all this is that Pioneer maintained a lot of backward compatibility. The down side is they created the situation of having to "fish" the AC-3 signal out of the RF analog carrier. AC-3 RF MOD If your player doesn't have an output jack for AC-3, don't worry. Most older LD players can be modified and given an AC-3 output with a simple kit you can still find online. DTS = DIGITAL THEATER SYSTEM DTS for home theater was used on a limited number of discs between 1996 and 1999. JURASSIC PARK was the first DTS LD. On DTS LD's, DTS replaces the PCM digital track. DTS LD's also have an alternative analog soundtrack so they can be played on any player. You must have a player with an optical or coaxial digital output (this will be a different output from the AC-3 RF output) to export the DTS bitstream to a DTS decoder to enjoy the DTS track. AUTO-FLIP or AUTO-REVERSE refers to players that can automatically play both sides of a disc. The laser that reads the disc starts out on the bottom reading side 1 and tracks the disc from the inside to the outside edge. Then, when side one is done, there is a pause of about 10 to 20 seconds, while the laser reader rides a rail to the inside edge of the top of the disc so it can begin reading side two. After side two is done, the laser automatically resets to the bottom and is ready to read a side one again. Single-side players require you to flip the disc over after each side by hand. LASER ROT I've mentioned this already but I'll give it a more complete description here. Mostly, laser rot is caused by bad manufacturing. If air is left inside the disc when it's manufactured the oxygen will break down the disc within two years, and a multitude of "snowy" spots will appear in the image and the sound will develop defects. If the glue seal around the disc's edge is never good or gets broken by rough handling, air gets in and rot begins. I think the laser rot problem has been greatly over stated. I have about 800 LD's and I have about 10 post 1985 discs that are rotted. The majority of rotted discs from the 1990's came from the Sony manufacturing plant in Indiana. Be weary of Columbia and Sony Music Video discs that came from that plant. I still buy LD's of material that's not available on DVD. Personally, I prefer to buy used, open discs because the original owner would of returned the disc if it was defective. I've bought over 100 LD's on eBay-bay and have only once had somebody send me a rotted disc. MUSE or HI-VISION LASERDISC The names are interchangeable. Hi-Vision is the analog 1035i, hi-def, 16 x 9 television system in Japan. The Muse LD format was invented by Sony and ran from 1992 to 1997 It's resolution is about 650i. Muse LD reproduction requires a Muse capable player like the HLD-X9 or HLD-X0 (imported laserdisc players from Japan), a Muse set-top box, and a 16 x 9 hi-def set or projector. The format never really got perfected. The early discs from 1992 and 1993 generally have problems maintaining proper colour balance and suffer from some nasty motion artifacts in spots. Digital video tape-based material worked wonderfully with the format from the start. Film-based material gradually improved. Some of the films look better than DVD, most do not though. LD GRAPHICS or LD-G LD Graphics are subtitle tracks available on selected Japanese Laserdiscs. It works on the same principle as closed-caption does in the LD format. Theoretically LD-G Laserdiscs could have more than a dozen different subtitle tracks. Three is the most I've seen on a disc. You should be able to remove all subtitles from the screen using LD-G, but most imported discs have the Japanese subtitles "burned-in" so to speak (the subtitles are part of the video signal and cannot be removed). The STAR WARS PHANTOM MENACE LD is a perfect example and the only Japanese LD a great many folks have ever seen. If you have an LD-G capable player, you can super-impose English sub-titles on top of the Japanese ones. Occasionally you can see the edges of the Japanese ones. A few MULTI AUDIO Japanese LD's feature LD-G subtitle tracks that are removable from the screen. The only U.S. player that ever had the LD-G feature was the Denon MD-3500. Get Skype and call me for free. I TOOK MANY PICTURES TO SHOW THIS ITEM OFF. Please feel free to contact us by email or call:The Captain's thecaptains@telus.net Phone: (604)837-3000We have taken lots of pictures and super sized them to show this item off.On rare occasions, we do make typographical or clerical errors. If you believe there is a factual discrepancy, please notify us prior to the end of the auction for clarification.Payment Instructions: Our congratulations to the successful bidder. For US and Canadian customers, Cashier's checks and International postal money orders welcomed. For air price, contact us after auction. Surface overseas shipping takes around 8 weeks, air takes 1-2 weeks and for most countries, TRACKING IS NOT AVAILABLE on surface shipments. Insurance is for loss only, not damage.For overseas air, contact us for price after the auction . Canadians add 5% GST. BC residents also add 6.5% PST. The packing fee is included in shipping price. It covers labor and materials for boxing the item, for documentation + labeling, delivery to post office + emailing tracking number."The sale of this item may be subject to regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and state and local regulatory agencies. If so, do not bid on this item unless you are an authorized purchaser. If the item is subject to FDA regulation, I will verify your status as an authorized purchaser of this item before shipping of the item. Questions? Feel free to contact us between 10am and 6 pm (PST) by Email: thecaptains@telus.net or phone: 1-604-837-3000We thoroughly test our items before selling, and can attest that our goods are in the condition as described in the listing. Nonetheless, all items are second hand, and are sold as is. Nonetheless, all items are second hand, and are sold as is. Nonetheless, all items are second hand, and are sold as is. We take great care in packing, to ensure the goods arrive intact; and we ship as soon as payment is received. For Paypal customers (whether in Canada or in the US): We can only ship to confirmed addresses.Pay-pal,Cashiers checks,money orders OK. Non US orders please request specific payment +shipping instructions and I will send. I PACK ITEMS VERY WELL. Shipping price covers labour and materials of boxing (average 3/4 hour) +documentation+ labeling (Average 20 min)+ delivery to post office or USPS or Fedex USA for faster, safer shipping. Questions? Email:thecaptains@telus.net, >>>>> --> Pay-pal,Cashiers checks,money orders OK. Non US orders please request specific payment +shipping instructions and I will send. Shipping price covers labour and materials of boxing (average 3/4 hour) +documentation+ labeling (Average 20 min)+ delivery to post office or USPS or Fedex USA for faster, safer shipping. Questions? Email:thecaptains@telus.net,  _gsrx_vers_246 (GS 5.1.1 (246)) Place a Bid!