Hmm, interesting thread!!!
i have had many past experiences with garbade equipment in the past and present; And atomized my share of junk.
7N7: I can really reflect upon your problems with that VCR. Companies are beginning to sell awful stuff these days.
I prefer to build most of my own equipment because I can't afford to buy anything that's really as solid and reliable as I need. I also can't seem to find anything good for sale in the local stores anyway.
i have had many past experiences with garbade equipment in the past and present; And atomized my share of junk.
7N7: I can really reflect upon your problems with that VCR. Companies are beginning to sell awful stuff these days.
I prefer to build most of my own equipment because I can't afford to buy anything that's really as solid and reliable as I need. I also can't seem to find anything good for sale in the local stores anyway.
It's My VTR And I'll Smash If I Want To...
I would think that those tapes you bought therefore all came from one company.
Err, you did find that those racing tapes played OK on your new VTR, right?
It would be a hell of thing to find that after going through all this grief, it turned out to be a series of bad video tapes after all!
7N7 said:
I would think that those tapes you bought therefore all came from one company.
Err, you did find that those racing tapes played OK on your new VTR, right?
It would be a hell of thing to find that after going through all this grief, it turned out to be a series of bad video tapes after all!
I actually feel a little sorry for them
(the makers of mid market equipment). Imagine the marketforces they must face. Take the DVD players..
I have seen players in the discount stores for $49. Thats almost a cheap as the movies !. If the old rule of thumb about cost of goods being 1/5 of retail price, then they have $10 on the budget. Hell, even if its 50/50, that still is only $25. Somehow, they make a profit from it..which even with slave labor it must be hard.
Your high end guy is selling name, last 2% of performance,etc. Not basic features.
The middle market guy selling a $250 player still only has $50 with which to build it. Sure its doubling, but it is not much money. The consumer expects a bunch more when the reality is that the consumer pretty much refuses to pay for it.
I just bought one of the XM PCR's. A satellite reciever for your computer. Includes a LNB antenna. $69 dollars. XM is funding those by about $100. So its total real cost is $170. Stunning. (and yes, as a second generation device, it works better than more expensive first generation equipment. Third generation is due out for Xmas. One can only imagine what it will do. ) Thats a lot of performance for not much money (from a satellite engineering point of view, its amazing.)
We now treat cell phones the same way, at least here in the States. I bought a new Motorola a couple of weeks ago. I have the cheapest account, without a contract, so I paid mostly the true cost of it. $80. And if it breaks, you throw it away and get another. Even if you wanted to fix it you couldn't. If you find a dead one, open it up. ******** amazing.
(the makers of mid market equipment). Imagine the marketforces they must face. Take the DVD players..
I have seen players in the discount stores for $49. Thats almost a cheap as the movies !. If the old rule of thumb about cost of goods being 1/5 of retail price, then they have $10 on the budget. Hell, even if its 50/50, that still is only $25. Somehow, they make a profit from it..which even with slave labor it must be hard.
Your high end guy is selling name, last 2% of performance,etc. Not basic features.
The middle market guy selling a $250 player still only has $50 with which to build it. Sure its doubling, but it is not much money. The consumer expects a bunch more when the reality is that the consumer pretty much refuses to pay for it.
I just bought one of the XM PCR's. A satellite reciever for your computer. Includes a LNB antenna. $69 dollars. XM is funding those by about $100. So its total real cost is $170. Stunning. (and yes, as a second generation device, it works better than more expensive first generation equipment. Third generation is due out for Xmas. One can only imagine what it will do. ) Thats a lot of performance for not much money (from a satellite engineering point of view, its amazing.)
We now treat cell phones the same way, at least here in the States. I bought a new Motorola a couple of weeks ago. I have the cheapest account, without a contract, so I paid mostly the true cost of it. $80. And if it breaks, you throw it away and get another. Even if you wanted to fix it you couldn't. If you find a dead one, open it up. ******** amazing.
Re: It's My VTR And I'll Smash If I Want To...
Ha-ha! Guess what? they did NOT play on the new machine either, but then it's even cheaper and crappier than the one I smashed up. In fact the old machine is begging to look relatively good. However, at least on the new one there are buttons marked "tracking" - quite intelligebt abd original I thought - Sharp called them "channel".
I thought I had three pre-recorded tapes (two from one source) all of which refused to play. I then found that I had a fourth (from the same source as the third tape) This played OK - I wouldn't say perfectly.
I have therefore sent a rocket to the tape suppliers.
The truth is that I watch very little TV; this is why I never really knew that the old VCR was good or not.
As I have said elsewhere it was sheer frustration. Countless times, I have visited friends who have said "Let's get a take-away and watch a video." So they plug in a tape and hey presto! it plays. No fiddling, no adjustments.
Perhaps it's just my paranoia!
I am sympathetic to the point made in another post where the pressures on manufacturers are pointed out. However as far as VCRs are concerned, I want to be able to play a tape; that's it.
I think that the VCR is a useless idea really - only any good if the consumer is prepared to pay for Nagra precision and if the cassette makers are prepared to improve dramatically. A video-cassette is one of the cheapest and nastiest products I have ever seen.
My mobile phone has piles of stupid features that are completely irrelevant to the business of making a telephone call - which is ALL I want to do. I suppose that by adding rubbish such as games etc., the makers hope to sell us the idea that we are getting value. I would rather have a battery that lasted longer!
7N7
kelticwizard said:
I would think that those tapes you bought therefore all came from one company.
Err, you did find that those racing tapes played OK on your new VTR, right?
It would be a hell of thing to find that after going through all this grief, it turned out to be a series of bad video tapes after all!
Ha-ha! Guess what? they did NOT play on the new machine either, but then it's even cheaper and crappier than the one I smashed up. In fact the old machine is begging to look relatively good. However, at least on the new one there are buttons marked "tracking" - quite intelligebt abd original I thought - Sharp called them "channel".
I thought I had three pre-recorded tapes (two from one source) all of which refused to play. I then found that I had a fourth (from the same source as the third tape) This played OK - I wouldn't say perfectly.
I have therefore sent a rocket to the tape suppliers.
The truth is that I watch very little TV; this is why I never really knew that the old VCR was good or not.
As I have said elsewhere it was sheer frustration. Countless times, I have visited friends who have said "Let's get a take-away and watch a video." So they plug in a tape and hey presto! it plays. No fiddling, no adjustments.
Perhaps it's just my paranoia!
I am sympathetic to the point made in another post where the pressures on manufacturers are pointed out. However as far as VCRs are concerned, I want to be able to play a tape; that's it.
I think that the VCR is a useless idea really - only any good if the consumer is prepared to pay for Nagra precision and if the cassette makers are prepared to improve dramatically. A video-cassette is one of the cheapest and nastiest products I have ever seen.
My mobile phone has piles of stupid features that are completely irrelevant to the business of making a telephone call - which is ALL I want to do. I suppose that by adding rubbish such as games etc., the makers hope to sell us the idea that we are getting value. I would rather have a battery that lasted longer!
7N7
I realize this whole thread is not meant to be taken completely serously, but I just came up with a horrifying thought. Anti-copying protection and TV compatibility.
I realize that America and Europe, (including Britain, I understand there is some debate about that over there, LOL), use different TV systems, so maybe this is not particulary relevant. But when VCR's first started becoming popular in the early 1980's, a lot of consumers over here found that they could not play prerecorded tapes on TV's made during the seventies! The anti-copying protection put on the prerecorded tapes caused severe interference. This was in the era before the elaborate home entertainment center, and many a home just had the big 25 inch console, made only a few years before in the seventies, as the focal point of the living room.
To my knowledge, nothing was really done about it. The problem resolved itself as the playing life of many a perfectly good console TV was shortened considerably as the owners simply bought new TV's that fit in better with VCR's. It should be noted that the incompatible TV's in question rarely had the yellow-red-white three cable system, and instead relied on the 300 ohm lead to hook up to the VCR.
Of course, since the same companiies that made VCR's also made TV's, there was little incentive for the TV manufactuers to fix a problem that resulted in the purchase of many new television sets.
For what it is worth, if the racing tapes play badly on the new VCR, and you really like those tapes, you can get a sync generator over the web that gets around the problem by generating the very part of the signal that the anti copyright system attacks. They work very well. A friend used one to make copies of several tapes on occupational diseases from a special library that only lent the tapes for a certain period of time. I think it cost him about fifty bucks, it might be lower now. I don't know if they have those TV system other than American-I would think they would.
It may or may not be worth a search on the computer. It all depends on how much you want to have those motor racing tapes play well.
I realize that America and Europe, (including Britain, I understand there is some debate about that over there, LOL), use different TV systems, so maybe this is not particulary relevant. But when VCR's first started becoming popular in the early 1980's, a lot of consumers over here found that they could not play prerecorded tapes on TV's made during the seventies! The anti-copying protection put on the prerecorded tapes caused severe interference. This was in the era before the elaborate home entertainment center, and many a home just had the big 25 inch console, made only a few years before in the seventies, as the focal point of the living room.
To my knowledge, nothing was really done about it. The problem resolved itself as the playing life of many a perfectly good console TV was shortened considerably as the owners simply bought new TV's that fit in better with VCR's. It should be noted that the incompatible TV's in question rarely had the yellow-red-white three cable system, and instead relied on the 300 ohm lead to hook up to the VCR.
Of course, since the same companiies that made VCR's also made TV's, there was little incentive for the TV manufactuers to fix a problem that resulted in the purchase of many new television sets.
For what it is worth, if the racing tapes play badly on the new VCR, and you really like those tapes, you can get a sync generator over the web that gets around the problem by generating the very part of the signal that the anti copyright system attacks. They work very well. A friend used one to make copies of several tapes on occupational diseases from a special library that only lent the tapes for a certain period of time. I think it cost him about fifty bucks, it might be lower now. I don't know if they have those TV system other than American-I would think they would.
It may or may not be worth a search on the computer. It all depends on how much you want to have those motor racing tapes play well.
Well now I feel guilty and ashamed. I received the following reply from Sharp:
Thank you for your e-mail.
Please accept our apologies for the problems that you encountered with your Sharp VCR.
When a product develops a fault, we usually refer a customer to their nearest Sharp approved service centre. Sharp approved centres can liase with our technical team if necessary and will usually have a unit repaired in a few days.
Given that your unit was only 2 years old, we may have been able to provide you with some assistance, e.g. we could have provided any necessary parts at a discounted rate.
Once again, please accept our apologies for the difficulties you experienced.
******************************************
My reply to this read:
Many thanks for your polite and indeed, courteous message.
*******************************************
No doubt the "repairs" would probably have cost more than a new machine anyway.
As for the tapes I have had a message form the tape people that says that they will send replacements.
Call me naive, but does everyone else have all this grief?
I cannot get away from the the idea that a domestic appliance should be simple to operate (much simpler that all the valve amplifiers that I have built, but which nonetheless work properly).
7N7
Thank you for your e-mail.
Please accept our apologies for the problems that you encountered with your Sharp VCR.
When a product develops a fault, we usually refer a customer to their nearest Sharp approved service centre. Sharp approved centres can liase with our technical team if necessary and will usually have a unit repaired in a few days.
Given that your unit was only 2 years old, we may have been able to provide you with some assistance, e.g. we could have provided any necessary parts at a discounted rate.
Once again, please accept our apologies for the difficulties you experienced.
******************************************
My reply to this read:
Many thanks for your polite and indeed, courteous message.
*******************************************
No doubt the "repairs" would probably have cost more than a new machine anyway.
As for the tapes I have had a message form the tape people that says that they will send replacements.
Call me naive, but does everyone else have all this grief?
I cannot get away from the the idea that a domestic appliance should be simple to operate (much simpler that all the valve amplifiers that I have built, but which nonetheless work properly).
7N7
We have all been there and done that. I had my last PC for some
7 odd years and it got to the point where I got so fed up with it
that one day I just hauled off and slugged the Tower. It was
laughable because when I did the picture went crazy on the
monitor and the Tower began howling (knocked the CPU Fan off
onto a card below...
I then opened the window (20' to the ground) and threw the
Tower and the Monitor out.. and went *Whew*. I was finaly rid
of that piece of trash. I went out and bought a new one..
Sure I probably could have donated it to GoodWill... But it was
much more amusing to knock its innards loose!
I guess I shouldn't ever get married or have children either... I
may be dangerous because I belted an inanimate object!
Someone call the police!
7 odd years and it got to the point where I got so fed up with it
that one day I just hauled off and slugged the Tower. It was
laughable because when I did the picture went crazy on the
monitor and the Tower began howling (knocked the CPU Fan off
onto a card below...
I then opened the window (20' to the ground) and threw the
Tower and the Monitor out.. and went *Whew*. I was finaly rid
of that piece of trash. I went out and bought a new one..
Sure I probably could have donated it to GoodWill... But it was
much more amusing to knock its innards loose!
I guess I shouldn't ever get married or have children either... I
may be dangerous because I belted an inanimate object!
Someone call the police!
ShiFtY said:Its part of being human, you are allowed to be irrational and angry from time to time!
I bet there was a great deal of satisfaction in beating the snot out of that VCR. Don't feel guilty.
Thanks for that.
As for the satisfaction, yes there was - but it could have lasted a little longer
(always a problem!!!)7N7
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