Amazing deal for a LaserActive on Ebay

[Black Tiger]

With the sega pack does it play Sega CD Games or just Turbo Games with the Turbo pack?  In terms of it's video out, LD is Composite native so I've heard that the Composite output is superior to almost everything through a CRT TV?  Game Sack made a great episode here:

The Sega paks contain Genesis/MD + Sega/Mega-CD hardware.

The Turbo/PCE packs contain Duo system hardware.

[schweaty]

With the sega pack does it play Sega CD Games or just Turbo Games with the Turbo pack?  In terms of it's video out, LD is Composite native so I've heard that the Composite output is superior to almost everything through a CRT TV?  Game Sack made a great episode here:

So here is everything it will play (with appropriate PACs:

Genesis
Sega CD
Sega Master System (w/ power base or other adapter)
PC engine Hucards
CDROM2 / super CDROM (ACD w/ card)
Mega LD
LDROM2

The picture quality isn't great, but I plan on doing a component video mod using turbokons v1 board when I finally get mine out of storage.  I will let everyone know how nit goes

[xelement5x]

With the sega pack does it play Sega CD Games or just Turbo Games with the Turbo pack?  In terms of it's video out, LD is Composite native so I've heard that the Composite output is superior to almost everything through a CRT TV?  Game Sack made a great episode here:

So here is everything it will play (with appropriate PACs:

Genesis
Sega CD
Sega Master System (w/ power base or other adapter)
PC engine Hucards
CDROM2 / super CDROM (ACD w/ card)
Mega LD
LDROM2

The picture quality isn't great, but I plan on doing a component video mod using turbokons v1 board when I finally get mine out of storage.  I will let everyone know how nit goes

RGB off the LaserActive is supposedly quite good, possibly the best for any Genesis hardware from what I've heard.  Also, if it's RGB modded then you could use a 32X as well!

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, good luck pulling off a successful and useful modern day video mod with one of these things. Doing the PAC side is trivial, but the LD side is, unless someone has come a long way since I last looked into it, about as difficult as making an emulator and for pretty much the same reasons. I'm sure it can and will be done eventually, but I'm not sure if I know of anyone in the world who can. 

16 bit game machines are RGB native
LDs are composite native
All the analog video muxing is (badly) done in the realm of Y/C
The machine only outputs composite

Soooo...let us know how it goes.

Like I said, you could do *just* the PAC side, but you'd get no better results than you would with a $20 Genesis so it seems beyond pointless to me.

[schweaty]

Yeah, the mod only works on the PAC side (which is all I care about).  LDs are essentially pure composite analog. 

To be honest, I get a lot of nostalgia out of watching 80s movies on LD.  The grainy pic just a half step up from VHS really takes me back in a way watching it on BD doesn't recapture the moment I first saw it

[SignOfZeta]

It's half a step up from VHS on the LA. It's a full step on a better LD player. While not a terrible player, the the amount of chroma noise coming from an LA is pretty fierce since the LD side is largely cribbed from the (bottom of the range...and a new bottom at that) CLD-S201. By the mid 90s Pioneer was making nearly noiseless players. Of course with the LA already coming in at $1000+ they couldn't exactly stuff the things with 3D comb filters and copper cases.

[Bloufo]

With the sega pack does it play Sega CD Games or just Turbo Games with the Turbo pack?  In terms of it's video out, LD is Composite native so I've heard that the Composite output is superior to almost everything through a CRT TV?  Game Sack made a great episode here:

So here is everything it will play (with appropriate PACs:

Genesis
Sega CD
Sega Master System (w/ power base or other adapter)
PC engine Hucards
CDROM2 / super CDROM (ACD w/ card)
Mega LD
LDROM2

You can add to the list Mark III carts. As well as Sega Card/MyCard games.

[SignOfZeta]

As well as 3D karaoke porn.

[EvilEvoIX]

The composite looks great, especially through an old CRT TV.  Not RGB Quality but very good.

[Necromancer]

As well as 3D karaoke porn.

That's what sold me on getting mine.

[RyuHayabusa]

It's half a step up from VHS on the LA. It's a full step on a better LD player. While not a terrible player, the the amount of chroma noise coming from an LA is pretty fierce since the LD side is largely cribbed from the (bottom of the range...and a new bottom at that) CLD-S201. By the mid 90s Pioneer was making nearly noiseless players. Of course with the LA already coming in at $1000+ they couldn't exactly stuff the things with 3D comb filters and copper cases.

Why exactly did the LA and PACs cost so much? It wasn't that great of a laserdisc player to begin with. The video quality isn't very good, it doesn't auto-flip, etc. The PACs, although still outrageously expensive, are a tiny bit more understandable since the original Sega and NEC hardware are completely redesigned and  shrunk down into a single small box. Perhaps there was a hefty licensing fee for Sega and NEC that attributed to the cost?

[Black Tiger]

Probably because they didn't expect it to sell well and they considered that the sweet spot for price/consumer interest. It wasn't the best laserdisc player and not many console players could be expected to spend so much, so there would have been limited interest from both markets.

The licensing costs should have been passed on through the pacs and dedicated games.

[Necromancer]

Its high MSRP was likely due to a combination of two things: A/V equipment MSRP is a joke, always selling at a discount; and it's a hold over of Japan's economic bubble, where people couldn't spend their money fast enough.

[SignOfZeta]

The player it was based on was $300-$400 retail. It has a lot more crap in it that one did too. When you consider it was, more or less, the most powerful piece of consumer AV gear ever made $1200 or whatever isn't bad. The original price for a PC Engine with CDROM2 was $500-600. We hadn't fully enslaved China yet at that point, and also people still expected shit to last more than 9 months. So shit was "expensive". You didn't have people buying PSTVs for $40 a year after they came out and then never bothering to take them out of the box. People nowadays seem to just buy SO MUCH shit so fast that they can't even use it.

My CLD-99 had an list price of $2400 and the only game I can play on it is "WTF Was That Sound? Shit. I Hope It's Not Serious, They Don't Make Parts For These Anymore." and it's not even as fun as Power Stone.

[schweaty]

Zeta is right.  It's a bit "over-engineered" possibly due to the high fail rate of first gen CD players among the other factors Zeta noted.  Additionally the pcb's in the PACs are really high quality.  Much better than what sega and NEC were using and also better than nintendo's boards by a significant margin.  I wouldn't necessarily say it was worth the money, but you were definitely getting something for your money