Simply random stuff

[Sonik Wiz]

It wasn't just the weight....but it was top heavy...the weight wasn't distributed evenly...it was a good tv...a Mitsubishi..it marked the beginning of HD TV purchases...I bought the largest HD at the time at Best Buy....a Panasonic 34 in with a 16x9 screen...

The biggest CRT TV I had was that Sony Trinitron WEGA I mentioned but it was only 27" 4:3. Still pretty damn hevy to carry up or down stairs. It was the perfect size to fit completely into the basement fireplace. I don't need no stinking fires. Gimme a TV.That is long gone but I still have a functioning true pro level Sony CRT monitor, 19". The good kind without a tuner, speaker. BNC connections on the back. Superlative picture. Worked fine about 5 years ago & I will keep it forever.

The heaviest TV I moved was a Mitsubishi 36 incher. Retirement present for my wife's uncle in Chicago. It took two of us to get it in his house. By comparison, after my Sony I got my first widescreen TV, a 40" Toshiba SD RPTV. Then a 46" Mits HD RPTV. Bigger boxes but seemed feather weight compared to the CRT sets.

 

[mandrix]

TV's are getting so big now it takes two people to hang then on a mount. I hung a 55" by myself but the 65" I paid someone to help me.
Not the weight now of course, just the bulk....and they keep getting bigger and bigger. Although I have stored an early 42" 4K that's sort of hefty.
The good thing is TV speakers are getting better. The bad thing is they're still TV speakers.

 

[Clint Eastwood]

Looking back on some of my TV purchases...in the 80's I bought an RCA monitor...I think it was 32 inch CRT...there weren't many video shops around me...so I bought it from J&R Music World in New York and they shipped it by Freight to a location about 15 miles from where I lived...I had to go pick it up...no home delivery...sad to see J&R go out of business in 2014...death by amazon...then...still in the 80's...I bought a Mitsubishi 40 inch rear projection TV....when combined with my laser discs....it was awesome....and when I got my first HD tv(the panasonic I mentioned earlier) there really wasn't any content on the main channels....the only place I could watch HD was on DIRECTV...they had 1 channel......then when Plasma hit...that changed everything....the first time I saw a plasma tv was in an audio/video store in Clearwater, Fla....I think it was a 40 inch display....and the cost was $25,000...they didn't know how to display it...they placed it right by the front entrance and the Florida sun washed out the picture....but when Plasma became more popular...things really took off...those were exciting times.

 

[mandrix]

I meant the rears in a 5.1 configuration. However, in a 7.1 configuration, I'm still against the sides being at 90 degrees and prefer 110.

I am actually considering returning to a 5.1.4 configuration from the present 7.1.4. I.O.W. doing away with rear surrounds. Of course since my side surrounds are better speakers that would entail moving the sides to the rear and a new calibration with Dirac.
It's not so much because having speakers at 90* from the MLP bother me: it's more because with Onkyo (and others) 5.1 DTS-HD is translated to whatever speaker configuration you have.
This can be mitigated somewhat since I use Windows software players, and one can set the sound applet up for 5.1 VS either 7.1 or Dolby Home Theater.
My base 5 speakers are a matched set, so there's that as well.
IDK, still thinking about it.

 

[barfle]

In a related question, how many of you still use a clock radio to wake up to? When I was a kid it seemed great to wake up to the Beatles or Herman's Hermits. Lay there & think about what you could try to get out of doing at school that day. But now being retired I'm on the other side & only set my alarm on weekend usually because I need to get to some g'kids sporting event early. Other than that it's just great to wake up when your body wants to, not when you have to.

I’ve often said that when I retired, so did my alarm clock. These days, I have a cat.

I had a sound machine that would lull me to sleep with basically ponk noise, with a few bird sounds injected hither and yon, and wake me to a bell buoy. That worked fine until I went camping in Acadia National Park, and there was a real bell buoy clanging away all night.

 

[barfle]

Hey gang. Today, June 25th is National Color Television Day! Every day is National something or other day. But today it's all about color television. Whether it's real big screen or tiny TV's we hold in our hand & make Dick Tracy phone calls on, we take this for granted & forget about the early days.

When I was working as an engineering tech at Altec-Lansing in the early 1970s, I pondered as to where I wanted to go, career-wise. Audio seemed to be plateauing, although quad was available, it was already waning. Most of the designs we had in-house were minor improvements to old designs (although we did have a pretty cool anti-feedback notch filter that the idiots in marketing dropped because the front panel wasn’t pretty - a panel they designed!). Class AB amplifiers already had 100db S/N and <1% distortion, not much to be done there, and really, the only thing of significance that’s been done since is class D.

But video seemed to be a field ripe for development. Picture quality was about equivalent to 16mm film at best, and it seemed to me that there could be tape recorders that recorded video (2” quadruplex decks for broadcast had been around for a decade or so), and there just HAD TO be record players with movies. So I studied TV tech, and my admiration for the developers of NTSC and PAL have my undying admiration. Talk about putting ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag!

Of course, those new consumer products were developed in other countries, but for the most part, my fascination with electric pictures hasn’t waned. The fact that my phone can do far more than a $50,000 camera could do back then still amazes me.

It still might be the “boob tube,” but that’s just because so much crap is being presented as programming. The tech is incredible, and I keep wondering if we’re going to get home planetaria with glasses-free 3D before I die.

 

[barfle]

My first TV was a GE portable, I have no idea of the model, but it was anout 8”, and it seems like it was some sort of a deal through my Shell credit card. I was able to afford,a Sony CVM2150 monitor/receiver after an insurance settlement. it cost a grand and change in 1977, and it had UHF video connectors and a momo mini-phone jack for audio. I kept that for anout 20 years and parts became unobtanium. I got a 32” monitor then, and finally got my 60” 3D set around 2012.

 

[soesbeout]

When I was working as an engineering tech at Altec-Lansing in the early 1970s, I pondered as to where I wanted to go, career-wise. Audio seemed to be plateauing, although quad was available, it was already waning. Most of the designs we had in-house were minor improvements to old designs (although we did have a pretty cool anti-feedback notch filter that the idiots in marketing dropped because the front panel wasn’t pretty - a panel they designed!). Class AB amplifiers already had 100db S/N and <1% distortion, not much to be done there, and really, the only thing of significance that’s been done since is class D.

But video seemed to be a field ripe for development. Picture quality was about equivalent to 16mm film at best, and it seemed to me that there could be tape recorders that recorded video (2” quadruplex decks for broadcast had been around for a decade or so), and there just HAD TO be record players with movies. So I studied TV tech, and my admiration for the developers of NTSC and PAL have my undying admiration. Talk about putting ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag!

Of course, those new consumer products were developed in other countries, but for the most part, my fascination with electric pictures hasn’t waned. The fact that my phone can do far more than a $50,000 camera could do back then still amazes me.

It still might be the “boob tube,” but that’s just because so much crap is being presented as programming. The tech is incredible, and I keep wondering if we’re going to get home planetaria with glasses-free 3D before I die.

When we got our first color TV it came with a remote I don't recall the brand but holy crap I finally was promoted to fetching the mail and no longer the living remote.It was a funny little gizmo that had two little hammers that stuck a couple round bars inside for the volume and channel select.

 

[kfbkfb]

My parents bought an 18 inch Sears color TV in the spring of 1969 (strangely, I remember the price - $286), after a few months, the color circuit failed and it became a B&W TV, rather than fix it, Sears just replaced the TV.

Our B&W TV was bought on closeout in early 1964 because it didn't have a UHF tuner, KCIT TV 50 came on the air in KC in the fall of 1969, so the Sears color TV was often tuned to TV 50 (the local affiliates preempted a lot of Network shows, many of those were broadcast instead on TV 50):
https://dpjohnsoncb.com/kcit50/


Kirk Bayne

 

[JediJoker]

The good thing is TV speakers are getting better. The bad thing is they're still TV speakers.

One of the coolest audio things Sony have done of late is to use distributed mode exciters as TV speakers. The higher end models even include speaker terminals to use the DML as a center channel:

Not ideal for music, obviously, but extremely compelling for visual content.

 

[Clement]

Man, i LOVE this site! How touching to receive a package from someone who clearly knows me–nailed the colors and italics! Stay Surrounded, Comrades!

 

[Clement]

 

[barfle]

When we got our first color TV it came with a remote I don't recall the brand but holy crap I finally was promoted to fetching the mail and no longer the living remote.It was a funny little gizmo that had two little hammers that stuck a couple round bars inside for the volume and channel select.

We had a remote like that. It used ultrasonic waves to signal the tuner to go up a channel. Which was OK, because there were only a dozen of them anyway. The same with the volume - up only, until it got real loud, then turned off.

We had a dog, and his tags would trigger the channel changer when he walked into the room.

 

[barfle]

View attachment 106976

In my early days as an engineer, we had some pretty rudimentary microprocessors (Motorola 6800), and my first design was controlling the hub motors on a cassette deck. It couldn't wind too fast, or the microprocessor would miss counts, and that was something we couldn't have. My first servo, before I took a control systems class. Busted a few tapes in R&D on that one.

 

[Rhinojack]

Moving ahead a few years, my mother claims that she was the first person in our hometown to purchase a VCR tape recorder. It was a Quasar I think sold for about $800. Eventually she purchased maybe six more VCR recorders over the years, had them in different rooms around the house each one hooked up independently (daisy chained in some cases) with cable. She had her own notebook where she would write down what she was recording. It was a very complex system she developed, and she had it all down pat. She made copies of movies, had a whole library set up. It was incredible. She also altered her TVs to incorporate an old fashioned radio ear plug for listening, no surround for her!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Moving ahead a few years, my mother claims that she was the first person in our hometown to purchase a VCR tape recorder. It was a Quasar I think sold for about $800. Eventually she purchased maybe six more VCR recorders over the years, had them in different rooms around the house each one hooked up independently (daisy chained in some cases) with cable. She had her own notebook where she would write down what she was recording. It was a very complex system she developed, and she had it all down pat. She made copies of movies, had a whole library set up. It was incredible. She also altered her TVs to incorporate an old fashioned radio ear plug for listening, no surround for her!

I'm impressed. Most people back then didn't even know how to set the clock on a VCR. Your mom had the system mastered!

First VCR I had was a two piece unit. Rather bulky on shoulder camera that went to a separate heavy VCR with a shoulder strap on the other side. Obviously the intent was home video. I had to hook it back up to the TV every time to watch or record off the air. I still have it. Somewhere.

 

[cbmmm3]

big ol bulky RCA VCR was my first. Was it 1980 ? 1981 ? trying to remember.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

My parents bought an 18 inch Sears color TV in the spring of 1969 (strangely, I remember the price - $286), after a few months, the color circuit failed and it became a B&W TV, rather than fix it, Sears just replaced the TV.

Our B&W TV was bought on closeout in early 1964 because it didn't have a UHF tuner, KCIT TV 50 came on the air in KC in the fall of 1969, so the Sears color TV was often tuned to TV 50 (the local affiliates preempted a lot of Network shows, many of those were broadcast instead on TV 50):
https://dpjohnsoncb.com/kcit50/


Kirk Bayne

Thanks that was a pretty interesting article. The Penncrest color TV I mentioned had a UHF tuner on it. But the only ch I knew about was KCPT, or whatever it was called back then. I never knew about KCIT 50 but that would have been a great choice at the time.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

When I was working as an engineering tech at Altec-Lansing in the early 1970s, I pondered as to where I wanted to go, career-wise. Audio seemed to be plateauing, although quad was available, it was already waning. Most of the designs we had in-house were minor improvements to old designs (although we did have a pretty cool anti-feedback notch filter that the idiots in marketing dropped because the front panel wasn’t pretty - a panel they designed!). Class AB amplifiers already had 100db S/N and <1% distortion, not much to be done there, and really, the only thing of significance that’s been done since is class D.

You and I are looking at roughly the same time period from two different perspectives. You, the seasoned professional & me, the advanced consumer. And I found that time slot to be very interesting. In 1970 Mati Otala raised the issue of TIM distortion. But it wasn't until maybe mid 70's it became real interest to audiophiles. There were many main stream products that started listing slew rates and addressing that issue. Then came the interest in the ubiquitous coupling capacitors. Suddenly there was great research as to what might be the audible outcome from capacitor DA/DF/ESR and inductance. All of a sudden there was an abundance of main stream & high end companies offering their version of "direct coupling".

And how might gear like audio power amps benefit from independent power supplies? Straight line tracking tone arms went main stream on Harmon Kardon & other TT's. And if CD-4 had waned it brought the benefits of better vinyl composition, half speed mastering, and improved stylus design to the masses.

All of these alone could only potentially bring smallish improvements but as a sum the potential for improved sound & I embraced it all trying to learn & separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

But video seemed to be a field ripe for development. Picture quality was about equivalent to 16mm film at best, and it seemed to me that there could be tape recorders that recorded video (2” quadruplex decks for broadcast had been around for a decade or so), and there just HAD TO be record players with movies. So I studied TV tech, and my admiration for the developers of NTSC and PAL have my undying admiration. Talk about putting ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag!

I must agree with you on that! Even analog TV is an amazing feat, keeping scan lines synced, blanking intervals, and then shadow mask tri-gun color TV. Wow! I think the big break through , besides home taping, was the Advent VideoBeam projector:

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/advent-videobeam-1000-projection-system

I was blown away seeing that the first time in a store. 100" screen, even if it was just 4:3. But back then the discussion was how far you had to stand back to let the scan lines merge & picture look sharp. When 1080 HD came out the topic switched to how close you have to be to soak in all that super rich detail.

Edit: Like you I value my movies as much as my music. There are quite a few here that rarely indulge in movies or the such, just audio. Mainly they have a monitor set up to navigate menus or look the Kodi displays & album art. Nuthin' wrong with that. But I like having high quality reproduction of both. I'm usually busy during the day but after din din I can retire to The Bassment. I usualy start of with movies (been grooving on Slow Horses series but re-watched The Boy & the Heron last night) and cap it off with a good round of music appreciation. Listen till my eyelids droop. Lately I've been revisiting & binging on my SQ LP's. Life is good.

 

[Clement]

Hey, Mr. DJ!