Here's my small contribution to a great and helpful site.
After reading through the reviews, the Pioneer 919 sounded like a great deal. A DVD, LD, CD, VCD all in one. My old DVD player (Toshiba A105) was starting to skip, not on every DVD, but consistantly on certain ones. Strange. Anyways, it put me in the market for a new one. Once I found out that the 919 was region-free and available for sub-$800. I dove in and bought one. After viewing about 6 LD's and 4 DVD's (ones that were problematic on the Toshiba) I can say it passed with flying colors. The 919's options are astounding, picture played back perfectly and the Dolby Digital sounded great (hooked up to a Harmon/Kardon AVR75). The LD motor is a bit noisy if you're listening to the movie a rather low volumes, and the tray seems a little slow to open/close, but that's being really nitpicky.

Other than that, my main gripes would be there's no jog shuttle on the remote and that the on screen display is pretty lackluster, sometimes being non-intuitive. For an example while selecting the audio dvd functions, it would give you "english 1" or "english 2", of course you can hear the difference, but it would be nice if it was "english: dolby pro logic", "english: dolby digital".

Overall I'm very happy with my purchase, $799 shipped from www.unclestereo.com (no affiliation, just a happy customer), they shipped it promptly,ground shipping took about 1 week and the unit arrived double boxed.

Plays all existing popular formats. Easy to use.

Noisy LD system when compared to older stand alone laserdisc players.

I use the 919 as a backup to my other Pioneer LD unit, and to play some DVDs and VCDs. The audio portion for CDs is not that good, but the 919 is basically an excellent player for the money since it plays all the popular formats. Some flaws are the noisy laserdisc playback which is too loud when compared to my existing older Pioneer stand alone model. This should not be because each new product should be an improvement. The DVD tray is not deep enough, but I have not had any playback problems. The picture is fairly good up to 32" screens, but I have yet to try it on larger screens. At $800 street price, the 919 is highly recommended.

Similar Products Used:

Older version of Pioneer Laser disc player.

Great versatility, multiple outputs, decent ld and dvd performance.

Remote, occasional lip sync problems (that many Pioneer units suffer from)

I wanted to buy one last LD machine to replace my aged CLD-980 and I was able to sell my Panasonic A110, so this seemed like the ticket. The a/v performance of this machine is quite good (I haven't tried it with audio cds) on movies, at least as good as the A110 and far better than the older LD player (having the digital outs for LD is nice too). I haven't run into the dreaded Pioneer lip sync problems too often, but I would consider this a disadvantage on this machine. The remote, IMO, is the real weak link in this otherwise fine product, much like one you might find on a dvd player in the sub-$300 range, certainly not appropriate for a unit that lists for over $1000. Overall, I am pleased with this deck and would certainly recommend this to anyone seeking this solution.

Good picture quality, plays all types of DVD / LD / CD / VCD

Occassionally traps CDs and DVDs between its tray. This is a nightmare to users!!!

In general its a great product that copes with different needs and serves multi purpose....but with major mechanical defect!! (I hope I'm just the unlucky one) My objective of posting my comments here is to alert anyone who is considering the unit, as well as Pioneer to investigate into the problem.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer DVL 909

versatility, 96 bit proccessing. plays all formats.

If you want to call it a weakness, "No jog shuttle" not that i use the one i have on my other ld player but there have been times when it comes in handy.

i like everything about it. picture quality is great and sound is great. remote is easy to use and the composite outputs are a plus, so when i move up to high def i will be ready. and i ordered it online and only paid $708.00 so the price was even better i paid more for my original ld player

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yamaha cdv-901

Great machine.It took me quite some time to make this desision and get it (the thing is not cheap) but it was well worth it. While all my friends with simpler DVD players have problems with some discs, I never had a single one. LD performance is great also. Definitely worth the money.

Plays Laserdiscs and DVDs,500 lines Horisontal Resolution, Video Noise Reduction. Both Side Play.

I bought this unit online for only $699.99 and I love it! I have about 80 laserdiscs and I wanted to try out DVDs too and this unit fit the bill perfectly! I have an old Pioneer laserdisc player that I'm going to sell now that I have this great unit! It even plays both sides of laserdiscs! I've already placed my order for Star Wars Episode I on laserdisc and I can't wait to watch it on my DVL-919!

The unit is easy to setup and I haven't had any problems with any laserdiscs or DVDs (including "The Matrix"). I'm COMPLETELY satisfied with this unit and I'm glad I was able to find it! About the only thing I need to mention is the AC-3 (Dolby Digital 5.1) output is an RF output that will require an RF-Digital demodulator unless you already have a receiver with an RF input directly built in. Laserdiscs with AC-3 encoding require use of the AC-3 RF output in order to utilize the AC-3 encoding. Laserdiscs will play and sound great even without this demodulator, but I didn't learn about this until after I had purchased this unit and upgraded my receiver to the Pioneer VSX-24TX. Click Here to
get yours for only $699.99!

I highly recommend this unit for laserdisc enthusiast who also want to benefit from the DVD experience as well!

Update: I have started buying my own DVD's and the Pioneer DVL-919 plays them perfectly. What do you know, rented DVD's must have pop corn oil on them or something (see review before). I also have been buying DTS audio discs like "The Moodly Blues" and classical music, and the sound is FANTASTIC!!! At first I didn't like DTS and I thought it was either poorly recorded music or the Pionner DVL-919 was not up to pare. But in fact it was due to an Acurus ACT-3 pre-amp that I had, that had poor quality processing. When I hooked up my Pioneer DVL-919 to a Theta Casa Nova pre-amp that replace the Acurus ACT-3, DTS discs sound AWESOME. Therefore, don't always judge a DVD player sound quality, but check to see if its your pre-amp, especially if its a sound processor.

I recently upgraded to the DVL-919 from an older Pioneer laserdisc player, and the difference in picture quality (on laserdiscs) is quite noticeable. The DVD and CD performance is also exemplary. This is a full featured combination player, and I can't think of a thing that I need it to do that it won't do. According to the dealer where I bought it, its performance is basically the same as Pioneer's "elite" combi player, but it costs several hundred dollars less. I would recommend it to anyone, especially if they are looking for a combi player.

A versatile machine, which plays all types of discs and is codefree too for DVD's.A bit noisy while loading LD's,but the sound is great.I have a Yamaha RX V 795 AV Reciever hooked on and have checked the DTS performance too on LD (Schindler's List), but have not been able to get hold of a dts DVD yet. Are there any available yet??