Laser Disc movies played on Sony XBR Flat sreen??

In contrast with almost every other piece of audio or video gear I've owned over the decades, the level of design and parts - and cost - is a huge determinant of the product. There is virtually no "point of diminishing returns" with LD players.

And the difference between the best available players and the next tier can be the difference between "does not look very good" and "nice, usable and very acceptable."

Good outboard processing is also a big factor. Lumagen, for example, can do wonders.

And finally: use the Composite signal. On all but the two very best Japanese machines, the S-Video signal is filtered and processed twice and looks like it. Given its price tag the CLD-99 is particularly unsatisfactory in this regard.

Unfortunately, most of the machines that have noise reduction (CLD-99 included) first do Y/C separation, apply noise reduction, then generate a new composite signal by recombining the Y and C signals. You might as well use the S-Video out and save an extra stage of Y/C separation on the TV side.

A good point at least theoretically. But the recombined Composite signal does not go through the second processing and settings circuitry performed after the Composite recombination. Especially on the -99 and its little brother -79 that second filtering adds more junk than the filters in almost all recent-vintage display devices.

The better solution is obviously avoiding the piggyback filtering process ...
:)