CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[dr8track]

I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this playback symptom since I've experienced it on both of my players. When playing back a disc it plays fine, but will periodically get brighter for a second or two and then go back to normal brightness.
My second player is currently not functioning, so I can't check the discs to see if the areas where the image gets brighter is duplicated when playing back on a second player. I'm trying to determine if this is a disc or a playback problem. I'm guessing it is somehow related to playback, but not sure why the symptom would show up on both my players.
It's very distracting when watching a movie. It is a somewhat subtle difference in brightness, but very noticeable while viewing the movie.
I saw nothing listed in the troubleshooting guide that sounded specifically like my problem.
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[Rixrex]

Try this. Play a disc that has that moment of brightness and note the scene and minute when it happens.

Then play it again later on and see if that happens at the same point. That might tell you it's in the dsisc. But my suspicion is the player.

[dr8track]

[dr8track]

[Rixrex]

Same symptoms on two different players? What about the possibility of it being in the TV set or the connection?

[Jesse Skeen]

Also how is it hooked up, and what kind of TV are you using? Some newfangled digital equipment adjusts the brightness of analog inputs- the picture on my DVD recorder when transferring old tapes sometimes comes out too bright.
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Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!

[cbertra2]

Is your your hookup through the RCA audio video plugs or coax. If the coax hookup works fine then it could be an impedance mismatch between the players and the TV. I had this problem with my old Sony front projection set. There was a user adjustable adjustment on the back of the tv to match the impedance from the output of the player to the input of the tv. It cured the problem.

[dr8track]

[7jlong]

This sounds like what we used to get when trying to copy a Macrovision-encoded VHS tape. They put flashing white signal in the vertical blanking interval (the same off-screen portion of a TV picture where closed captioning information lives) to confuse a VCR's automatic gain control - the sudden bright white would annoy the gain control and you'd end up with a copy that kept getting lighter and darker.

A persistent drawback of CED players is that the signal coming out of them is actually very rough-n-dirty compared to today's devices. If the needle isn't on the disc, there's no signal. If the needle hops around or skips, the signal gets garbled. It is possible - and this is just thinking out loud, may not mean anything - that there is some garbage ending up in the signal coming out of your player that is irritating your receiver.

Another possible troubleshooting step would be to pass the video through a "dumber" device like an older VCR first. It might clean up the signal just enough that modern devices won't try too hard to "fix" things.

[dr8track]

[Jesse Skeen]

CEDs never had any sort of copy protection. Macrovision is accomplished by putting flashing white boxes in the vertical interval. CEDs already had time code there, so did laserdiscs which is why they never had it either.

Here's a video on my old LCD TV that let you see the vertical interval, playing a VHS tape with Macrovision: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fBTYbm3CZQ
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Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!

[dr8track]

[7jlong]

[DirectorSG]