Posts by MJI

Made the best video recorders.

Like my 1982 portable, very good deck, or my late 80s home deck with every toy imaginable.

Then early 90s they went rubbish!

I wanted to go.

But no Colossus no visit.

Oh and I want elderly people who know the place intimately to show me around.

Multiple tuners - what then?

That said licence fee amount is enough for me.

Samsung were good drives

Got two in the home PC and I am after a 3rd drive, but cannot find any more Samsung.

So what do I buy?

Reliable, quiet and large are the important features, as to speed, can it handle HD video if so fast enough..

How many are there?

It seems there are quite a few BSD companies, can someone explain why please?

What will happen when Vita TV arrives?

Similar price, better controller, known brand.

Will be interesting.

The prices

Are not that bad if you compare to the prices paid in the 1980s.

I paid £400 for a second hand camera and recorder, which were new a £1000 in early 80s, that is the equivalent of £1100 / £2800 in todays money and for that I had a video camera of good picture quality and low number of features (no auto focus), and a heavyish recorder known to be quite light.

I could have spent more if I had the money, a better camera like the JVC GX-N70 with the essential and most popular accessory of 14pin K adaptor, but the recorder was just the best.

Actually the mix and match was good, Sony as an example made the best portable VCR on the UK market by a huge margin SL-F1UB, but their cameras were bare on features (even the HVC4000P 6 x zoom no, AF, no remote control beyond pause), JVC made an excellent camera (GX-N70) but their portable was shite.(cannot remember the model) Same with Panasonic, the NV180 was not fit to be mentioned in the same sentence as the SLF1, but their late model video camera was really good. The cheap cameras from JVC tended to go green, their VCRs could not handle multi generation editing.

In my experience of videoing in the late 80s was that editing on all Sony kit in the domestic market automatically gave you an extra generation to your tapes, basically a Sony master edit tape was better than a JVC or Panasonic camera tape and the duplication copy from a Sony master was better than the edit master from the other two companies.

Part of this was due to the sync pulse handling within Sony kit and part of this was due to the higher resolution of Betamax. I edited onto a SL-HF950, Pro-X tapes all round.

Those patents are a bit tenuous

Looks like they used patents for the wrong things to try to troll Nintendo

More important drink in the UK

What about the effects of tea?

Glasses here

I am pretty short sighted, but now getting a new issue due to age, not so easy to focus, I struggle to see close up things with my glasees on. But when I do take off glasses I can do a lot of closeup work, as a modeller it is actually not a problem to be short sighted.

If I had contacts or laser treatment I would now be in a more difficult place than I am in now.

However I do annoy the fashion police as they talk about brands they mean frames by fashion designer, whereas I mention brands like Nikon and Zeiss, so middle price metal frames here with bloody expensive plastic!

Trying to compete on price

Really hurt them, I hope this is a return to premium products at a reasonable price.

Yes I do consider £1500 a reasonable price for a good LCD TV, compared to say £500 for a rubbish one.

I also still perceive Walkman to be better than IPod, yet they are cheaper. I have always felt you get what you pay for with Sony, pay too little you get little, pay a decent amount you get a decent product.

If you want to see engineering and design, go back to 1983 and look at their top of range VCR, everything built for quality, even the 4 year later top end VCR did not have the fine reel control of its predecessor (I own the portable version of the first and I do own the 1987 VCR).

Basically Kaz needs to bring back the premium feel of the 1970s and 80s before their descent into cheap crud and people will buy it again. Just think how many ex Trinitron owners have a Bravia, I bet it is not 100%.

I am still sad that Pioneer cut back on its ranges, and I am still worried that Panasonic may take the cheap road to junk. We need premium consumer level kit, so stop always chasing the cheapskate.

Before people mention PS4 prices, the PS4 is the cheap fix to get you hooked into the games where the profit is made.

Interesting

I noted they went for the XBone sales rather than the higher PS4.

I may be interested in Steam OS as our main gaming PCs are both running XP, the older PC is also running Linux and some games work on that. I have more important things to buy than newer copiees of Windows (such as PS4s and food) and I don't think the older 2.8 P4 will run Win7.

But now you can get games for Windows, Linux and BSD.

Portal 2 was a PITA played with a controller, after using mouse on Portal, (Got Orange Box on Steam and Portal 2 on PS3), but the Move patch fixed that.

Now I see the Steam boxes as a supplementary console at the moment, big PC gamers can use them to play their Steam games on their TV with a controller. Other console gamers can use it to play ga,es not on their console.

For now I don't think Steam box will take main console sales off the X1 or PS4 but it will definately take secondary console sales. I would see me more likely to buy a Steam box than a XBone.

The Hawk

Prefer in 9s and bright red