it makes me long for the days of 9" crts and farudja line processors. sure beats the hell out of anything available today with the fix pixel displays.
Ed will be known as the Tiger Woods of the integration business, followed closely with the renaming of his company to "Hotties A/V". The tag line will be "We like big racks and tight holes"...
I have a client with boxes and boxes of laser disc's. His father used to own a store that sold them. They are a PITA to move when I need into the attic.
We have a plethora of LDs in the warehouse. I went through our stack of LD players a while back and weeded out the ones that did not work. We have 3 working ones that I know of. We also have a Sony G90 in mint condition and a Faroudja processor as well. If I had the time and motivation, I would have that G90 in my house. :P I did clean it up and turn it on last summer. An HDMI 1.4 card can be had for about $350.
I pulled a client's LD player out last year and had it serviced and repaired so he could continue to use it. My guess is that is has not been used since. :P
"When I eat, it is the food that is scared." - Ron Swanson
I get a kick out of those old pop top beta and VHS machines. So mechanical. Lots of moving parts with intricate springs, catches, levers, etc. Lots to break. But still fun to tinker with. :)
"When I eat, it is the food that is scared." - Ron Swanson
it makes me long for the days of 9" crts and farudja line processors. sure beats the hell out of anything available today with the fix pixel displays.
I surprised the hell out of a tech guy at Faroudja when I called him up in 1999 and asked why there wasn't IR control on the line quadrupler.* Now I was going to have to use RS232 when everything else in this consumer's theater was IR. And this was the second residential customer with that problem. The next quadrupler model had IR.
*$27,000 at the time
A good answer is easier with a clear question giving the make and model of everything. "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." -- G. “Bernie” Shaw
I finally watched the video. 27 minutes of video with about two hours of narration. My ears were exhausted at the end of it.
The guy I work with most of the time boosted his income very nicely for a few years by installing AC-3 decoders inside LaserDisc players.
Fascinating video and worth knowing about. Thanks!
A good answer is easier with a clear question giving the make and model of everything. "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." -- G. “Bernie” Shaw
It does bring a question to mind... why isn't jog/shuttle scrubbing more common on digital playback devices?
Seems like many players have great difficulty even doing plain fast-forward/rewind with any usability, never mind smooth frame forward/reverse like we used to get. I'm sure it can be done - the NLE software I use has pretty good scrubbing capabilities.
Your NLE software may have it. But how much would it cost just to get that part and install it onto the embedded software of the devices today?
Then the cost of the remote and it's software to control such action if the design has to be different from earlier remotes.
Does your NLE software allow you to scrub with a dial at different speeds? What happens when you stop turning the wheel, does the scrubbing stop?
I'm just picturing the engineers scratching their heads right now. And the higher ups seeing that and then say "scratch it, it's too expensive." Even though it could be a very simple thing. Some times the simplest things are over the heads of engineers, because they don't think like that.
I'm just scrubbing with the mouse in this example (it even plays back audio at the appopriate speed), but it does support connection with dedicated jog/shuttle editing devices to do pretty much anything you can imagine.
I seem to recall back in the day, TiVo had some kind of patent on being able to produce smooth trick play motion on low-end processors - and that's why all other devices, like cable boxes, looked more like a slideshow when fast forwarding. And then there was the Sony DHG HDTV DVR, which at the same time somehow managed silky smooth fast forward motion (no idea how -or if- they got around those patents).
While I'd love to see a return to the old days of jog/shuttle controls, I suspect they're the kind of "luxury" item you're not going to get in A/V these days. However, it would still be nice to get functional button-based controls, so you can play back in slow motion and frame advance.
Once we all started using universals, the concept of a wheel for one source must have just died away. I remember sticking the OE remotes in drawers, with the amazing functionality of their one particular control never to be realized.
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