In this case it was either carelessness or rushing the product to market. They knew that vcrs can cause this sort of problem and indeed they encountered and solved the issue with an other of their products. But different design teams--and the failure of design teams to communicate to each other ( they do wish to reinvent the wheel which means we field animals spend more time suffering solving the problem ).

VCRs present all sorts of issues to video processing software as sync is not rock solid. The point of my example was not to lead this post off topic but to point out how engineering issues that are known and solved continually make their way into products because manufacturers are loath to spend the necessary money to design their units correctly from the beginning.

Someone in the marketing department thought having Energy Star rating was a good idea. But they clearly did not design this from the ground up or they screwed up monumentally. A serial bus that is turned off when the unit is powered down is not merely bad design but stupid. Funny how this seems to always crop up on Sharp designs. Anyone remember the Pioneer plasma that was produced in combonation with Sharp that also turned off the serial port when the unit was powered off.

Similiarly, a manufacturer that places a scaler on the market without testing its compatibilty with VCRs--which are known to cause problems in scalers-- is also guilty of placing money ahead of sound engineering; or maybe they have short memories and forget what they discovered on other products. ( I was surprised to learn that many products are made in different factories all over the far east, from Tiwan, to Korea, to Sigapore, to China and it is not all that surprising that engineering lessons need to be relearned as they are manufactured by different engineers in different factories under a common brand.

It is always about money. Manfufacturers change factories to save money. Engineering time costs money. Product QA costs money. The average consumer could care less so the manufacturer could care less. Only we automation folks have to pay the price for these badly engineered products. Since the CEDIA market does not really affect bottom lines they don't spend the money. The firmware to the video card will, I suspect, be modified. They are a small compnay, I talk to the engineer who writes the firmware ( my incessent chatter to a Korean engineer whose face never changes expression and never acknowledges if he has understood what I have said is quite amusing ) and they seem to have the correct attidute--to a point. If it takes too much time and cost too much I bet they too will cheap out.

Alan