Pioneer VP-1000 Playing DiscoVision Jaws CAV
Channel: Max Cadenasso
Date: 2010-04-08

I am ecstatic!! I got my Pioneer VP-1000 working today after over a month of research. I picked up a 2nd player on Easter for free which gave me 2 players. Neither players would track more than a few seconds of a disc and would repeat.. I ended up putting the motor from Player 1 into Player 2. I really had no confidence in my fix and half thought I was going to have to extinguish an electrical fire but it ended up turning out for the better because the player WORKED!! Anyways I decided to put up this video because there isn't a single video of a VP-1000 anywhere on the internet and also as a thank you to those who gave me information throughout the past month. A special thanks to Silicon Sam, he was really the one who gave me the confidence to tear this thing apart. His website has THE best LaserDisc repair information anywhere that I've found, he specializes in gas-tube players(which are pretty much the only ones that can track and play DiscoVision discs like the original CAV(Standard Play) version of Jaws I have in this video). I have an LD-660 gas-tube player(vs. solid state, which is all the ones made after the mid-80's) but the VP-1000 is THE gas-tube player to have. It is the classiest one and has a remote which the LD-660 does not. It is from the first generation of LaserDisc players and was made from 1980 through 1984, the one shown was made in August of 1980. The VP-1000 was Pioneer's first consumer LD player, before the VP-1000 the consumer players were garbage for the most part and solid state was a reversion back to garbage in my opinion(although fine for playing any disc made after the mid-80's). The solid-state design's main advantage was to cheapen the cost of the players. Anyways I'm pretty sure the Jaws disc in the video is from the first pressing(from the release of LD by DiscoVision in December of 1978, just in time for the holidays!) because of it's pizza-box design. I think DiscoVision went to sleeve boxes a few years later although I am not sure of this. That's pretty much all I can tell you guys and I am very happy to provide some historical information on the initial technology that made laser-tracking discs like CD's, DVD's and Blu-Ray's possible. LD's often times have better sound than DVD's because their sound wasn't compressed. LD's video quality is often almost on-par with that of DVD's but was made 20 YEARS before. CD's weren't made available to consumers until 1982, a full 3 years after the invention of the LaserDisc(or LD in short). Hopefully somebody finds this interesting and if anybody has any questions I would be happy to do my best to provide the information. LD4Life!! MaxCad