Sony MDP-9

The MDP-9 the machine is of similar dimensions to the current SONY LV players (it actually measures the same as the LDP-730) but contains two drawers - one for LV discs, the other for CD.  The LV drawer is positioned towards the top - just about where you'd expect it to be in a conventional front-loading player - and the main transport function buttons are to be found immediately to its right.  At the bottom left-hand corner of the machine is another drawer purely for CD discs and this has its own set of buttons; again to the right and directly below the LV ones. The reason the controls are not combined is to allow the playing of CD audio with just the video picture from a LV disc.  Every LV disc becomes, in effect, a BGV disc (BackGround Video - a popular use of video in Japan).  The two discs can be synched up and played from a pre-determined point and you don't just have to take pot luck with sound and picture synchronisation.  Rather unexpectedly the CD player frequency response is slightly less than for digital sound LV (the range is quoted as the same but LV is within + 0.3dB, the CD player + 0.5dB).