Kurtis could tweak the 97 (or it's clones) within an inch of it's life and it would look really good - if I remember he liked the less digital picture quality of those 2 over the 99 level players., but I think anytime things got serious the discussion almost always came back to the Japanese players with The 704 was in my basement at the time and I probably played less than 10 discs on it, which really was the plan as if I had gotten into it more (don't really have the storage now in FL with no basement), between the 2 players and parts I wouldn't have trouble keeping a working player for a very long time.Ī large number of arguments were started over the years about Best of the Best, but the US players virtually never won the battle. Considering the number of LDs I opted to get the 704 as my back up player (I traded him my CLD-59 plus cash) and get some extra parts. If I was to buy one (not considering I only have about 135 LDs, I'd get the tweaked CLD-97. The CLD-59 was behind those and I had a 406 at one point and that was behind the CLD-59. The tweaked CLD-97 was second and not far behind that (and this was on a 100 inch screen) were the CLD-99 and the Pioneer Elite CLD-79 and Pioneer 704.

He had a tweaked CLD-97 over my place along with his Japanese imported HLD-X9. We used 'The Phantom Menace' LD mostly for comparison (it was many years back). At my place I had a scaler (Proceed PMDT with the PVP card) and we were able to view things in different ways on my 100 inch screen. I have now (although not used in some time) a CLD-79 and a Pioneer 704 (which are basically the same machine and that's why I got them). I had Kurtis over my place at one point when I was deciding how far to move up the chain as I don't have tons of LDs.

Ld play er