From: cmv@looney.att.com (Craig M. Votava)
Subject: Pioneer CLD-D701 Novice Review
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 16:04:34 GMT

Well, I've had my Pioneer CLD-D701 now for a couple weeks and thought it
was about time to take Bob Niland's suggestion to heart (Hi Bob!), and post a
review of it to this newsgroup. Let me begin by warning you all that I'm a
novice at all of this video-techno stuff, so you're not going to find neat
techie stuff here. In fact, since this is the first piece of my "media room"
that I've purchased so far, all I have it connected to is a VCR which is then
connected to the antenna leads on an old 19" color TV (no stereo or anything!).
This is also the first LD player I've ever owned.

Mostly, I'll talk about the experiences, functionality, and a little bit of
techno-stuff that I read out of the CLD-D701 Service Manual (order number
ARP2463 from Pioneer parts 800-228-7221 around $50.00 I believe).

I bought my player from an 800 number mail order place out of Ohio somewhere
for $744.00 (total) C.O.D. and it came within 2 days.

Unpacking it I was happy to see that all the cords I needed to connect it up
to the VCR (and stereo, if I had one) were included, along with batteries for
the remote control... nice touch!

The unit was secured with a transportation lock screw, along with lots of
warnings to remove the thing before starting it up. Connecting it up was
easy, and I was watching the Fantasia LD (that I've had for over 3 months)
within minutes.

The instruction manual starts out with a lot of useless warnings, notices,
and suggestions about things like "Don't fill the unit with bacon bits, which
may cause damage and will void the warranty". The most useful pages are page
15 and 16. Page 15 is a picture of the remote, with labels pointing to all
the buttons, and page numbers of where the function is described later on in
the booklet. Page 16 is the same for the on-board controls, and the display
window. This proved to be an extremely helpful set of references.

Here are some notes I made on the functions I like the best.

	Lighted remote - I really like this feature, since I'm always fumbling
		around in the dark with the remote, trying to see the buttons.
		This feature doesn't solve it completely, since only 7
		buttons in the middle actually light up (by yellow LED's).
		You still can't see the "effects" buttons, which in my
		opinion are the ones you'll be hitting the most in the dark,
		but I still like it.

	Automatic Side Flipping - It takes about 16 seconds for the unit to
		flip from one side to the other, 15 seconds if you have it
		in "Film Mode" (the instructions say this is faster because
		it doesn't bother to read some table of contents). Before
		I bought the player, I thought this was a feature I really
		wanted, but now I realize that most movies are on 2 disks
		anyway, and since I've got to get up at least once to change
		the disks, getting up 2 additional times isn't much worse.

	Automatic Resume - If you turn the power off in the middle of playing
		a disk, it will startup playing a little bit before that point
		when power is re-applied. I like this feature alot.

	Volume control - From the remote, you can adjust the output volume of
		the digital output. I haven't actually used this yet, since
		I don't have it connected to a stereo, but I think it's neat.

	Jog/shuttle - Well, the jog/shuttle dials are "cute", but you almost
		get the same thing with the variable speed forward and reverse
		buttons. What I really like is the fact that you can go at
		about 30x normal speed either forward or backwards (this 
		happens to be done with the shuttle ring). This can get you
		to specific parts of a movie very quickly! I like it!

Many of the "normal" LD or CLD disk functions that you'd expect to be there
are, however there are some functions that really puzzle me why anybody would
want to use them. For instance, there is a "strobe" function which will allow
the LD sound to play normally, but will strobe the picture for you. You can
change the strobe rate to every frame, every other frame, every fourth frame,
and so on. For the life of me, I can't understand what anyone would actually
use this for...

Many of the functions are just combinations of other functions. This seems
to just clutter up the remote. I'd rather have one way of doing each function
instead of many different ways.

Some of the functions are difficult to understand just from the descriptions,
you really need to play with them to understand them. At first I thought my
"one-shot memory" was broken, until I played around with it enough to find
out how it REALLY works. The instructions weren't wrong, just confusing.

I also ordered the service manual to better understand what comes out of the
optical port in the back, and to just generally see what's going on inside.
It's about 150 pieces of paper stapled together, with some color, fold-out
schematics, and circuit board renderings. Part 1 is safety information,
part 2 is dissassembly, part 3 is exploded views with parts references,
parts 4, and 5 is schematic and PCB connection diagrams (with video waveform
references), part 6 is the PCB parts list, part 7 is adjustments, part 8 is
IC information, part 9 is the remote control unit, and part 10 is for the
Karoke version (CLD-D750).

The adjustment section was interesting in that it describes how you can put
the player into "Test Mode". You have to ground a pin on one of the circuit
boards and supply power, or use the remote control unit (GGF1067) and hit
<escape> then <test>. Once in test mode, the player can be told to do all
kinds of things, and the results are shown in a very cryptic display on the TV
screen.

The IC section only describes IC101 (mechanism control) and IC301 (Comb filter)
but doesn't talk at all about IC201 (digital sound control) which is what
I wanted to learn about. Also, on the front of the manual is the statement:

	"For the circuit and mechanism descriptions, refer to the service
	 guide ARP2234 for CLD-1090/2090/3090"

It looks like I've got to fork over another glob of money for this one...
Oh well, live and learn.

Well, that's all I have to say about it now. If you have specific questions
or things you want me to try out, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

-Craig


	()_()	Craig Votava
	 (_)	AT&T Bell Labs
		looney@ihlpf.att.com