Sony G90 manual Pioneer Elite DVL-91 Combination CD/LD/DVD Player, Look and Feel, L L C R U C E

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.

M a n u f a c t u r e r I n f o r m a t i o n

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

Pioneer Elite DVL-91 Combination CD/LD/DVD Player

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

1

making the player mechanisms is Pioneer).

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

out-

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.

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