Date : Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:06:20 +0200
From : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: Leccy @ Acorn World '09
Alex Taylor wrote:
> I meant the controls didn't follow the same play/stop/pause layout and
> the timer didn't work anything like all the Japanese ones, which were
> all fairly similar. If I remember correctly, the 'stop' button
> actually meant 'pause', there was some other button for 'stop', rewind
> and fast forward may have been called something else,
I remember one that had separate buttons for Play, Pause, Stop. The play
engaged play. Pause was a toggle that made the machine make some
horrendous noises (also the tape would keep going for a few moments and
then back up a seemingly random distance). Stop, well, stopped. With a
CLUNK! that made the entire table vibrate. A seriously large relay inside...
> and the timer actually had a full numeric keypad for entry.
I remember one like that, with a little brown-smoked plastic flap
concealed a mass of keys (I've had calculators with less functionality).
Took a while to figure out how to programme it.
I wonder if it was Y2K-capable? :-)
> That Beta machine you talk of sounds rather like a Sanyo VTC-9300.
Hang on, let me look under the desk... VTC-M20.
I think I had a VTC-9300 once upon a time?
I'd like to get my hands on a reasonable working Beta, but I really
don't want to consider the price of sending one of those internationally!
> at my parents' house but I don't know if they still work, especially
> as I'm not sure how well my dad's stored them.
I have that problem with the tapes. Some time I will look to
transferring my old videos to DVD-R. I suspect, though, I'll need to get
myself another big harddisc. :-)
> Ahh - but most of the Beta machines wrap and unwrap the tape at the
> time of cassette insert and eject respectively, whereas the VHS
> machines had to do it every time play or stop was pressed.
Thankfully VHS eventually caught up. My Daewoo deck slackens "just a
bit" for fast forward and rewind. There's apparently some sort of
indexing mode but I never made much use of it, instead just doing some
basic maths with the tape time counter.
That reminds me. Had a lovely Sony deck that had an LED bargraph on the
front for tape remaining. It could even detect L500 and L750 by itself.
Was bang-on accurate and only ever got confused by the Betacam tapes I
used to recycle...
> I've got a Ferguson 3V22 piano-key job (it's at work right now because
> I used it to copy a Macrovision-protected tape).
Yes, it amuses me that the really old tech /mostly/ [*] copes with stuff
like that where more modern stuff can't. Macrovision even hits my video
capture card. Bleugh!
My old 14" TV doesn't. This is why I make no bones about saying I
habitually rip DVDs both bought and library-borrowed. It is a basic
expectation to be able to watch a DVD, and there is some interaction
between my DVD player, VCR, and TV which results in picture tearing and
rolling. So I rip it and tell it to take out the macrovision. The
resultant AVI is placed on an SD card which is then put in the DVD
player. /Then/ I can watch the movie as I should have without all the
faffing.
...though, nowadays, with it in AVI format I would tend to sit/lie in/on
bed wit Azumi on my lap. The 8" screen is a little small, but it
suffices and being 16:9 aspect, it was practically made for watching
movies! :-)
> and the Sanyo's picture and sound quality is far better
I must admit that while I liked the fluff on the Sony machines, the
Sanyo has always delivered good results. Even *now* when the machine is
mostly dead and I have to hand-help the threading AND wind the take-up
spool by hand as the tape is playing.... the sound is pretty good for
linear audio (but crap compared to HiFi PCM) but the picture is good and
could, still, give the whoo-hoo-and-all-that multi-headed HQ-overdrive
VHS deck a run for it's money.
> The Sanyo's timer is incredibly crude though, although I
> quite like it for that.
Some timers suffer from overcomplication. What I like is an ON time and
an OFF time and hopefully a choice of day (if only 1,2,3,4...).
Best wishes,
Rick.
--
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...