The other day I noticed that my local Walmart no longer had any DVDR's with tuners on the main floor, they did have a couple in the clearance corner of the electronics section. Online searching seems to confirm that the number of DVDR's with OTA tuners is going down...

What gives? Are the consumer electronics companies giving up on this niche?

If you do some searching here you'll find many, many posts, but short answer is: yes, CE companies are pretty much calling the niche done.

Relatively poor sales and the advent of cable/sat DVRs (think, TiVo and their ilk) are the most commonly cited causes. Others include conspiracy theories, such as Hollywood lobbying for laws against them, which I never bought into as a cause, but I guess some believe it.

If you want one, now is the time to buy one. The Maganvox 2160 that includes a hard drive is favored, as are a few Panasonic models (although less so.)

The other day I noticed that my local Walmart no longer had any DVDR's with tuners on the main floor, they did have a couple in the clearance corner of the electronics section. Online searching seems to confirm that the number of DVDR's with OTA tuners is going down...

What gives? Are the consumer electronics companies giving up on this niche?

There are still a few recorders with ATSC tuners for receiving digital broadcast stations through an antenna.

There are still a few recorders with clear QAM tuners for receiving non-scrambled digital cable through the cable company raw coax feed. Many cable companies are in the process of scrambling most of their services so customers will have to use cable company provided converter boxes, digital transport adapters (DTAs) or Cable Cards (for a limited number of devices).

Tunerless recorders may be used with a Coupon Eligible Converter Box (CECB) for recording broadcast stations through an antenna or cable services through cable company provided converter boxes or DTAs.

The other day I noticed that my local Walmart no longer had any DVDR's with tuners on the main floor, they did have a couple in the clearance corner of the electronics section. Online searching seems to confirm that the number of DVDR's with OTA tuners is going down...

What gives? Are the consumer electronics companies giving up on this niche?
Not to be pedantic, but NO! They are not giving up -- they have most certainly already given up on these products. Past tense -- done deal.

With the other reasons cited here, I believe one of the biggest reasons is the ubiquitous cheap cable company DVRs. Even though they are not in the same niche, the easy and inexpensive avilability of these DVRs has killed the DVD recorders. No, you cannot save content permanently, but you certainly can do everything else a user would want, and since they come from the service provider, they are usually pretty well integrated into the system, channel and guide-wise.

The precipitous rise and fall of the DVD recorder is, at least in part, the result of CE companies fundamentally misreading the marketplace. DVD recorders were designed and marketed as super-VCRs, everything the old VCR did plus a whole lot more cool features that really appeal(ed) to the kind of folks who still hang out on this forum. Most of us were probably active VCR archivers and readily embraced the major leap forward in flexibility, editing features, and picture quality the DVDR gave us.

Problem is Joe and Jane Consumer used their VCRs mostly for playing rented video tapes and maybe a little time-shifting. The common jokes about VCRs being so hard to program and the stereotype of the VCR clock forever blinking "12:00" are indications of how little those machines were used for recording. Then the DVD recorder came along, and it was WAY more expensive than a VCR, much harder to use, and prone to little finicky glitches that somebody who likes to tinker with electronics doesn't mind working around. Joe and Jane tossed up their hands, took their DVDRs back to Big Box Store (hence the robust refurb and open-box DVDR market some of us took liberal advantage of), and signed up for a dirt-simple to use cable/satellite company DVR that practically reads your mind and records stuff for you.

I love DVDRs and can't imagine life without them now, but even I recommend to non-geeks who simply want to time-shift their favorite shows that they just get a cable/satellite co. DVR.

Of course, I'm darned independent and REFUSE to pay for TV--no way, no how--unless I got to pick only (and I mean ONLY) the channels I want. It helps that I'm mainly interested in PBS, a handful of commercial TV shows, and news. Plus, I have a large VHS collection that I'm (a) slowly replacing with commercial DVDs or (b) dubbing to DVD. So I'm running a couple of CECB-fed DVD recorders, with backups in the closet. Despite the extra effort, it's still more appealing to me than wrestling with a media/home theater PC to get it to perform those functions. Someday, when my last DVD recorder cacks, I'll probably have to go that route. But not yet.

Bottomline: As fantastic and irreplaceable as DVD recorders are for the small band of faithful that hang around on this forum, the rest of the population has lost interest and moved on.

With the other reasons cited here, I believe one of the biggest reasons is the ubiquitous cheap cable company DVRs. Even though they are not in the same niche, the easy and inexpensive avilability of these DVRs has killed the DVD recorders. No, you cannot save content permanently, but you certainly can do everything else a user would want, and since they come from the service provider, they are usually pretty well integrated into the system, channel and guide-wise.You hit the nail on the head.

DVD-R is all but obsolete for timeshifting. Consumers want the ability to record in HD. Consumers want the ability to watch one channel while they record another, or better yet, record two channels simultaneously while they watch a previous recording. Customers want a box that records all new episodes of their favorite shows while ignoring repeats. All are standard features of every cable DVR.

Third-party DVRs are still expensive to produce. The technology required for high-definition recording is more costly, and DVR software is much more expensive to develop and support. Plus, to adequately compete with cable DVRs, a CE vendor needs to provide a guide and guide data, and both involve expensive patent and data licensing fees. Such a product could be viable at $300 with the right volume, but such volume is virtually unattainable given the competitive landscape (i.e. cheap cable/sat DVRs) and most Americans' reluctance to pay more than $100 for a recorder.

Such a product could be viable at $300 with the right volume, but such volume is virtually unattainable given then competitive landscape (i.e. cheap cable co DVRs) and most Americans' reluctance to pay more than $100 for a recorder.

You'd think people would want MORE (time, storage especially) than the cable companies' low end DVRs offer.... but they don't save much anymore or figure they can get it online and on youtube. Guess those of us who want to make our own and control the process already KNOW that the likelihood of finding what you want (long term) is slim.I think another factor is how difficult the cable companies make using your OWN equipment ... for example , the horror stories about getting the cablecards for Tivo up and running.... so it's "easier" to just let them do it for you .... OK for for occasional time shifting, at least until it stops working or you cant get the stuff off the drive or ... you look at the bill ... or ... fill in the blanks.

If a cableco DVR stops working, they replace it for free. And most people I've known who use them don't care to get the shows off the hard drive. They just want to timeshift it, watch it, and delete it. If they want to own the content, they buy the DVDs or get it from online. As for the bill, the majority of a cable bill will be for whatever tier you're on. The DVR adds all of $20 at the most, which most people pay. All of these factors make the cable DVR excel at its niche, and it's hard for anything to compete.

You may not want one, and I don't really want one, but for your average Joe, they do their job. Otherwise, they wouldn't be as pervasive as they are.

An interesting discussion and charts (http://www.snl.com/Interactivex/article.aspx?CDID=A-10089958-12327&Printable=1) on Cable, DBS and Telco DVR growth and dwindling stand-alone (TIVO) base.

Note discussion of TIVO patent fight with Echostar, which recently got juicier with the USPTO making a prelim. determination (http://www.multichannel.com/article/326956-TiVo_Patent_May_Be_Invalid.php) that two prior patents invalidate the TIVO Time Warp claims ruled on in the Echostar case.

An interesting discussion and charts (http://www.snl.com/Interactivex/article.aspx?CDID=A-10089958-12327&Printable=1) on Cable, DBS and Telco DVR growth and dwindling stand-alone (TIVO) base.

Note discussion of TIVO patent fight with Echostar, which recently got juicier with the USPTO making a prelim. determination (http://www.multichannel.com/article/326956-TiVo_Patent_May_Be_Invalid.php) that two prior patents invalidate the TIVO Time Warp claims ruled on in the Echostar case.Neither has much to do with DVDR obsolescence, but the article certainly speaks to the difficulty in selling standalone DVR products when cable and satellite providers offer their own DVRs at subsidized prices.

I do mainly time-shifting and have used two DVDRs to do this. I do save a few programs to DVD-R discs, but for me that is small part.

Recently I got a Comcast DVR & really like it. It has two tuners so it can record two programs at once, even while playing back a third one. All in HD and DD5.1, presuming the original was that way. I'll have to admit that my DVDRs had less problems, but they were not 100% perfect. While the DVR has had more bugs, it sure is nice to record in HD. And I still can use a DVDR if I want to.

While it has not hit my area yet, I keep reading that cable companies are starting to encrypt everything but the lower channels. So if you want Discovery Channel, USA, etc., eventually you might need some kind of STB or DVR from the cable company, presuming you want cable. Of course you can still go free OTA, and I've considered doing that. But I keep calling Comcast & keep getting 6 month promo rates, so I'm still with them for now.

If/when I decide to go OTA, I'd get something like a Dell Studio Slim desktop which has a nice form factor & can positioned horizontally and it then looks like a piece of A/V equipment. These start at $400. Add a dual tuner card for OTA and connect it to the internet to watch Hulu, etc.

Most of the channels that you (are supposed to) pay extra for, here, get encrypted here later this month. And so if you want to record digital cable, you better understand your obligations as per FCC regulations: Cable companies must support CableCARD, and your recording devices must have CableCARD slots if you want to expect them to work recording cable. That's the law.

Using either a digital STB included with a cable account or even a DTA, often provided free, gets around any problems recording digital channels in standard-def from cable.

The STB provides a composite (sometimes S-Video) input to the DVD recorder while a DTA requires input on chs. 3 or 4 by coax, or with a VCR used as demodulator, can be connected to the DVD recorder via composite inputs.

Cable companies must support CableCARD, and your recording devices must have CableCARD slots if you want to expect them to work recording cable. That's the law.

Law or not, CableCARD is now a legacy technology.

That is incorrect.

Law or not, CableCARD is now a legacy technology.CableCard is cable's separable security technology for the foreseeable future.

All tru2way devices use the existing CableCards. A tru2way device is just an updated CableCard device with bidirectional transmitter and a Java virtual machine to run the cable company's software. It eliminates the need for the CE vendor to develop and implement their own software.

That is incorrect.

Nobody uses CableCard. Nobody. It might as well not exist -- like Super VHS, DAT recorders and Discovision.

I use CableCARD. You are incorrect still yet again.

I decided to invest in a 2160A HDD recorder because I didn't want to have to pay the monthly fee to the cable company for their DVR...I was trying to save what money I could, and if it's a choice between giving up the DVR or giving up HD service or something else, I gave up the DVR (but that's only because I was able to get the 2160 to do the same thing...save stuff to the hard drive, watch it, and delete it).

Some day maybe I'll get the DVR from the cable company again...probably when the 2160 dies or something, I suppose. For now though I'm happy with how I've got things set up. :)

I've always liked having a DVD recorder, whether it's the 2160 or the Panny that I use on the TV upstairs. I'll miss having them when they finally do quit working...I just like not having to pay that darned monthly fee to the cable people! I give them enough of my $$ as it is. :(

DGK

I use CableCARD. You are incorrect still yet again.

Only 443,000 standalone CableCards have been installed. By comparison, Betamax sold 2.3 million units in 1984 and HD-DVD sold a million in 2008.

That's nobody.

Only 443,000 standalone CableCards have been installed. By comparison, Betamax sold 2.3 million units in 1984 and HD-DVD sold a million in 2008.

That's nobody.We're still in the early stages of CableCard deployment. At this time, all we have is the TivoHD, Moxi, and some discontinued television models. Most television manufacturers abandoned CableCard two years ago and decided to wait for tru2way.

Without tru2way, CableCards don't support a program guide, guide information, or any form of video-on-demand unless the CE manufacturer invests $$$$ to provide and support those services on their own (i.e. TiVo, Moxi). With tru2way, the CE device functions as if it has a built-in cable box; it downloads and runs the cable company's software with their interface, guide, program information, and video-on-demand. With tru2way, the cable company is responsible for supporting all cable functionality. That makes it much more cost-effective to implement.

It looks to be another 6-9 months before tru2way software is widely available from cable operators across the country. At that time, you should see CableCard support in many new high-definition televisions priced $800 and above. Expect to see a number of new announcements for tru2way enabled TVs at CES in January.

We're still in the early stages of CableCard deployment.

The technology is broken on a conceptual level. This is supposed to replace Cable Ready, but doesn't act like it. The old system was plug and play. The new requires monthly fees and special installation. It is a toy for the HT crowd, like the aforementioned laserdiscs and DAT machines.

Instead of the STBs, both cable and satellite could give us a combination descrambler/modulator. It would pass through every channel in RF digital or analog, according to the needs of the subscriber, to any sort of tuner. Considering the engineering talent available, it wouldn't be too difficult to develop.

Besides, Pay TV is moving away from full service into a specialty, luxury product that provides massive amounts of live sports and PPV movies to a smaller audience that is willing to spend extra. I don't think that audience cares how they get a signal, just as long as they can watch certain special events.

Only 443,000 standalone CableCards have been installed. ... That's nobody.Incorrect. That is a significant number of people. Your earlier assertions were erroneous. Your point has no merit.

Incorrect. That is a significant number of people. Your earlier assertions were erroneous. Your point has no merit.

That's a smaller installation base than ReplayTV achieved, despite Hollywood suing it out of business. Cable TV reached just over 63 million subscribers in 2008, out of more than 124.8 million available US homes. Only 443,000 is just sad, considering it had government support.

Less than one percent of cable TV households use CableCard. That's a failure. And, BTW:

We're sorry‚ we found 0 matches on Walmart.com for "cablecard".

Your point has no merit. You imply you are owed something, but you have no legitimate foundation for what you demand.

Your point has no merit. You imply you are owed something, but you have no legitimate foundation for what you demand.

Scroll up. My point is that "CableCard is now a legacy technology." In fact, I don't think DVDRs ever used them.

CableCARD is the current and future technology supporting digital cable-ready capability.

CableCARD is the current and future technology supporting digital cable-ready capability.

It might as well be an urban myth.

Even cheap VCRs had cable-ready tuners. Only niche products carry CableCards.

One product is so simple that granny can use it. The other is only used by hobbyists and Tivo devotees.

It isn't an urban myth, or anything like it. It is the actuality. It's the law.

If you think consumers should not have had a choice to buy lower-priced equipment (i.e., without support for CableCARD) then you should have done what was necessary to have such regulations imposed on consumer electronics manufacturers a decade ago. There were comparable regulations imposed on them (i.e., requirements to include ATSC tuners, for example), so you had your shot. You blew it.

It isn't an urban myth, or anything like it. It is the actuality. It's the law.

So what? Nobody cares. Nobody uses it. Worse, it fails to serve the purpose for which it was intended. Our exalted leaders invoked their experience, expertise, professionalism, and fiduciary responsibilities... and made a system nobody (except you) wants or cares about. It makes the US DVD recorder look like a smash success.

So what? Nobody cares. Nobody uses it. Worse, it fails to serve the purpose for which it was intended. Our ehalted leaders invoked their experience, expertise, professionalism, and fiduciary responsibilities... and made a system nobody (except you) wants or cares about. It makes the US DVD recorder look like a smash success.I understand your anger, but it is misguided by your mistaken sense of entitlement to an obsolete business model. The digital equivalent to the analog plug-n-play cable-ready CATV TV is here now -- it's called QAM. It's in every new TV that has been sold for the past couple of years. What more do you want? Well, I think I know the answer to that. You want them to continue their old analog business model and provide all the channels you subscribe to in clear QAM so you can use the tuner in your TV without renting their STB or cablecard for every device you have hooked up. If I had cable, I would want the same -- but they have chosen a new business model which says they're not going to do that. A business model which is already used by their competition.

They have chosen a new business model, that curtails features previously enjoyed by their subscribers, because they believe it will increase their overall revenue. If the balance of subscribers who object outweigh the subscribers who consume more services of the new model, they will lose revenue, which will prompt a change in business model. The only resolution to the matter is concerted pressure applied by disgruntled users to make them think revenue will be negatively impacted unless they relent. But if the majority of users are content to follow along with the new business model, you are SOL.

What's "CableCard"?

They have chosen a new business model, that curtails features previously enjoyed by their subscribers, because they believe it will increase their overall revenue.

The new business model isn't going to work, hasn't been shown to work and the industry has no reason to think it will work. Premium cable has been declining for years. PPV has never been a great success. Most viewers are not willing to pay extra for HD. Worst of all, the overall subscriber universe is not growing.

Music today is dominated by file sharing plus download services. Video will be that way soon. Cable TV will always being around, serving senior citizens and sports junkies, but the era when 2/3 of the public subscribes is already over.

The digital equivalent to the analog plug-n-play cable-ready CATV TV is here now -- it's called QAM.

I pointed this out with Bicker1 on this site before. He is adamant that CableCard is the One True Successor to analog TV, because "it's the law." Whatever.

A business model which is already used by their competition.

That's not a business model. That's a technical limitation. If D* and E* sent all their satellite signals in the clear, they wouldn't be able to sell subscription. And, until recently, more people used analog cable than both services combined.

Cable TV was designed from the start to mimic TV antennas.

What's "CableCard"?It's basically an access card that plugs into a TV or third-party device to authorize and decrypt all of your cable channels. It eliminates the need for a separate cable box to tune encrypted cable channels.

The Telecommunication Act of 1996 required cable companies to transition from built-in decryption schemes to an open standard that would allow third-party devices to access and tune encrypted channels. Cable companies responded by creating the CableCard standard. This moves the cable company's decryption scheme from a soldiered chip inside the cable box to an access card the that can be used in any supporting device. FCC mandate requires that all digital cable systems make these access cards available by request.

The problem with the original OpenCable (CableCard) standard was that it provided no support for two-way communication. Devices with CableCard slots could access all of the cable company's channels, but they did not have access to the program guide, program information, interactive features, or video-on-demand featured on the cable company box. If a third-party wanted to provide this functionality, it had to do so at its own expense. [That's what TiVo did.]

The tru2way standard expands upon the OpenCable standard by addressing these limitations. A tru2way TV or recorder uses the exact same CableCards, but it adds the hardware necessary to download and run a Java (OCAP) version of the cable company's software. Once a CableCard is inserted into a tru2way TV or recorder, it features the same cable company interface, program guide, program information, and video-on-demand as the cable box.

For tru2way to work, cable companies must provide the Java software for these devices to run. Major cable operators committed to making that software available by July, 2009, but not all could not meet that deadline. It now looks to be early 2010 before most will have that software available. At that point, we should see tru2way become a standard feature on many new TVs and third-party devices. This functionality should add $50-$100 to the [consumer's] cost of a volume product.

Major cable operators committed to making that software available by July, 2009, but not all could not meet that deadline.

The cable industry has massive war chests, but somehow cannot meet a deadline for creating a glorified PCMCIA card. Amazing!

This functionality should add $50-$100 to the cost of the product.

That would double the cost of many products. Why should an OEM card slot cost $100 or even $50?

If any product was ever designed to fail, this is it. These cards will serve a tiny population using locked-down DVRs, assuming Tivo is still in business.

The new business model isn't going to work, hasn't been shown to work and the industry has no reason to think it will work. Premium cable has been declining for years. PPV has never been a great success. Most viewers are not willing to pay extra for HD. Worst of all, the overall subscriber universe is not growing.Consumer spending on cable and satellite service grew significantly over the past five years. Over 102 million of the 114.5 million television households subscribe to cable or satellite and pay for more than local channels (source (http://www.multichannel.com/article/307416-Cover_Story_Extended_Reach.php)). That includes 32 million satellite and 28 million digital cable subscribers.

A growing percentage of "value content" is no longer available on broadcast television. Faced with diminished ad revenues, caused primarily by cable competition (ex: ~100 million TNT, USA, CNN, etc viewers (http://www.multichannel.com/article/307416-Cover_Story_Extended_Reach.php)) and the advent of easy commercial skipping with the DVR (~33 million DVRs and counting (http://www.snl.com/Interactivex/article.aspx?CDID=A-10089958-12327&Printable=1)), networks slashed their programming budgets and now focus more and more on low-cost reality TV shows. As a result, some content that we'd have traditionally seen on the local networks is now cable only. Other content is not deemed suitable for broadcast television because of its language, violence, sex, or subject matter.

Cable was always a luxury and that has not changed. Some people feel the content is worth the price; others do not. Some feel the increase in the cost of cable programming is offset by the increase in value content; others do not.

I pointed this out with Bicker1 on this site before. He is adamant that CableCard is the One True Successor to analog TV, because "it's the law." Whatever.The days of free and clear cable channels -- outside of locals -- are coming to an end. Whether you like it or not, digital television with CableCards is where the cable industry is headed in the short to intermediate term.

Cable companies do recognize the need for a better solution that eliminates the need for an access card. DCAS -- downloadable CAS --will allow TVs to download the necessary decryption software, effectively moving the functionality of the CableCard into a software download for the TV. This technology is probably still three years off, and then it will be some years after that before it makes its way into consumer products.

That would double the cost of many products. Why should an OEM card slot cost $100 or even $50?I was referring to the added cost for the consumer. Obviously, tru2way support consists of more than a card slot. The equipment manufacturer must include the hardware (ex: OpenCable receiver) and software (middleware) necessary to support the functionality.

If any product was ever designed to fail, this is it. These cards will serve a tiny population using locked-down DVRs, assuming Tivo is still in business.By 2011, tru2way products should vastly outnumber existing unidirectional CableCard products like TiVo and Moxi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM

that includes 32 million satellite and 28 million digital cable subscribers.

Only 28 million out of America's 60-65 million cable subscribers go digital? I honestly thought that number was much higher!

The days of free and clear cable channels -- outside of locals -- are coming to an end.

How soon until Motorola takes away the component, RF and RCA jacks away and forces eveything through a protected HDMI port?

Cable companies refuse to accept that the obsession with DRM and encryption is pointless, counter-productive overkill. File-sharing is here to stay. Get over it. As it stands, the customer is forced to subsidize a pointless security system intended to solve signal theft issues from the 1980s.

By 2011, tru2way products should vastly outnumber existing unidirectional CableCard products like TiVo and Moxi.

These will have lower sales than ReplayTV rang up a decade ago. Anyway, if I'm only watching live TV, the STB is fine. The problem is the cable won't play nice with my DVDR, my PVR, my SVHS, or my USB tuner. Besides, cable TV's advantage was convenience, but that is being eliminated. So what's the point of having cable?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM

Imagine trying to get that same clip off a cable VOD service! :D

Cable was always a luxury and that has not changed. Some people feel the content is worth the price; others do not. Some feel the increase in the cost of cable programming is offset by the increase in value content; others do not.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the cable TV pipeline became America's dominant source of news an information. It was not a luxury. Now things have changed -- and the rise of the Internet is just the beginning.

In this last decade, there has been no increase in the real incomes of working Americans. Instead, there was a sharp decline. Americans have just suffered two major stock market crashes and the destruction of their real estate wealth.

Yet the cable industry is stuck in a 1990s bubble mentality, believing Americans are going to pay enormous amounts for more and more premium services. That just isn't realistic.

Only 28 million out of America's 60-65 million cable subscribers go digital? I honestly thought that number was much higher!That number will increase substantially over the next few years, as more and more systems transition to digital only.

Cable companies refuse to accept that the obsession with DRM and encryption is pointless, counter-productive overkill. File-sharing is here to stay. Get over it. As it stands, the customer is forced to subsidize a pointless security system intended to solve signal theft issues from the 1980s.Most Americans could care less about watching TV on their computer. Very few Americans, percentage-wise, download pirated shows online. The overwhelming majority of viewers still watch and record content as it is broadcast on cable and satellite. Content providers and cable/satellite companies want to ensure that those viewers pay for what they watch, and encryption is the best way to do that.

These will have lower sales than ReplayTV rang up a decade ago. Anyway, if I'm only watching live TV, the STB is fine. The problem is the cable won't play nice with my DVDR, my PVR, my SVHS, or my USB tuner. Besides, cable TV's advantage was convenience, but that is being eliminated. So what's the point of having cable?Cable's transition to digital will obsolete some legacy equipment (or cripple its functionality). We've already seen that with the transition to digital broadcasting and the same transition is coming to cable, albeit at a slower pace and for different reasons.

At this point, any AVS member considering an analog-only or ClearQAM device should be aware of cable's transition to encrypted digital. If you buy such a recorder, you should do so knowing full well that it will be crippled (i.e. won't support non-locals without another box) before long.

New, more compelling technologies will take the place of these devices -- we're already seeing that with CableCard DVRs and cable/satellite DVRs. Later this month, certain PC tuners will gain CableCard support without oem restrictions; Hauppauge and others have already announced their intent to offer new tuners with CableCard slots in 2010. Windows 7 includes built-in DVR software (http://www.viddler.com/explore/engadget/videos/503/0.836) with CableCard support.

Looking ahead 5-10 years, cable companies will provide network DVR functionality via tru2way which will greatly minimize the need for third-party recording devices. In ten years, you'll turn on your tru2way (CableCard) TV and you'll see the cable company's DVR software, except it'll run on your TV instead of some external box. Recorded programs will be stored and played from cable company servers rather than a local hard drive.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the cable TV pipeline became America's dominant source of news an information. It was not a luxury. Now things have changed -- and the rise of the Internet is just the beginning.Cable news did not even reach half of U.S. TV households until 1987-1988.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, local network news dominated the ratings. The combined Nielsen ratings for local news programs was more than four times the combined ratings of all cable news channels. Take the example of the first Gulf war back in 1991, when CNN set ratings records for basic cable:

CNN 11.7 share (10.85m households)
ABC 16.1 share (14.99m households)
NBC 15.7 share (14.62m households)
CBS 13.4 share (12.48m households)

I will grant you that many in GenX and GenY grew up watching cable news, and now obtain a much greater percentage of their news online. But cable was never a "dominant" source of news and information. Cable was certainly never a requirement to remain informed.

...How soon until Motorola takes away the component, RF and RCA jacks away and forces eveything through a protected HDMI port?...

That's a scary thought. It would have to be much further in the future, if ever, because it would require all subscribers to buy HDTV's. Analog TV sales are now dead, but sets that have sold already will continue being used for many, many years to come.

Sometimes you can't beat the picture quality of a nice SDTV when your signal source is analog. It's a good reason why I won't be throwing away mine before it dies on its own.

Sometimes you can't beat the picture quality of a nice SDTV when your signal source is analog. It's a good reason why I won't be throwing away mine before it dies on its own.You'd be a fool to throw it away, anyway - by the time they get done with all this diluting of HD signals, those are the only things that they're going to still look acceptable enough on (until they get so bad that they can't be salvaged by those, either).

That number will increase substantially over the next few years, as more and more systems transition to digital only.

The bulk of cable subscribers won't buy premium services. Worse, the cable companies have a hard time even keeping the people they have. The whole strategy for future expansion is misguided.

Very few Americans, percentage-wise, download pirated shows online.

By that standard, very few Americans, percentage-wise, have digital cable. More people watch movies off file sharing than off HBO and Showtime. The young, affluent crowd that the industry craves treats file sharing as second nature.

Encryption does not stop file sharing. It has no effect whatsoever. Rather, encryption destroys usability for the average consumer.

At this point, any AVS member considering an analog-only or ClearQAM device should be aware of cable's transition to encrypted digital.[

What you call a "transition" is nothing of the sort. Digital OTA and digital cable are not the same technologies. Comcast and some others put some digital channels in the clear so they could transition people off the analog feeds. They never marketed a ClearQAM service and never intended it to be available over the long term.

In fact, the cable industry never intended to send anything unscrambled over digital. In doing so, they are blowing off away their ability to provide cheap, useful content to the masses.

New, more compelling technologies will take the place of these devices -- we're already seeing that with CableCard DVRs and cable/satellite DVRs.

Those DVRs have fewer features and more bugs than my 2004 model ReplayTV. The only upside is the tuner. If you consider file sharing insignificant, don't even bother mentioning CableCard.

Who needs a third-party recording device when everything is out there, online, for free? Why do you think nobody bought DVDRs?

Cable news did not even reach half of U.S. TV households until 1987-1988.

I'm not talking about cable news. I'm talking about cable TV itself. During the 1980s and 1990s, educated, affluent people needed CATV because it provided a necessary window on the world. Now, the net has taken that position.

Cable's transition to digital will obsolete some legacy equipment (or cripple its functionality).

Deliberately crippling somebody's electronics is on questionable legal grounds. IANAL, but you can't just break somebody's TV. Considering cable's cozy relationship with government, a good lawyer could also claim this action is an unlawful taking of private property under the fifth amendment.

Deliberately crippling somebody's electronics is on questionable legal grounds. IANAL, but you can't just break somebody's TV. Considering cable's cozy relationship with government, a good lawyer could also claim this action is an unlawful taking of private property under the fifth amendment.

I thought you were making fairly reasonable (if misguided) arguments before, but you now have to be kidding. Sorry, but now your posts smack of wacko-conspiracy-theory-shack-in-Montana-nut.

I thought you were making fairly reasonable (if misguided)...

I'm not misguided. The Cable TV industry is betting the future on selling premium services to a narrow range of customers, rather than a useful, affordable package for the general consumer.

Instead of being Wal-Mart, cable wants to be Magnolia Home Theater. There aren't enough customers to do that and support the scale of a cable TV system.

...arguments before, but you now have to be kidding.

Nope. There is Supreme Court precedent on this. The actions of a cable TV company can be treated as an unlawful taking.

Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. (458 U.S. 419)
http://supreme.justia.com/us/458/419/

Not to be pedantic, but NO! They are not giving up -- they have most certainly already given up on these products. Past tense -- done deal.

With the other reasons cited here, I believe one of the biggest reasons is the ubiquitous cheap cable company DVRs. Even though they are not in the same niche, the easy and inexpensive avilability of these DVRs has killed the DVD recorders. No, you cannot save content permanently, but you certainly can do everything else a user would want, and since they come from the service provider, they are usually pretty well integrated into the system, channel and guide-wise.

And that is precisely why such DVRs suck. Personally, when I record something I do it to save it permanently otherwise what's the point?
That's why it is sad the the manufactures have long given up on the DVD recorders with the built in hard drives. RIP

Nope. There is Supreme Court precedent on this. The actions of a cable TV company can be treated as an unlawful taking.

Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. (458 U.S. 419)
http://supreme.justia.com/us/458/419/

Again, you have to be kidding. The only thing I gather from that link is that a cable company was liable for actual physical damages it caused (I would hope so.) Changing a mode of delivery from analog to digital is not the same thing. And even if it were, the goverment already did it with digital OTA.

That's like holding Microsoft liable because they changed Office 07 file types from .doc to .docx, effectively "breaking" every version of Office prior to 2007.

Personally, when I record something I do it to save it permanently otherwise what's the point?

Some stuff is only worth watching once. :)

Again, you have to be kidding. The only thing I gather from that link is that a cable company was liable for actual physical damages it caused (I would hope so.)

Actually, this is a landmark case that affects property rights on all sorts of issues that go beyond cable TV. A full discussion would go way beyond the scope of this forum. I only brought this up because bfdtv referred to the cable industry deliberately crippling consumer devices.

That's like holding Microsoft liable because they changed Office 07 file types from .doc to .docx, effectively "breaking" every version of Office prior to 2007.

The analogy doesn't fit. Microsoft products do not require a physical invasion of private property, which is the crux of Loretto.

Besides:
1. Microsoft allows you to export into several formats.
2. Microsoft doesn't prevent you from using old versions of its software.
3. Microsoft doesn't require the countless doc files be "upscaled" into docx files.

Besides, the point is not analog to digital. The point is that cable TV is changing its business model entirely, away from the general market, in the belief that the lost revenue can be made up by selling premium packages.

Actually, this is a landmark case that affects property rights on all sorts of issues that go beyond cable TV. A full discussion would go way beyond the scope of this forum. I only brought this up because bfdtv referred to the cable industry deliberately crippling consumer devices.



The analogy doesn't fit. Microsoft products do not require a physical invasion of private property, which is the crux of Loretto.

Besides:
1. Microsoft allows you to export into several formats.
2. Microsoft doesn't prevent you from using old versions of its software.
3. Microsoft doesn't require the countless doc files be "upscaled" into docx files.

Besides, the point is not analog to digital. The point is that cable TV is changing its business model entirely, away from the general market, in the belief that the lost revenue can be made up by selling premium packages. This is going on during an economic downturn, when disposable incomes are stretched.

The cable companies do not own the content. They simply transport it.

Much of what we do not appreciate as it relates to "crippling" is a result of pressure from the content owners. Not the transporters.

The analogy doesn't fit. Microsoft products do not require a physical invasion of private property, which is the crux of Loretto.


Neither does going from analog to digital. When I went from analog to digital cable, the cable company used the same wires it had before. They didn't even roll a truck. I picked up the box myself.

Nobody "broke" anything. If OTA was still sending an analog signal, I could still use my old analog equipment without adaptation (the fact that I can't is the lot for progress.) You're not convincing me, dude. Not one iota. I don't even know why I'm arguing. It's clear you've set your mind on this, so happy trails. :)

Neither does going from analog to digital. When I went from analog to digital cable, the cable company used the same wires it had before. They didn't even roll a truck. I picked up the box myself.

Nobody "broke" anything. If OTA was still sending an analog signal, I could still use my old analog equipment.

I agree.

OTA is protected territory - as legislation has demonstrated.

Cable systems are not. There is no valid reason why a closed cable system should have to offer the Discovery Channel for free.

Nobody "broke" anything. If OTA was still sending an analog signal, I could still use my old analog equipment without adaptation (the fact that I can't is the lot for progress.).

Even then, the government subsidized converter boxes in order to make up for the property loss in analog tuners. Likewise, Comcast is handing out DTA boxes at no charge.

Anyway, analog to digital is not the issue, as I explained above.

There is no valid reason why a closed cable system should have to offer the Discovery Channel for free.

Who is arguing this?

Who is arguing this?

Riddle me this?

Why does the cable industry deliberately cripple content?

Even then, the government subsidized converter boxes in order to make up for the property loss in analog tuners. Likewise, Comcast is handing out DTA boxes at no charge.

Anyway, analog to digital is not the issue, as I explained above.

The government decided to subsidize converter boxes as a result of political pressure - plain and simple.

Auction off the frequencies for "many many many" billions and spend a few billion on converter boxes.

It was a huge net revenue gain.

I'm not misguided. The Cable TV industry is betting the future on selling premium services to a narrow range of customers, rather than a useful, affordable package for the general consumer.

Instead of being Wal-Mart, cable wants to be Magnolia Home Theater. There aren't enough customers to do that and support the scale of a cable TV system.





Ummm.....and who gets to make the choice in strategy moving forward? You?

Why does the cable industry deliberately cripple content?

They are fighting a 1980s fight. Old-style cable theft went out of style when premium channels moved to digital cable. Addressable digital can't be hacked as easily as the old scrambled analog signals.

The new system of encryption+DRM on everything is just overkill. It creates service problems for the average user and does nothing to stop file sharing. Worse, it damages cable's best feature, convenience.

Repeat after me: Encryption does not stop file sharing. It has no effect whatsoever.

Ummm.....and who gets to make the choice in strategy moving forward? You?

The market.

Cable faces the same problems that everything from newspapers to video rental face. The margins on media are falling through the floor. The modern digital business model was based in 1990s dreams that Americans will pay massive amounts for a proverbial 500 channels. Meanwhile, the modern consumer economy has imploded, but cable still presses forward.

By weakening the mass-market service, cable believes it will make up lost volume by selling large quantities of premium programming. It isn't working. Subscriber levels are flat with no explosion in buyrates. Worse, neither advertisers nor households are willing to pay super-premium prices just for HD.

Look, all this talk of a glorious digital future coming Real Soon Now is just a rehash of dot-com bubble hype. The difference is that cable has a massive cash war chest that keeps the dreams alive.

When expanded basic first came out nobody had a cable ready tv. Everybody fully expected to need a box to tune cable channels above 13. Then cable ready tv sets appeared. On some systems, for a little while, buying a cable ready tv would get free expanded basic (and sometimes even free HBO etc.), which were not encrypted because originally just using channels 14 and up guaranteed that nobody could tune it without a box. This didn't last long. Once cable ready sets hit the stores cable companies started using other security measures. Some installed traps, some encrypted everything above limited basic, and some went to only one tier of basic (this was before the 1993 Cable Act that requires a limited basic tier be offered). Encryption did not affect the vast majority of subscribers who only owned tv sets with the VHF and UHF knobs/dials. As time went by, however, more and more people bought cable ready sets. Many were p***ed off when they realized that they would still need a box. I myself used to call then Warner Amex Cable and gripe about this a lot, even though I was only a teenager at the time (and had a box in my room). Finally most cable companies (1987 here in Bakersfield) relented and stopped encrypting expanded basic. The same scenario is repeating now. When digital cable debuted almost nobody had a tv with a QAM tuner. Everybody expected to need a box to tune any digital channels. QAM equipped tv sales were very slow at first, so the situation didn't change hardly at all for several years. Then in 2007 the vast majority of tv sets for sale had QAM tuners. The percentage of total sets in use with QAM tuners is still in the minority, but rapidly increasing. Complaints about not being able to use the QAM feature for anything other than limited basic will keep increasing. I predict that before the end of the next decade that most cable companies will give in to consumer demand and carry expanded basic in clear QAM. I just wish I still had the 24 hour "PBS HD Channel" to provide me my anytime HD fix until then.

And that will lead to increasing the amount of time devoted to commercials, reduction in production values, more reality programming on expanded basic, and more migration of quality scripted programming to premium cable.

How would expanded basic in clear QAM result in "increasing the amount of time devoted to commercials, reduction in production values, more reality programming on expanded basic, and more migration of quality scripted programming to premium cable."? Is there really a large number of people who climb the pole to remove traps and steal expanded basic while paying for limited basic? I would think that most cable thieves would prefer illegal descrambler boxes than having to climb the pole.
__________________

And that will lead to increasing the amount of time devoted to commercials, reduction in production values, more reality programming on expanded basic, and more migration of quality scripted programming to premium cable.

1. The general public could care less about "quality scripted programming." Or 1080p. Or premium anything.
2. Reality TV is invading basic cable because either a.) more people watch it or b.) making original reality shows can be cheaper than buying off-network reruns.
3. The whole paradigm of flipping channels looking for a show is dying out. Fewer and fewer people are willing to arrange their schedules to catch a new episode of something.

Is there really a large number of people who climb the pole to remove traps and steal expanded basic while paying for limited basic?

Most "cable theft" is a legal fiction. Cable operators often neglect to trap the signal entering someone's home, which means the resident gets free service. Many would argue that isn't theft at all.

You ought to come and visit the Chicago area here.

The third world illegal aliens filling up all the apartment complexes (12 to a unit) are notorious for constantly breaking into the terminal boxes and hooking themselves up to free cable.

Since there's easily over 30 million of them in this country (contrary to what the government intentionally underreports), and it seems to be a "culturally acceptable" thing for them to do, I would imagine the amount of it going on is quite high.

The third world illegal aliens filling up all the apartment complexes (12 to a unit) are notorious for constantly breaking into the terminal boxes and hooking themselves up to free cable.

This probably explains why Cablevision wants to encrypt everything, but only in the inner-city segment of its territory.

That's probably why they picked Chicago as one of the first places to do that in. That's one theory, anyway.

1. The general public could care less about "quality scripted programming." Or 1080p. Or premium anything.
2. Reality TV is invading basic cable because either a.) more people watch it or b.) making original reality shows can be cheaper than buying off-network reruns.
3. The whole paradigm of flipping channels looking for a show is dying out. Fewer and fewer people are willing to arrange their schedules to catch a new episode of something.

That's too bad. I must be one of the few who does care, then...I wish there was more quality scripted programming. I love my 1080p. I hate reality TV shows. And I actually do still care enough about the shows I do enjoy that I save them to DVD recorder (HDD drive) so I can watch them later -- I've been known to make sure I'm home to watch the shows I really like best in real time, though.

DGK

...third world illegal aliens...


When I wuz a kid our 5th grade biology text (insidious aren't they!) was written byMoon Man Otto (http://cgi.ebay.com/Modern-Biology-Moon-Mann-Otto-1951-Textbook-50s_W0QQitemZ190339571405QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAntiquarian_Coll ectible?hash=item2c511f5ecd&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14). :eek:

When I wuz a kid our 5th grade biology text (insidious aren't they!) was written byMoon Man Otto (http://cgi.ebay.com/Modern-Biology-Moon-Mann-Otto-1951-Textbook-50s_W0QQitemZ190339571405QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAntiquarian_Coll ectible?hash=item2c511f5ecd&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14). :eek:I think you mean Moon, Man and Otto -- three American high school science department heads. I kinda doubt they were illegal aliens.

I think you mean Moon, Man and Otto -- three American high school science department heads. I kinda doubt they were illegal aliens.

Golly gee whiz!

So tell me more you party animal, you! :rolleyes:

---
I'm by nature a detail person and when I get out the tweezers can pick dingleberries with the best of them. Is that what people want?

---
For instance:

Truman J Moon, Paul B Mann, and James H Otto's work was controversial in that it espoused eugenic concepts that the human race should be improved by genetic selection; a view which kinda' fits in with the current movement to keep those damned illegals out.
http://www.faultymemories.com/wordpress/?p=652 (http://www.faultymemories.com/wordpress/?p=652)

When I wuz a kid our 5th grade biology text (insidious aren't they!) was written byMoon Man Otto (http://cgi.ebay.com/Modern-Biology-Moon-Mann-Otto-1951-Textbook-50s_W0QQitemZ190339571405QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAntiquarian_Coll ectible?hash=item2c511f5ecd&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14). :eek:
When I was a freshman in college, the fundamentals of physics textbook was written by "Holiday and Redneck.":eek:Or it ight have been Halliday Resnick. Who can remember being a freshman in college?:p

Hey, howja do that neat hidden spoiler trick?

You use the following to encase the text you want to spoilerize:

[ s p o i l e r ]text[ / s p o i l e r ]

Without any of the spaces of course. It's just SPOILER and /SPOILER in brackets. You can do that with a lot of things B and /B for BOLD, I /I for italics and so on.

How soon until Motorola takes away the component, RF and RCA jacks away and forces eveything through a protected HDMI port?

Looks like I was onto something:

"Hollywood is at it again. The movie studios and their trade association are lobbying the Federal Communications Commission for power to cripple the component video interface—the only one available on millions of early-generation HDTVs.''

"Selectable output control was banned by the FCC in 2003 as part of the original CableCard agreement. The Motion Picture Association of America, the National Cable and Telecommunications Commission, and Time Warner Cable have all visited FCC offices recently to demand that the ban be lifted."
http://www.hometheatermag.com/news/092909studios/

"Selectable output control was banned by the FCC in 2003 as part of the original CableCard agreement. The Motion Picture Association of America, the National Cable and Telecommunications Commission, and Time Warner Cable have all visited FCC offices recently to demand that the ban be lifted."
http://www.hometheatermag.com/news/092909studios/That seems rather foolish by the cable companies. The CC's charge a premium for HD service and channels. If an HD subscriber finds he can no longer feed HD content to his older HDTV via component (lots of still functional projection TV's don't have HDMI), what reason would he have to continue paying the CC premium for HD.

That seems rather foolish by the cable companies. The CC's charge a premium for HD service and channels. If an HD subscriber finds he can no longer feed HD content to his older HDTV via component (lots of still functional projection TV's don't have HDMI), what reason would he have to continue paying the CC premium for HD.

This was recently decided in favor of the consumer - meaning the selective control for analog outputs was denied. But that doesn't mean that the fight ends and the studios will continue their lobby.

This selective control was sought by the studios (and some carriers) in order to offer content prior to their DVD release dates. And in some cases the day (for example) a movie debuted in theaters. The argument is that in order to do this the analog output of cableco boxes would have to be crippled in order to support better encryption.

I don't believe it was intended to shut down analog across the board to all customers for all content. Just to "selectively control analog" output by shutting it down for certain pay per view events - for example something like "The Hobbit" being shown on cable the same day it was released in theaters.

The studios will not move forward with things like this unless they have better (in their minds) control over the analog output on the STBs. Some home theater fanatics (those with tricked out thearter rooms) actually support the analog selective control because they would love to pipe high end HD into their home theaters the same day and date the movie was released in theaters - and would pay the price.

Conversely the Movie Theater Associations are lobbying strongly against selective analog control because they do not want to lose control of new movie releases. They want people to have to come to the theaters for new movies and not enjoy them in the comfort of their own homes.

Conversely the Movie Theater Associations are lobbying strongly against selective analog control because they do not want to lose control of new movie releases. They want people to have to come to the theaters for new movies and not enjoy them in the comfort of their own homes.They'd have to break into my home, take me at gunpoint, and chain me to a tow truck and physically drag me there against my will, if they ever wanted to get me into a theater to see a first run, major motion picture these days. :mad:

(Pay my way, too.)

They'd have to break into my home, take me at gunpoint, and chain me to a tow truck and physically drag me there against my will, if they ever wanted to get me into a theater to see a first run, major motion picture these days. :mad:

I agree. And there are those who would be willing to pay $100 (for example) for a first run film on pay per view on the release date. Say the next Bond flick for a Bond fan. Stuff 8-10 people into a home theater and it actually could be a bargain.

But the studios won't do it with analog outputs enabled - thus the "selective analog control" argument.

The studios will not move forward with things like this unless they have better (in their minds) control over the analog output on the STBs.

How are they going to stop HDCP strippers? Or a simple kinescope, which just means pointing a camera at a TV screen?

And there are those who would be willing to pay $100 (for example) for a first run film on pay per view on the release date.

This might finish off movie theaters for good.

The HDCP strippers would be a problem but I don't think they're worried about a poorer quality kinescope, after all I don't think they're talking about disabling the 480i composite, RF or even S-video outputs of the STB. I'm guessing they're mostly worried about the HD component output which could be used to feed a HD PC card like the Hupp.... which has HD component inputs and could produce a mirror of the source. Their has always been a paranoia about component inputs in recording devices, hence the lack of component inputs on any major mfg. DVDR, even with the case of DVDRs it would only be SD anyway:rolleyes:

Movie theaters should always be around, although maybe not to the extent they are now. They sure aren't getting rich on me, I can't remember the last movie I saw in a theater, probably one in a dollar movie theater which should tell you how long ago it was. Since VHS I've preferred to watch the majority of my material at home.

I think there really are two paths forward for movie theaters:

First, some folks cannot afford the up-front costs of building their own home theater, and so, for them, there is a value in seeing a film in the theater. The problem with this market, though, is that by its nature, there isn't much money to be had, so what we're talking about is something that will necessarily be a middling experience, since there won't be the money available to make it worthwhile making it a superior experience.

Second, the middle class will never be able to build a home theater to rival the experience that can be delivered from a truly premium movie house experience, such as the various IMAX theaters that have gone up in our area in recent years. I'm of two minds with regard to IMAX: In some cases, it is simply "too big". However, in some cases, I find that still superior to my own home theater experience. The seats are comfortable and typically clean; the high price ensures that you're not going to stuck behind a bunch of teens who aren't interested in watching the film, but rather are just interested in being disruptive; etc. However, because of the high price, the demand will be lower, so many people will have to travel a bit for such an experience. Here, in a thickly-settled suburban area, we still have to travel 10 miles.

I was at Fry's Electronics the other day & they had quite a few Panasonic EZ48 DVDR units stacked on a display in the main aisle near the other DVD players/recorders. They also had a few EZ18 machines and one EZ28. However none of these were on sale.

I wish the movie industry would die out to the point where they say "The heck with it - we might as well just start making them all good now", and stop gearing most of them to the widest, lowest common denominator-type audience.

I live in one of those very "homogenized" areas (very comformist, heavily religious, and extremely Republican - boring as hell. Hardly any authentic, affordable, ethnic restaurants, other than Spanish, naturally, which are taking over like in so many other places - but even those are overpriced around here), where there is nothing but the most popular stuff showing. If I want to see anything a little off the beaten track (for here), I usually have to travel 40 miles into Chicago.

If we ever had anything resembling an "art movie house" around here, I'd probably occasionally be going there (although you'd still have to go towards the city if you wanted to make it a full-fledged night out and actually dine anywhere worth dining - the food out here is terribly overpriced and mediocre. I guess that's what you get when you grow up and live around Chicago most of your life - but I swear, these people don't even have any taste buds out here).

If we ever had anything resembling an "art movie house" around here, I'd probably occasionally be going there (although you'd still have to go towards the city if you wanted to make it a night out and actually dine anywhere worth dining - the food out here is terribly overpriced and mediocre. I guess that's what you get when you grow up and live around Chicago most of your life - but I swear, these people don't even have any taste buds out here).

This is why netflix has been doing so well -- the 'art house audience is pretty small and even in urban areas, the rents are so high that it's hard to justify keeping them open. We used to have one of those theatres that couldn't make the rent -- first they split into about 5 boxes so they could show different foreign films - usually five or six people would be in each theatre. Now it's a CVS drug store.

I miss the 'community' aspect of seeing a movie with a lot of people who are really enjoying it - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- especially at one of the old movie palace style theatres ... but in reality, most of the time the movie going experience had become more annoying and inconvenient than 'socially rewarding.... lots of talkers, inconvenient times or locations, etc . I miss seeing great films in their full wide-screen glory, but more often than not these days we end up watching most movies at home.

The precipitous rise and fall of the DVD recorder is, at least in part, the result of CE companies fundamentally misreading the marketplace. DVD recorders were designed and marketed as super-VCRs, everything the old VCR did plus a whole lot more cool features that really appeal(ed) to the kind of folks who still hang out on this forum. Most of us were probably active VCR archivers and readily embraced the major leap forward in flexibility, editing features, and picture quality the DVDR gave us.

Problem is Joe and Jane Consumer used their VCRs mostly for playing rented video tapes and maybe a little time-shifting. The common jokes about VCRs being so hard to program and the stereotype of the VCR clock forever blinking "12:00" are indications of how little those machines were used for recording. Then the DVD recorder came along, and it was WAY more expensive than a VCR, much harder to use, and prone to little finicky glitches that somebody who likes to tinker with electronics doesn't mind working around. Joe and Jane tossed up their hands, took their DVDRs back to Big Box Store (hence the robust refurb and open-box DVDR market some of us took liberal advantage of), and signed up for a dirt-simple to use cable/satellite company DVR that practically reads your mind and records stuff for you.

I love DVDRs and can't imagine life without them now, but even I recommend to non-geeks who simply want to time-shift their favorite shows that they just get a cable/satellite co. DVR.

Of course, I'm darned independent and REFUSE to pay for TV--no way, no how--unless I got to pick only (and I mean ONLY) the channels I want. It helps that I'm mainly interested in PBS, a handful of commercial TV shows, and news. Plus, I have a large VHS collection that I'm (a) slowly replacing with commercial DVDs or (b) dubbing to DVD. So I'm running a couple of CECB-fed DVD recorders, with backups in the closet. Despite the extra effort, it's still more appealing to me than wrestling with a media/home theater PC to get it to perform those functions. Someday, when my last DVD recorder cacks, I'll probably have to go that route. But not yet.

Bottomline: As fantastic and irreplaceable as DVD recorders are for the small band of faithful that hang around on this forum, the rest of the population has lost interest and moved on.

moved on to what!!!???

you know what really pisses me off? it htat it damn near impossible to get a new VCR anymore. the last ones that Walmart carries are Magnavox (really made by Funai) and the build quality is utterly shocking! I bought one and retruend it a day later - felt like it would last 4 weeks tops. I ended up shelling out 220 bucks for a Toshiba DVR670 DVDr/VHS combo.

so, now I have a decent quality VHR (which has HDMI out and fabulious picture quality for VHS (yes I know VHS - still it does need all the help it can get - no?)), and the other half a DVDr which i didn't need and still have no use for frankly.

I know all about DVDrs, I had the first generation ILO walmark crap brand DVDr with NTSC tuner back in 2002/2003. What POS that thing was. Oh it was great when you made a recording it would palyback fine!!.......until you tried playing the recording on ANY OTHER DVD PLAYER ON THE F*KING PLANET! I've had enough of playback incompatabiliy ******** (ANYONE NOTICE THAT VIDEO TAPE NEED HAD THIS ******** PROBLEM? - AM I THE ONLYONE THAT GETS IRATE OVER THE ISSUE?)

So I have a new DVDr which I will not even bother to try out - i now it will not playback on any other machine. plus the whole ISO structure of walling off sesions and finalizing etc.... is simply NOT made be to work as smooth as VTRs, and never will be.

What I don't like is the very reall probability that I will no longer be able to get a VCR in 5-10 yrs time - period.

You'd think that at least ONE company would continue to offer them indefinately due to many of us having a large VHS library of titles (anyone still have alot of LPs too - I do...............you can still get Turntables!!.........wise up companies, there will always be a niche market for VCRs)

anyway I get pissed over the whole issue of inavailablity ot new VCRs and the pimping of Cable TV TIVO crap.

I dumped cable in 1999, and have had absolutely on interest in getting more than the 13 I get over the air - and Hell PBS/CBS is all I wathc anyway. you can keep the other 500 channels.

I do miss History Channel, but the others Discovery/ Learning are both utterly dumbed down from their 1980's days, A&E is the same, and Americna Movie Classics stopped playing commercial free CLassic BW mobies by 1986, and now "classics" dating to 5 yrs ago!! w/ 300 commercials every hour!

nope no need for cable.

but sure would like more VCR choices.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the cable TV pipeline became America's dominant source of news an information. It was not a luxury. Now things have changed -- and the rise of the Internet is just the beginning.

In this last decade, there has been no increase in the real incomes of working Americans. Instead, there was a sharp decline. Americans have just suffered two major stock market crashes and the destruction of their real estate wealth.

Yet the cable industry is stuck in a 1990s bubble mentality, believing Americans are going to pay enormous amounts for more and more premium services. That just isn't realistic.

Amen.

cable free for over a decade. it saved me the 10,000 I've used to build my home theater room, soon to buy my second projector, my HDTV CRT a few years ago, buy 500 5-cent DVDrs and decript DVds and soon Bu discs.

and no 500 channels of crap reality TV to waste my time with. mroe time to post here, find more new music on the net, and read up on stuff that iterests me on the net.

i get PBS - so that means I get access to Frontline, Nova, Independant Lens and POV.

I don't need anything else from TV

The overwhelming majority of viewers still watch and record content as it is broadcast on cable and satellite. Content providers and cable/satellite companies want to ensure that those viewers pay for what they watch, and encryption is the best way to do that.



EXACTLY the war against Fair Use has been going on since Hellicom act 1996 (the same act that singlehandedly destroyed Radio as an enjoyable product)

That's like holding Microsoft liable because they changed Office 07 file types from .doc to .docx, effectively "breaking" every version of Office prior to 2007.

ya, and when they pulled that **** against DR DOS MS lost in court!

I don't like it when I see folks defending MS, the most unethical corp on Earth second to Debeers only.

I know all about DVDrs, I had the first generation ILO walmark crap brand DVDr with NTSC tuner back in 2002/2003. What POS that thing was.

nope no need for cable.

but sure would like more VCR choices.

ILO was a POS, I tried one in '05 and promptly returned it also. I tried several cheaper brands until settling on Panasonic and I haven't looked back since.

I also have no need for cable, I get more than I want OTA.

While I agree about the VCR choices it's not going to get any better, VHS is dead-er than LPs:( You still can buy decent new record players as well as new LPs, as you said no VCRs are available and the last few years (with the exception of DVHS) were junk.

Besides:
1. Microsoft allows you to export into several formats.


only problem is they are MS's version of the "open" standard file format - and so, usually: nope they don't allow you to export in anyway reliable/functional.


2. Microsoft doesn't prevent you from using old versions of its software.


Really? is that why every new version of MS garbage saves in a new file format that is not readable by the older version of the same program? You have to go out fo your way to "save as" into the older format. Sometimes it is readable by siad older program and sometimes it is not. nice.




3. Microsoft doesn't require the countless doc files be "upscaled" into docx files.


HAHA!! thats EXACTLY what they've been doing since the 1980s!

I live in one of those very "homogenized" areas (very comformist, heavily religious, and extremely Republican - boring as hell.


sounds like Oklahoma ;-/.

Hardly any authentic, affordable, ethnic restaurants, other than Spanish,

TexMex ain't Spanish. I've never seen a Spanish restuarant, but I've had great Spanish food before. many many years ago.



If we ever had anything resembling an "art movie house" around here, I'd probably occasionally be going there (although you'd still have to go towards the city if you wanted to make it a full-fledged night out and actually dine anywhere worth dining - the food out here is terribly overpriced and mediocre.


We have a nice college town theater which shows more quality independent films - but only once every few months or so ;-/.

There is no good food in the States anymore - knowbody can cook or taste anymore. Its all sugar salt and fat - some fried crap.

anything like good spicy food american namby pamby baby tougues can't handle the "pain".

I love authentic Indian and Veitnamise - but put some Cadamom, Ginger, Tumaric, or Saphron in front of the demographic you mention and I work with andits like pearls before swine.

"ew whats this funny taste?" like a bunch of 4 yr olds.

sugar/salt/sugar/salt/fat/fat/fried/buttered/fried/batter/sugar/more sugar/more more fat more sugar and more salt.

in otherwords "Chinese" buffet!!




I guess that's what you get when you grow up and live around Chicago most of your life - but I swear, these people don't even have any taste buds out here).

You have to be talking about Oklahoma!!

What I don't like is the very reall probability that I will no longer be able to get a VCR in 5-10 yrs time - period.

You'd think that at least ONE company would continue to offer them indefinately due to many of us having a large VHS library of titles (anyone still have alot of LPs too - I do...............you can still get Turntables!!.........wise up companies, there will always be a niche market for VCRs)


I was hoping Mitsubishi would. They made really nice VCRs (I have one of their S-VHS units, used of course.)

I don't think VHS has the rabid and vocal fanbase that LP records have, even though lots of people still have large VHS collections. Look how many debates about CDs vs LPs that still rage on in this forum. How many VHS vs DVD debates do you see? I guess the VHS fans never rallied the way LP fans more or less did. Plus, many just convert their tapes to DVDs, whereas LP fans would kill you where you stand if you suggested they convert their beloved vinyl to CDs or heaven forbid, mp3s. :)

Gaffo,

In recent years Toshiba DVD recorders have been made by Funai.

In the summer of 1999 American Movie Classics gave hosts Bob Dorian and Nick Clooney the pink slip, started running commercials between movies and hired John Burke to appeal to a younger demographic. There had also been a transition to more recent movies and a de-emphasis on "classic" movies. In 2000-2001 John Burke was also given the pink slip and commercials interrupted the movies. By that time I had largely given up on AMC. By 2002 the "classic" movies were largely gone and American Movie Classics had become "amc." The new amc had a bunch of twenty-somethings exchanging mindless chatter about how great the 1980s and 1990s movies are. Really?

During the late 1980s and early 1990s I started watching TNT as they showed older classic movies in their overnight timeslots. Then, in April 1994, Turner Classic Movies took over the classic movie programming 24/7 with the "uncut and commercial free" format that continues to this day. TCM is the only network showing a great number of 1930s-1950s movies. My favorites are the early "talkies" through the film noir era, but I've been known to watch a few more recent movies. I'm seldom interested in movies produced after 1960.

The TCM.com message boards are quite active. Once in a blue moon a distributor will, at the last minute, supply 1950s or 1960s movies that have been butchered, i.e., narrowscreen panned and scanned, edited TV versions. Many TCM folks are well-informed purists so whenever TCM shows a non-theatrical version of a movie there is an uproar on TCM message board. In those situations the TCM programmer often posts her regrets, then promises to make an effort to obtain the original theatrical versions for future showings. I'm an infrequent TCM poster, with only a few more than 600 posts.

I should also mention that Encore Westerns is a good source for vintage "western" or "cowboy" movies and TV series including The Gene Autry Show, Cheyenne and Maverick. THIS has been showing the Bat Masterson series. Encore Westerns and THIS show "edited for TV" narrowscreen and pannned and scanned versions of widescreen movies.

TCM is the only channel I know of that also shows old silent comedies, and stuff like the Thin Man movies. Good stuff like that is hard to find, unless you rent/buy it....

DGK

...cable free for over a decade. it saved me the 10,000 I've used to build my home theater room, soon to buy my second projector, my HDTV CRT a few years ago, buy 500 5-cent DVDrs and decript DVds and soon Bu discs.
...
i get PBS - so that means I get access to Frontline, Nova, Independant Lens and POV.

I don't need anything else from TV

I've got 3 relatively cheap 16 x 9 LCD TVs from 37" to 46", in different rooms, but don't care about hi-def when watching talking-head news or many other programs.

PBS is the best thing on TV, pay or OTA, and many of their shows actually look striking in high-def.

I don't like the concept of Home Theater though; a pretentious, often stuffy environment trying to act like a movie theater instead of a living room where people can kick back and be slouchy if they feel like it!

DVDs are great, video casette's are OK, but I was disapointed with the only BluRay disc I own, Trans-Siberian. Its reviews didn't say anything about its visuals being especially bad or good, so I don't know. It could have been an anamorphic DVD; not nearly as striking as the best from PBS on cable.

You have to be talking about Oklahoma!!

I quite agree with your remarks about food... but, I am originally an Okie, and I remember we had some good hot, spicy BBQ, and some decent Mexican food. I hope that hasn't all gone away! I was thinking he was talking about Grand Rapids, Michigan... very bland, very Republican.



PBS is the best thing on TV, pay or OTA, and many of their shows actually look striking in high-def.


Ken Burns' recent series on the national parks is a good case in point. :D

TCM is the only network showing a great number of 1930s-1950s movies. My favorites are the early "talkies" through the film noir era, but I've been known to watch a few more recent movies. I'm seldom interested in movies produced after 1960.

One of the reasons TCM was able to maintain the format is that it was moved from basic cable to the nether realms of digital tiers.

I guess the VHS fans never rallied the way LP fans more or less did.

The one advantage of VHS is that certain titles will never be released on disc. Certain 70s, 80s, and 90s may disappear indefinitely, except on fle sharing sites.

I wish the movie industry would die out to the point where they say "The heck with it - we might as well just start making them all good now", and stop gearing most of them to the widest, lowest common denominator-type audience.

I live in one of those very "homogenized" areas (very comformist, heavily religious, and extremely Republican - boring as hell. Hardly any authentic, affordable, ethnic restaurants, other than Spanish, naturally, which are taking over like in so many other places - but even those are overpriced around here), where there is nothing but the most popular stuff showing. If I want to see anything a little off the beaten track (for here), I usually have to travel 40 miles into Chicago.

If we ever had anything resembling an "art movie house" around here, I'd probably occasionally be going there (although you'd still have to go towards the city if you wanted to make it a full-fledged night out and actually dine anywhere worth dining - the food out here is terribly overpriced and mediocre. I guess that's what you get when you grow up and live around Chicago most of your life - but I swear, these people don't even have any taste buds out here).


I'm in the 'burbs also. However there is one nice movie theater in Downers Grove. The Tivoli that was built in 1928 & the plaque inside states they were the second theater in the country that was built for "talkies". One or two days a week they even have an organist play before the movie. They also have an "After Hours Film Society" on Monday nights. It may not be any closer than Chicago for you, but parking is free & admission is reasonable.

http://www.classiccinemas.com/History/tivoli.asp

http://www.classiccinemas.com/specialevents/theatreindex.asp?theatre=3

I'm in the 'burbs also. However there is one nice movie theater in Downers Grove. The Tivoli that was built in 1928 & the plaque inside states they were the second theater in the country that was built for "talkies". One or two days a week they even have an organist play before the movie. They also have an "After Hours Film Society" on Monday nights. It may not be any closer than Chicago for you, but parking is free & admission is reasonable.Thanks. Never knew that. Sounds worth checking out.

Last theater I went to was the (restored) Portage at Six Corners on Milwaukee Ave., in the city a couple of months back, for two nights during their yearly Silent Film Festival (saw Keaton, Fields and Lloyd). They also have live organists that play along. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portage_Theater)

I usually go there every winter, too, for their Sci-Fi/Horror Film Fest.

TexMex ain't Spanish. I've never seen a Spanish restaurant, but I've had great Spanish food before. many many years ago.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking - should've said "Mexican".

Actually, I'd be surprised if there wasn't an official, Mediterranean-Spanish style restaurant somewhere in the metro area here - considering that we pretty much have everything else you can imagine.

I was thinking he was talking about Grand Rapids, Michigan... very bland, very Republican.Crystal Lake (McHenry County), IL.

PBS is the best thing on TV, pay or OTA, and many of their shows actually look striking in high-def.If you never saw it back in it's earlier, pre-watered down days, you ain't seen nuthin'.

Crystal Lake (McHenry County), IL.

Hmmm... I read the two earlier versions, and didn't see anything wrong with them, even though I didn't agree 100% politically. I live in Ann Arbor, where we have the University of Michigan. Republicans are just about extinct in local politics. We have lots of restaurants with spicy food, and plenty of legal immigrants, who pay big $ to attend U of M...

You have to be talking about Oklahoma!!Nah - best steak I ever had was in Oklahoma City.

'Course, that was in 1978 - I have no idea what they're like now.

I'm in the 'burbs also. However there is one nice movie theater in Downers Grove. The Tivoli that was built in 1928 & the plaque inside states they were the second theater in the country that was built for "talkies". One or two days a week they even have an organist play before the movie. They also have an "After Hours Film Society" on Monday nights. It may not be any closer than Chicago for you, but parking is free & admission is reasonable.

http://www.classiccinemas.com/History/tivoli.asp

http://www.classiccinemas.com/specialevents/theatreindex.asp?theatre=3

Bellingham is between Seattle and Vancouver, BC; a relatively small city, pop. 75,000, but we've got an art house plus a chain theater near WWU that tends to feature the more arty commercial offerings.

Yesterday I saw the original Thing From Another World for $2 at the art house's Rocket Matinee. Only the second time I've seen it in a theater. The first time, admission was 25¢ but it wuz a lot scarier!

More than you want to know about the chain theater:
http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/2474.html

Our real gem:
http://www.pickfordcinema.org/pickford/
http://www.pickfordcinema.org/pickford/AllFilms.aspx?sort=date

DVD recorders dying out:

I feel like the fighter pilot in the original Star Wars film on his run against the death star:

"Keep on target."

"They're coming in too fast!"

"Keep on target!"

"But there are only Republicans here."

"Keep on target!!"

"We don't have any decent restaurants around here AT ALL!"

BLAM!

:D

DVD recorders dying out:

Yeah, I wasn't thinking - should've said "Mexican".

Actually, I'd be surprised if there wasn't an official, Mediterranean-Spanish style restaurant somewhere in the metro area here - considering that we pretty much have everything else you can imagine.


While not exactly near you, it is Mediterranean style. It's been a while since I've been there & it was an enjoyable experience.

http://www.mesonsabika.com/mesonsabika/index.html

My brother is a vinyl dealer. Quite often at his store and on eBay he can get $100+ for a used LP, sometimes even for LPs that are re-issued on CD. He tells me that his customers range in ages from teenagers to seniors. He also says that the vinyl niche market is growing every year. Many albums still get released on vinyl and cost more than CDs. For instance, last month Rhino released 6 DOORS albums on 180-gram vinyl for $25 each.

As for VHS, I predict that in a few years someone will come out with a USB VHS player. A unit that will easily convert a VHS tape to a DVD. Maybe one-button to record and finalize a tape to disc.

Many folks claim that vinyl sounds better than CD but no one claims that VHS looks better than DVD – that is why almost everyone is throwing away their VHS machines. But just wait; in a few years folks will want to re-visit their home memories on VHS.
Also many folks will find out that the DVDs they burned no longer read and they have long ago trashed their VCRs.

The USB VHS player market will be for the lucky folks that have kept their VHS tapes hidden in the attic. Plus I bet there are tons of people not very tech-savvy whom never got around to transferring VHS to DVD – the one touch USB VHS players will be perfect for those folks.

BTW, I still have quite a few Super Beta Hi Fi tapes. I long ago transferred them to SVHS but kept the original beta tapes in a closet. Now that I finally own a HDD DVD recorder, I will transfer the original beta tapes to DVD. Many are rare concerts broadcast in the 1980s and never released on home video. Luckily I own two working beta machines but I did notice that eBay usually has about three times as many Beta decks compared to HDD DVD recorders. Go figure.

Mark my words on the USB-VHS players coming out in a few years.

They already have one:

http://www.ionaudio.com/vcr2pc

The same company also makes USB enabled turntables and a USB cassette deck.

http://www.heartlandamerica.com/browse/item.asp?product=vcr-2-pc-converter&PIN=85937&GUID=8150350D-B195-4B36-BF40-E8ED1FCC3A84&BC=10001003&DL=SCH3:cool:
Although I doubt it will do commercial tapes with CP, BTW I've read poor reviews on this product I just posted the link FYI.

While not exactly near you, it is Mediterranean style. It's been a while since I've been there & it was an enjoyable experience.

http://www.mesonsabika.com/mesonsabika/index.html Also try the original Emilio's on Roosevelt a little west of Mannheim. He was the original chef of Cafe BabaReba in the city and also opened Meson Sabika and then sold it.

I know there are lots of good restaurants in Chicago, but the one I would most like to try is the Frontera Grill. It is owned by Rick Bayliss, who does a HD show for PBS, called Mexico, One Plate At A Time. Obama considered making him the Whitehouse chef, but I think he has too much going on to do it. He has three different restaurants in Chicago.

Also try the original Emilio's on Roosevelt a little west of Mannheim. He was the original chef of Cafe BabaReba in the city and also opened Meson Sabika and then sold it.


I think I've been to Emilio's also. The name doesn't ring a bell as much as the location you describe.

They already have one:
http://www.ionaudio.com/vcr2pc
The same company also makes USB enabled turntables and a USB cassette deck.

http://www.heartlandamerica.com/browse/item.asp?product=vcr-2-pc-converter&PIN=85937&GUID=8150350D-B195-4B36-BF40-E8ED1FCC3A84&BC=10001003&DL=SCH3:cool:
Although I doubt it will do commercial tapes with CP, BTW I've read poor reviews on this product I just posted the link FYI.

My bad!:o

Gaffo,

In the summer of 1999 American Movie Classics gave hosts Bob Dorian and Nick Clooney the pink slip, started running commercials between movies and hired John Burke to appeal to a younger demographic. There had also been a transition to more recent movies and a de-emphasis on "classic" movies. In 2000-2001 John Burke was also given the pink slip and commercials interrupted the movies. By that time I had largely given up on AMC. By 2002 the "classic" movies were largely gone and American Movie Classics had become "amc." The new amc had a bunch of twenty-somethings exchanging mindless chatter about how great the 1980s and 1990s movies are. Really?

During the late 1980s and early 1990s I started watching TNT as they showed older classic movies in their overnight timeslots. Then, in April 1994, Turner Classic Movies took over the classic movie programming 24/7 with the "uncut and commercial free" format that continues to this day. TCM is the only network showing a great number of 1930s-1950s movies. My favorites are the early "talkies" through the film noir era, but I've been known to watch a few more recent movies. I'm seldom interested in movies produced after 1960.



TCM is one of the few channels I watch on cable frequently. It keeps crossing my mind, especially with the threads here about Comcast encripting every channel so the QAM tuners on my recorders will be useless, that maybe I should ditch the cable, connect to the community antenna in the condo and get a Netfix subscription for a fraction of what I pay Comcast, for my Bogart fix.

Steve

TCM is one of the few channels I watch on cable frequently. It keeps crossing my mind, especially with the threads here about Comcast encripting every channel so the QAM tuners on my recorders will be useless, that maybe I should ditch the cable, connect to the community antenna in the condo and get a Netfix subscription for a fraction of what I pay Comcast, for my Bogart fix.

Steve

That's one way to avoid being enslaved to Comcast.

For me TCM is a must-have service as they program my favorite early talkies as well as movies from the film noir era. A friend told me that I would find very little of interest at Netflix.

Now and then the notion of "a la carte" cable pricing comes up. Bfdtv has addressed this here:

Some people have this idea that they "don't want to pay for all those extra channels," without realizing that many of those channels actually reduce their bill. A number of channels pay for carriage, and a number of content providers offer discounts to cable providers that carry all of their channels.

Folks thinking that "a la carte" cable pricing will save them money should read this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/business/media/24nocera.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

I first read that article after it was quoted and linked by Kyle In Hollywood (hlywdkjk) in the earlier of his two 25 November 2007 TCM Message Board posts. In that post Kyle details the likely impact to TCM if "a la carte" pricing were to be implemented. That post is currently found down toward the middle of this page:

http://forums.tcm.com/jive/tcm/thread.jspa?threadID=117503&start=15&tstart=0

For me TCM is a must-have service as they program my favorite early talkies as well as movies from the film noir era. A friend told me that I would find very little of interest at Netflix.


I'm a big fan of film noir, and TCM. They actually play a lot of things that aren't available on DVD... well, commercially, that is... ;)

A friend told me that I would find very little of interest at Netflix.Yeah, I've checked what they have, and it's not really worth it for me to subscribe, either.

Not enough old, obscure or eclectic stuff that I'm interested in. I can't even find half of the stuff I'm looking for on DVD for sale anywhere.

I love TCM and Netflix. Movies are my thing.

I always wondered whose thing they were. :)

That's one way to avoid being enslaved to Comcast.

For me TCM is a must-have service as they program my favorite early talkies as well as movies from the film noir era. A friend told me that I would find very little of interest at Netflix.



What TCM doesn't show is miniseries. Masterpiece Theater had several outstanding series on in the 70s and 80s, several of which I foolishly failed to record at the time. Browsing Netflix's selection, I've found "The Last Place on Earth", "The Flame Trees of Thika" , "I Claudius" and others on DVD, as well as commercial network series including "Centennial" and "Roots"

Steve

Yes - BBC stuff is what I'm mostly interested in, too. And most of is pretty old now.

One great, highly-rated (but relatively unknown) mini-series that I've always wanted and don't see anywhere is "The Life and Loves of a She-Devil". It was only available on PAL before, but I don't even see that anymore.

Another one I was just looking all over the net for last night was the original "Moll Flanders" - from 1975 (not that slick, over-commercialized 90's version). As far as I know, that was never available. It was only 2 or 3 episodes, and most people never even heard of it.

I do have the Keith Mitchell "Six Wives of Henry VIII" set on VHS - in pristine condition - but I still would like the better resolution of DVD (you can buy that, of course, but I'm not gonna spend $100.00 on it again).

Also would like all of the old T. Baker and J. Pertwee Dr. Who episodes - not just a select few.

Many old BBC sitcoms, too. You can only get "Best of" DVD's with some of them (like with "Dave Allen at Large"), and some (like "Sorry", with Ronny Corbett) don't even exist anymore.

Also, the series "Lovejoy", before some of the original cast members started leaving. And the mini-series "Raffles", too.

Then there was "Tenko", with Louise Jamison (Leela, from Dr. Who).

I could go on and on. All great stuff.

One great, highly-rated (but relatively unknown) mini-series that I've always wanted and don't see anywhere is "The Life and Loves of a She-Devil". It was only available on PAL before, but I don't even see that anymore.

The original "She Devil" is one of the darkest, funniest mini-series ever made. Its remarkably true to the Fay Weldon source novel, which is extremely bleak and bitter but also very funny if you have a twisted sense of humor. When they made the misguided Hollywood version, Meryl Streep was passable but Roseanne was hopelessly bad and off, hard to believe she could end up "miscast" in a role she was seemingly born to play. (To be fair, dark British humor rarely succeeds when fully Americanized).The original "She-Devil" hasn't appeared on US television since it was last shown on A&E in 1993. There was another show based on Fay Weldon's followup novel "The Cloning Of Joanna May", thats also long since disappeared. Perhaps Region 2 PAL dvds could be found on Amazon?

Amazon had it last time I looked a few weeks back, but last night when I checked again, the DVD page for it was completely gone - they only had the book. I think I saw it one or two other places back then, also, but I'm having a hard time finding them now.

I thought that "American movie version" was downright awful. It had that "kiddie-style" CGI in it, with R.B.'s head spinning around. Nothing like the original series, which was very low-key and dark, like you say.

(About the PM: Wikipedia says it was 60 mins. x 4. I don't know why it seemed longer to me. I also think I saw it without commercials first back in the late eighties on PBS here.)

Hmmm. Just looked on Wikipedia again, and the series "Sorry" is available on DVD. That's a pleasant surprise.

Six Wives and Lovejoy are on Netflix along with a ton of Dr Who. I don't know what episodes your looking for but they do have some old ones. A lot of BBC stuff.

I believe NetFlix has all the Tom Baker Dr. Who episodes that have been released on DVD. Many are available for streaming. I've rented/streamed all the Baker episodes before moving on to the current incarnation (half way through season 4).

Thanks. Been quite awhile since I last checked, and they didn't have much BBC stuff back then.

Probably wouldn't subscribe just for a couple of things (especially because I know how much of a huge, frustrating, and sometimes enraging hassle it is to "unsubscribe" to any kind of subscription service these days, and I'm just getting too old to want to deal with that kind of cr*p anymore once they run out of things I want to see), but maybe they have more now that I'd be interested in to make it worth it for me.

Out of all of those, "Lovejoy" is what I'd want to see the most. That's one of the most underrated (in the US) shows of all-time.

(Also have my good ol' Sima on hand.)

Thanks. Been quite awhile since I last checked, and they didn't have much BBC stuff back then.



Weekly series from the Brits! Netflix has "Yes Minister" and the first season of "The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin". Apparently only the first season of Perrin. The second season, when Reggie founded "Grot" had be rolling on the floor laffing.

Steve...who had a boss exactly like "CJ"

Ah, jeez, you guys are killing me with the Brit nostalgia trip. "Reginald Perrin"? I haven't heard that name since the late '70s, when the show would come on right after "Monty Python" here on NYCs PBS-13. Now I'll hafta hunt down that "Perrin" DVD to put with the Python episodes...

Also would like all of the old T. Baker and J. Pertwee Dr. Who episodes - not just a select few.

Oh yeah. Iowa Public Television started a complete run through the Tom Baker, Peter Davison, and Colin Baker Dr Whos right after I got my DVD recorder up and running..... :D

Apparently, they were one of the last PBS stations to be running the "original" Dr Who series.

Oh yeah. Iowa Public Television started a complete run through the Tom Baker, Peter Davison, and Colin Baker Dr Whos right after I got my DVD recorder up and running..... :D

Apparently, they were one of the last PBS stations to be running the "original" Dr Who series.
Man, don't I wish *I* could have access to those series. During my dubbing project, Doctor Who was one of the largest collections, and I took the time to do it as good as possible, but I had very, VERY lousy cable then and it was littered with image ghosting and dropouts.

Ever hear of a series called "'Allo 'Allo!" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086659/)?

I have almost all of the Lovejoy series from the original A&E run, many years ago. I have to say, Eric from Lovejoy, and Richie from Highlander were almost the same character. I really preferred Beth to Eric, by a LOT, but when Lady Jane left the series, it was over. While it hung on for a bit longer, catastrophic failure was inevitable. Ian McShane just couldn't hold it together.

One of the best lines was in the pilot episode, when Eric first arrives to work with Lovejoy, his dad was a butcher, and when he walks in, he tosses Lovejoy a large piece of meat as an opening gesture. Lovejoy looks at it, grins, and says, "Now is the winter of our discontent been made glorious summer by this loin of pork!" I still chuckle at that.

THAT was an enjoyable series.

My wife really likes The Midsomer Murders, now in it's tenth year. Part of my PAL to NTSC odyssey was in response to her desire to get the episodes that have not been shown in the US, so they were on UK PAL (region 2) disks.

Anybody remember Poldark? It was basically a soap opera based on a series of novels by Winston Graham set in late 18th century Cornwall with Robin Ellis as the eponymous hero. The Beeb made two 13-episode serieses out of it, the second stronger, I think than the first, which may because (IIRC) Graham was more involved in writing the scripts. Both series first aired in the U.S. on Masterpiece Theater in the mid-/late-70s. In one of his books, Alastair Cooke pretty much said he thought Poldark was dreadful, melodramatic stuff and beneath the standards of Masterpiece Theater. But I think it was pretty popular with the audience.

Anyway, the series did come out on VHS in the U.S. but with a whole slew of small cuts done, I suspect, so the series could be fit onto standard T-120 VHS tapes. The damage wasn't enough to mess up the narrative but did cause odd jumps and missing bits that led to continuity errors. As of a year or two ago, it had been issued on DVD in Region 2 but never here. However...

Milwaukee Public Television ran both series in their entirety--without the disfiguring cuts--when I lived in the area. I treasure the tapes I made (this was just a year before I got my first DVDR) for their completeness. If the series ever come out *uncut* on commercial DVDs, I'm there.

Edit: Well, you can get Region 2 copies even from Amazon US. I gave my girlfriend a region-free DVD player for Christmas last year so she could watch DVDs she brought back from Russia. Hmmmmm......

One of the reasons TCM was able to maintain the format is that it was moved from basic cable to the nether realms of digital tiers.



The one advantage of VHS is that certain titles will never be released on disc. Certain 70s, 80s, and 90s may disappear indefinitely, except on fle sharing sites.

speaking of which, has "Death Be Not Proud" been offerd in DVD.............yet? only been 40 yrs.

Mission Impossible - original series of course.................?

.......

last time I checked 5 yrs ago niether were ;-/.

still VHS only ;-/.

Nah - best steak I ever had was in Oklahoma City.

'Course, that was in 1978 - I have no idea what they're like now.

Best Steak to be found is "Houstons" in Austin TX (and I assume its a chain and one in Houston too).

excellent steak - been 15 yrs though.

things change, so who knows.

Also many folks will find out that the DVDs they burned no longer read and they have long ago trashed their VCRs.




EXACTLY!!!!! I burned 200? CDrs since 1998 - most proir to 2002. Now a good 1/10th of them have HOLES in them. Corrupt data out the arse. Partial reads - many mp3 gone for good.

I wised up around 2002 and made two copies of everything - each backup on a different brand (since 2005 when I got into burning DVDs I did the same thing)....................I've just now noticed than a very very few of my DVDrs are now starting to play the same game!!

I even went out of my way before buying in 100 DVDr bulk to "test" pre-orders by taping discs on my dashboard "sunny side up" for a few weeks in summer to see how tough the data integrity wuold hold up before I bought the same brands (or non-name brands to be more accurate).

Long story short - I did my testing which weeded out the good from the bad and even still I think the data integrity will be only good for maybe 10 years or so.

I know that most other folks didn't "test" and jusy bought whatever DVDrs were on sale at the store - I fear for their future!! I know many will wake up in shock in 10 years time to find their videos are all gone!

;-(.

.............

I do wonder if DVD-RWs (CD-RWs) are simply more reliable longterm (I don't have any due to the 2x cost...still wonder though).

What TCM doesn't show is miniseries. Masterpiece Theater had several outstanding series on in the 70s and 80s, several of which I foolishly failed to record at the time. Browsing Netflix's selection, I've found "The Last Place on Earth", "The Flame Trees of Thika" , "I Claudius" and others on DVD, as well as commercial network series including "Centennial" and "Roots"

Steve


Got a copy - (err..I mean rented) of I Claudius from NF - what a great show. They have Henry the VIII too BTW.

recommend Elizebeth the Virgin Queen also - a great newer flick.

anyone seen "Star Cops" (sci-fiction late 90s?)????????? BBC miniseries.

too obsure to rent but I can buy it.

any good? if so I may bite the bullet and buy.

What TCM doesn't show is miniseries. Masterpiece Theater had several outstanding series on in the 70s and 80s, several of which I foolishly failed to record at the time. Browsing Netflix's selection, I've found "The Last Place on Earth", "The Flame Trees of Thika" , "I Claudius" and others on DVD, as well as commercial network series including "Centennial" and "Roots"

Steve

oh ya, Brother Cadfael miniseries is also excellent for those interested.

Blockbuster had it years ago - not sure about NF (memory seems to tell me they didn't have it, but that was a few years ago).

oh ya, Brother Cadfael miniseries is also excellent for those interested.

Blockbuster had it years ago - not sure about NF (memory seems to tell me they didn't have it, but that was a few years ago).

They do have that one. I have gone through Poirot, Midsomer, Touch of Frost and Hustle and I will eventually start on it.

Thanks. Been quite awhile since I last checked, and they didn't have much BBC stuff back then.

Probably wouldn't subscribe just for a couple of things (especially because I know how much of a huge, frustrating, and sometimes enraging hassle it is to "unsubscribe" to any kind of subscription service these days, and I'm just getting too old to want to deal with that kind of cr*p anymore once they run out of things I want to see), but maybe they have more now that I'd be interested in to make it worth it for me.

Out of all of those, "Lovejoy" is what I'd want to see the most. That's one of the most underrated (in the US) shows of all-time.

(Also have my good ol' Sima on hand.)

Yeah, I still have some tom baker episodes on tape, but streaming netflix Dr Who has been great. you need to know the storylines to figure out which episode is which, but very handy. As for bbc- they have a lot. I'm currently in the midst of "state of play" .... much better than the subsequent movie. You might enjoy the minimal subscription (one movie at a time + the right to stream to video device like a roku box or a vieracast enabled tv (not sure if Tivo is doing netflix now,too) or your computer) for about 10 a month.

The VHS to usb thing sounds mildly interesting just to cut down on the cable clutter. I got a usb turntable last year but haven't used it much (other than as a turntable, not for dubbing - the set up is too inconvenient). Recently was given a beta machine that was infrequently used and the owner was going to throw it away! I haven't tried it yet, but the plan is to set it up with the 2160 and record mostly live shows that never made it to any other format to HD, then edit out what's not worth salvaging. It'll have to be a really snowy winter or I'll never get to that!

Anybody remember Poldark? It was basically a soap opera based on a series of novels by Winston Graham set in late 18th century Cornwall with Robin Ellis as the eponymous hero. The Beeb made two 13-episode serieses out of it, the second stronger, I think than the first, which may because (IIRC) Graham was more involved in writing the scripts. Both series first aired in the U.S. on Masterpiece Theater in the mid-/late-70s. In one of his books, Alastair Cooke pretty much said he thought Poldark was dreadful, melodramatic stuff and beneath the standards of Masterpiece Theater. But I think it was pretty popular with the audience.


I saw Robin Ellis the other day playing the wronged husband/villain on an episode of Wallender (not the PBS version, the original swedish police drama that runs here on MHZ world view 'international mysteries') I kept scratching my head thinking WHERE do I know this guy from.... it was Poldark! Which brings to mind another great source for these series -- if you do get MHz (supposedly it's gone 'national" but I'm not sure how limited that term is)... do yourself a favor and check out International Mysteries. If you like noir or detective-style serial programming, Magrait (the french original, not the PBS one) , Detective Montalbano, The Octopus (they're on year 6 now), Wallender from Sweden, Raid from Finland , Varg Veum from Norway (I think), all with subtitles, not dubbed -- some full length features, others series with continuing characters and different story lines... all excellent fare .

Just in case any of you are interested -- I just checked. Mhz is available on Dish and Direct TV in addition to these markets
Throughout the nation, MHz Worldview is available in over half the top-20 U.S. television markets- nearly 23 million households- through broadcast/cable affiliates in: Chicago, IL- WYCC; Philadelphia, PA- MiND TV (WYBE); San Francisco,CA- KCSM; Washington, DC- WNVC/MHz Networks; Tacoma-Seattle, WA- KBTC; Cleveland/Akron/Youngstown, OH- WNEO/WEAO; Minneapolis, MN- MPS Cable; Miami, FL- WLRN; Denver, CO- KBDI; Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne, FL- WCEU; Salt Lake City, UT- UEN (statewide); Grand Rapids/ Kalamazoo/Beaver Creek, MI- WGVU; New Orleans, LA- WLAE; Las Vegas, NV- Vegas PBS; Richmond, VA- WCVE; Flint, MI- WDCQ; Charleston, IL- WEIU; Moline, IL (Quad Cities)- WQPT; Warrensburg, MO- KMOS; Topeka, KS- KTWU; Rochester-Austin, MN- KSMQ; Charlottesville, VA- WHTJ; St.Paul, MN- St. Paul Neighborhood Network; Stanford, CA- Stanford University Cable, as well as nationally via DirecTV and WorldTV (powered by GlobeCast, G19) satellite.

They are also supposedly adding a Roku feed --- just spotted this:


MHz Networks' global content will be available for viewing on the TV via the Roku digital video player later this fall.

Viewers will be able to access video from the MHz Networks library of international broadcast partners and programming and view it on their TV using the Roku player.

The Roku player connects directly to any TV and uses a broadband Internet connection to deliver up to HD-quality video instantly. Roku customers will be able to choose a variety of free and premium MHz Networks programming, including news, clipcasts, mystery series, sports and more by simply building their account at www.mhznetworks.org.

"We feel the progressive technology of the Roku digital video player and our innovative content complement each other perfectly. Viewers will love the affordability of the digital player and the ease in which they can literally become connected to the world," said says Frederick Thomas, MHz Networks CEO. "Partnering with Roku also allows us to bring our premier content to viewers who may not yet be able to watch our national channel, MHz Worldview, via broadcast, cable or satellite in their local market."


International Mysteries currently runs Sunday (repeats Tuesdays) at 9 and 12, and the octopus series has been running sat night 9 and repeats at 12 . Check local listings...



PS as for mini series from the 'good old days' ... I recently ran across Shogun on NF ... not as great as I'd remembered it, but still fun, if you can get over the fact that the lead was played by Richard Chamberlain ... NOT Sean Connery!

(not sure if Tivo is doing netflix now,too)!Yes, works great.

Only problem with the MHZ World View subchannel here is that anytime something moves at all, it looks horrible (it's the only subchannel to a smaller, independent HD PBS channel - not our "main" PBS-HD channel here - which has 3 other SD subchannels).

I was trying to watch the music videos on it late last night (those are the only ones I'll watch, other than the ones on the Public Access 'Link' channel that I have on Dish - on the program "World Music") - but they were blocking up so bad I couldn't hack it.

It's a shame, because it's a channel that actually has stuff I'd want to watch.

Gaffo,

In recent years Toshiba DVD recorders have been made by Funai.



Are you sure about this? I hope you are misstaken. The Magnavox unit I bought at Wallyworld was a totaly POS and on the back end of that unit it says it was made by Funai.

My Toshiba unit does not state this. I looked on the back of the unit and all through the literature.

Maybe it is a "Better" Funai unit than the Magnavox?

She don't sound nearly as tinny as that Mag unit - and she even managed to copy my DVD Firefly series in anamorphic ratio on Video Tape!! - pretty cool.

...........

over the years I've found that there were ONLY three makers of decent VCR units made.

Tops were Mitsubishi, closely followed by Toshiba and then JVC.

all the others were garbage - both in construction and in picture quality.

amoung the worst were:

Emerson, GE and RCA.

.........

I had one of the first S-VHS units from RCA which "only" cost 1000 bucks in 1989 (all others were 2000 at the time) - sadly it also had the highest background video noise.

...

oh ya, one way I've found to get a clue at how good a regular VCR was was to load an old S-VHS tape and see how well she played back the tape. The crappy GEs/RCAs and Emerson's gave a totally unwatchable picture, whereas the Mits and Toshiba's played them back at 95-percent watchable. I think that meant that their regualr VRCs had a better bandwidth and so supported a slightly higher resolution than their crap brethren. I have not tried this on my new Toshiba yet (have to find an old S-VHS tape which will take a while to find).

..

BTW as an aside, my Yaris has a Funai car radio/CDr which plays back all my mps CDrs and I'm very pleased with it these last two years.

over the years I've found that there were ONLY three makers of decent VCR units made.

Tops were Mitsubishi, closely followed by Toshiba and then JVC.

all the others were garbage - both in construction and in picture quality.


My experiences have been somewhat different. My first VCR, ~1988, was a Quasar. It still works just fine. Then in 1990 I bought two expensive SVHS editing decks, a Mitsu for about $1,000, and a Sony SLR5U (IIRC). Both had great features, great play back, and a great hunger for tapes. They required repeated trips to the shop. I finally gave up paying for the expensive fixes.

My current main SVHS deck is a Philips, about 10 years old. It works like a champ, plays everything, great PQ. Never a trip to the shop. My ~8 year old JVC SVHS plays fine some days, won't track the same tape other days.

I have ALL of Tom Baker on SLP SVHS. I've been afraid to take them out and see what they look like on a 56" DLP screen. :eek:

On the subject of old British programs, anyone remember Two Ronnies, or The Goodies?

Several years ago I had a standard VHS recorder made by JVC. It worked very nicely for many years. What I really liked was the ability to program scheduled recordings without having to turn on the TV in order to do this. So if you were going out the door you could program the VCR without waiting for the CRT TV to warm up. Quick & simple. Plus this also saved wear & tear on the CRT. You could use on-screen programming also, but you did not have to. I thought it was a big step backwards when I eventually had to replace the unit & everything else out there required me to fire up the CRT because they only had on-screen programming.

On the subject of old British programs, anyone remember Two Ronnies,...?

"It's good night from me..."
"And good night from him."

Two British comedians, Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker were their names, as I recall. WTTW in Chicago ran the show quite a bit in the 80s. And one summer they ran Sorry with one of the Ronnies (the short one).

As for VCRs...my first one, in 1988, was a General Electric that I held onto until it gave up the ghost because it was not affected by Macrovision. Then I upgraded to a JVC Hi-Fi in 1993, which brought my first exposure to stereo TV, though I used it mainly to time-shift music from FM radio. It lasted only about 5 years; for the last year or two, tracking got pretty dicey, and when I play/dub those tapes these days, I often have to manually fiddly the tracking on the playback machine. But I used the thing so heavily, I can't necessarily blame it on poor product quality. My first Mitsu from 1998 is still running, though the HS-U748 I got in 2003 is pretty much dead. I have two JVCs in the closet, one from 2003 lightly used as a playback machine for dubbing projects, the other from 2006 NIB. Plus a slew of backup Mitsus I snagged off eBay, some for the price of lunch, including two D-VHS units that were not cheap.

Sharp and Toshiba have been called out on this forum as pretty decent, too.

You see a Funai tag on Magnavox because Funai more-or-less owns that brand name now. I've been heavily testing a couple of refurbished Mag H2160 DVD/HDD recorders I picked up for friends this week, and I'm very impressed with their recording quality using cable as the source. These Mags equal or surpass the performance of Panasonics and Pioneers I've used, although their operation and handling is awfully klunky compared to those twice-more-expensive recorders. Funai is capable of incredible price-performance engineering when they set their minds to it. Items they make for Toshiba will not have a Funai label because they are subcontracted under the Toshiba name. Most current Toshiba home video recording products have been made by Funai since 2006, and I would not be at all surprised to hear they subcontracted their new BluRay players to Funai as well. After investing millions mfring the failed HD/DVD, why should Toshiba bother ramping up to produce their own BluRay gear now, when its a profitless commodity? Better to take advantage of an existing relationship with Funai, just to say they have a BD presence.

People are fanatical when it comes to VCR brands, no two hobbyists will ever agree. In the end, what counts is durability coupled with acceptable performance, and in that regard the only units that have stood the test of time are the Matsushita-made designs. Not all of them, not by a long shot, but there are enough decent Panasonic and Quasar VCRs dating back to the early 90s still chugging along, functioning perfectly. The higher up the scale you go, the higher the probability of a Panasonic surviving in usable (or at least easily repairable) form. For high-end VHS-to-DVD dubbing tasks, you are way, WAY more likely to find a reasonably-priced, properly-functioning Panasonic AG1980 than you are to find anything from JVC, Toshiba or Mitsubishi.

The "legendary" top Toshiba VCRs with their supercalifragilistic 16-head designs and Star Trek noise reduction were so ridiculously fragile that virtually none have survived, except in the hands of a few owners who managed not to break them. They are never available second hand, and are now unrepairable. The handful of used samples I've tested all had major problems with horrible luminance noise and lousy tracking. They may have been top-notch when new, but forget finding a surviving unit that still performs that well. I love Mitsubishis, and have owned quite a few, but they were perverse in that the more expensive the model the more chintzy and flimsy the loading mechanism- the loaders in the x80 and x90 editing decks literally decompose and crumble to pieces. The sturdier x70 series had a known tendency to warp their circuit boards from heat, causing a short in the video feed that looked like a hailstorm of dropouts. Only the very last Mitsu VCRs had the improved loader and good reliability- the 448/49, 748/49, and the DVHS models. JVC was JVC: you either got a good one and you loved it, or one so bad you swore you'd never touch them again. Sony was hopeless in VHS: the more you spent, the more performance you got, but the greater your risk it would spend more time in the shop waiting for a one-off power supply replacement and transport adjustment.

The ability of some plain-jane VHS decks to "fake" the playback of SVHS tapes just meant the deck had the common "SVHS Quasi Playback" feature, it had nothing to do the decks inherent quality. They could play most SVHS tapes back with reduced regular-VHS image quality, but true SVHS bandwidth always required a true full-bore SVHS recorder.

Forgot to mention - during the Monty Python doc series on the Independent Film Channel, they mentioned a new, remastered, DVD set of Fawlty Towers is coming out soon. :cool:

Two British comedians, Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker were their names, as I recall. WTTW in Chicago ran the show quite a bit in the 80s. And one summer they ran Sorry with one of the Ronnies (the short one).The best, Sunday late-night lineup we had going here in Chicago for a long time was Monty Python, Dave Allen at Large, Dr.Who, and The Two Ronnies. All with no commercial breaks. Talk about TV heaven (Dave Allen's jokes often literally had me in stitches).

A couple of big sitcoms in the 70's here were "No, Honestly" and "The Good Neighbors" (aka "The Good Life").

Another hilarious 70's show was "Rising Damp". They didn't show it here until the 80's on A&E (and at 3:00 am, at that), but thankfully I got to discover and see it.

Loved Rossiter's character and the early episodes with the original cast. He was really a bit of a comic genius.

There are DVD's of it, and for anybody who hasn't seen it, I recommend the early seasons wholeheartedly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Damp).

...(Dave Allen's jokes often literally had me in stitches)...

Sounds messy. Did you make it to the emergency room, or did a family member use a needle and thread? :p

...A couple of big sitcoms in the 70's here were "No, Honestly" and "The Good Neighbors" (aka "The Good Life")...

I really LOVED "No, Honestly" and really wish they'd done more shows with those two characters. The two actors later performed together in some other British show, but in other roles. Just wasn't the same.

you are way, WAY more likely to find a reasonably-priced, properly-functioning Panasonic AG1980 than you are to find anything from JVC, Toshiba or Mitsubishi.

You're echoing what I told a friend last week after recounting the story of how I hosed myself on a used Samsung BD-P1500 blu-ray player from eBay that turned out to be a lemon. If you must buy used electronics on the 'Bay, go for the high(er) end stuff because the original owner is more likely to have taken good care of something that cost him serious money than Joe Big Box Shopper's used-and-abused low-dollar base model.

I have a Panasonic PV-9662, acquired new in early 2000 to serve as my secondary/backup VCR when my first JVC finally gave up the ghost. Hardly in the AG1980's class--this machine came out after the VCR had begun the downward slope to commodity product status with a reduced feature set. But it produced surprisingly good PQ and had a couple of handy features: a time/date stamp at the beginning of each recording (you can shut that off if you don't want it) and a "commercial skip" function that is pretty accurate at jumping past commercials during playback.

Forgot to mention - during the Monty Python doc series on the Independent Film Channel, they mentioned a new, remastered, DVD set of Fawlty Towers is coming out soon. :cool:

I recently got Fawlty Towers from Netflix and the 1st episode was as funny as anything I have ever seen but the rest of the series didn't seem nearly as good.

Yeah, "Good Neighbors" was another funny show that tagged in the wake of "Python" and "Fawlty Towers" in their PBS heyday. I taped all the "Good Neighbors" eps during their last PBS run in the mid-80s. What was the premise of "No, Honestly"? Was that the show with the young newlywed couple? I remember a Britcom like that, it opened with an animation similar to the old "Love, American Style".

While its true not every "Fawlty Towers" is a 100% gem, every episode has at least one memorable moment, even if its just the sight of seven foot tall John Cleese improbably folding himself into a Morris Mini to make a grocery run. The scenes where his ornery wife discovers his handprints on a nubile guests blouse, or his assistant tries to tell him their chef is drunk out of his mind without letting on to the guests, are priceless. Unfortunately Cleese has a tendency to "remaster" Fawlty Towers every time he gets a divorce, and he needs money to pay off the latest ex right now. So I wouldn't expect too much from the upcoming "update", even if he puts it on BluRay there's only so much you can do to improve the look of a mid-70s PAL conversion. And how much "behind the scenes" material do you really want to hear about a show like this? If you demystify it, you lose the magic.

I recently got Fawlty Towers from Netflix and the 1st episode was as funny as anything I have ever seen but the rest of the series didn't seem nearly as good.


blasphemy! I'd nominate episode 12 (the rat & health inspector) as one of the funniest shows ever. The last fifteen minutes are as tightly scripted and delivered as anything I've seen on tv (or elsewhere, for that matter). I must have seen the show at least 15 times. When they get to the line "you put BASIL in the ratatouille?", I just lose it each and every time. :D

PS. DVDRs aren't the only things dying out. They just put up a giant "Store Closing" sign on the Blockbusters near me. Can't say I'm surprised ... it truly is the end of that business model.

They just put up a giant "Store Closing" sign on the Blockbusters near me. Can't say I'm surprised ... it truly is the end of that business model.


same here! - you ain't in Norman by any chance?

If the video rental store "business model" collapses quickly, we'll be in for some interesting times. For nearly thirty years, Hollywood has earned a huge chunk of its income from bulk sales of physical media to rental outlets: if that disappears NetFlix and Wal*Mart are hardly in a position to completely take up the slack. The maddening impossibility of deriving any sort of meaningful profit from electronic delivery already has the studios chasing their tails in a spiral of hysteria. Factor in entrenched consumer attitudes of wanting everything for free online, and there very well may not be a replacement for the rental store profit segment, in which case we're in for a helluva transition as reality sets in and a permanent loss of that revenue reverberates through all sectors of the industry.

The business model is transitioning. BB already announced they were closing a bunch of their stores. Mail-order disk rentals have taken a big chunk of the market and lots and lots of little RedBox machines are popping up all over. They have to be buying their disks of new releases somewhere. There is a Blockbuster near me in a shopping center. Including the 2 grocery stores and a couple drugstores, there must be at least 6 RedBox machines within 1/4 mile of the BB. I was friendly with the manager of the BB while I was still a customer (before NetFlix got me). He once told me that 90% of his rental activity was for "new releases", yet 80% of his in-store rack storage was for "old stuff" nobody wanted to rent. It was the "old stuff" that got me into NetFlix.

...Including the 2 grocery stores and a couple drugstores, there must be at least 6 RedBox machines within 1/4 mile of the BB. I was friendly with the manager of the BB while I was still a customer (before NetFlix got me). He once told me that 90% of his rental activity was for "new releases", yet 80% of his in-store rack storage was for "old stuff" nobody wanted to rent. It was the "old stuff" that got me into NetFlix.

I'm a big fan of Redbox. They seemed to really take off during the recession with their $1 / night business model. The only common complaints I see with them is the long lines they can form (on weekends mostly) and being out of the latest new releases. The second problem can easily be avoided by renting online before going to pick it up. The majority of Redbox users don't do this for some reason.

Traditional rental stores are at 45% market share and falling. 36% is rent-by-mail and 19% is DVD rental kiosks.

When Redbox starts carrying a bigger selection of Blu ray titles (also $1 / night), this'll be the point at which I buy my first Blu ray player. Until then, I'm in no rush.

Yes, the RedBox kiosks are popping up on every street corner, but they're a band-aid at best and part of the problem at worst. The studios have been fighting RedBox tooth and nail, recently losing a major court challenge. At issue is the ubiquity of 99-cent kiosk rentals rapidly killing off what remains of the rental store base, permanently reducing the perceived value of a rental and further pushing the studios into the profitless iTunes business model of high-turnover/zero-margins. I'm not defending the studios, mind you: they've had at least a decade to come up with innovative backup business models and certainly enough money to fund the research, but strangled themselves with their own greed and inertia at every turn. RedBox is simply the last toll plaza on the road to physical-rental oblivion, a slap in the face to complacent, lazy studio management.

While on the subject of studio lunacy:rolleyes:, this seems as good a place as any to post what I recently saw in my Brooklyn neighborhood. A few weeks ago, a crew came to shoot some scenes for an upcoming Julia Roberts flick. On Saturday night, they began cordoning off a four block stretch of a major commercial traffic avenue. When I looked again on Sunday morning, the entire four block stretch was lined on both sides bumper to bumper with massive production trailers. Cables snaked a couple more blocks to the actual filming location at a townhouse on a side street. By Monday morning the entire colossal undertaking had vanished as if it was never there. Now stop a minute, and calculate the cost to instantly mobilize upwards of 50 trailers full of crew and teamsters, to shoot what will likely be no more than three-to-five minutes in the final film, if it doesn't end up on the cutting room floor. Factor in Julia Roberts complete inability to carry a movie since "Erin Brockovitch", and the near-certainty this upcoming film will tank without a trace.

Why blow this kind of money at this excessive level of production? Its not like brownstone Brooklyn is a suburban shopping mall where people would swarm at any opportunity to see a movie star: residents went about their business that weekend and more-or-less tried to ignore the gargantuan undertaking in their midst. In this particular location, they could have knocked off the simple shoot with a handful of trailers and heavy security detail for Roberts. Instead, you would think they were shooting the finale to "Transformers" or something- complete overkill. And they wonder why even a simple rom-com costs $100 million to produce, and loses $60 million nearly every time. Duh.

I was at Fry's & BB over the weekend & both had Panasonic DVDRs. Fry's had 10 or 12 of the EZ48 combo models, a couple EZ28 & an EZ18. BB had several EZ48 & a couple EZ28 models. One of them had an EZ38 but I don't recall which store. I realize they are not HDD models, but they are available. None of them were on sale at the time.

One of them had an EZ38 but I don't recall which store.Probably Fry's. I don't think I've ever seen the EZ38 at any BB around here (just the two you mentioned).

I have seen it at Abt, though.

Given the lack of any viable suggestions for the studios that secures the same or greater amount of profit as they get today, folks who risk their money on studio productions are probably better off finding something else to invest in. So if all (or even just most) of the investors realize this, and take their money elsewhere, where does that leave us viewers?

So if all (or even just most) of the investors realize this, and take their money elsewhere, where does that leave us viewers?It leaves us getting used to badly dubbed chinese kung-foo flicks and lots of bollywood musicals.

Now, would you even want to see any of that on BluRay.

Indeed. There were a bunch of articles posted over the last week (I was on vacation so I spent much of last night catching up) with various people pointing out that broadcasting is on a precipice, with the most likely scenario that we're about to plunge into an unending cesspool of mediocre (at best) programming.

we're about to plunge into an unending cesspool of mediocre (at best) programming.

WHAT?! And lose all the high-quality, innovative programming we now enjoy? A tragedy indeed ;)

So if the big movie studios and TV producers crash and burn--and lose their monopolistic lock on the airwaves, movie theaters, and DVDs--maybe more opportunities will open up for small, innovative producers who can do interesting and original work on small budgets?

Notice how this happens a lot these days: we see an old order coming to an end and, for some reason, assume that when it passes nothing will replace it (e.g., newspapers). But if the deunct Old Order leaves a vacuum for something people want, like new TV programming and movies, somebody will eventually fill it.

I'm not sure how that'll work yet..... Maybe it'll mean that stars have to settle for a few hundred thou per movie and directors an writers have to eke by on $50K or something. Whatever, maybe that industry has just priced itself out of the market and needs a reset.

So if the big movie studios and TV producers crash and burn--and lose their monopolistic lock on the airwaves, movie theaters, and DVDs--maybe more opportunities will open up for small, innovative producers who can do interesting and original work on small budgets? Some folks actually prefer high production values -- big epic productions. Those folks lose out.

That might be okay with you.

Notice how this happens a lot these days: we see an old order coming to an end and, for some reason, assume that when it passes nothing will replace it (e.g., newspapers). But if the deunct Old Order leaves a vacuum for something people want, like new TV programming and movies, somebody will eventually fill it.I think you are overlooking a lot of cases where what filled the gap was unequivocally, qualitatively worse than what it replaced. Remember those classic old movie houses? and how they were replaced by those econobox impersonal multiplexes? How about when the profit motive for VCRs evaporated? and how the only VCRs now available are cheapo models?

Sure, sometimes gaps are filled with good stuff. And sometimes gaps are filled with crap.

My current main SVHS deck is a Philips, about 10 years old. It works like a champ, plays everything, great PQ. Never a trip to the shop. My ~8 year old JVC SVHS plays fine some days, won't track the same tape other days.



My first VHS machine was a JVC 3300 from 79: mechanical tuner and 1 event timer.

Easiest machines to program were mid 80s Sharps, just a few buttons on the front for channel up/down, time up/down and length. Great performers as well.

Last 2 surviving S-VHS machines are a Go Video (made by JVC, didn't even bother to change the cosmetics) and a Philips (diff cosmetics but display and connector positions on back exactly like the JVC made Go Video)

The Philips started having SLP tracking issues when recording, a year ago. Cleaned and oiled the bearings, and restored some degree of functionality. Use it now for dubbing onto DVD. Go Vid is 100%...waiting for me to have time to put it on e-Bay.

Sure, sometimes gaps are filled with good stuff. And sometimes gaps are filled with crap.

Exactly. Compare any post-ATSC recorder with any pre-ATSC recorder: no contest. Yeah, we're grateful to still have the serviceable Magnavox H2160 but lets not delude ourselves: the Mag is to a Pioneer or Toshiba XS as the Chevy Aveo is to a Cadillac CTS. And every time I hear someone blather about how wonderful the post-newspaper, post-magazine, all-web-all-the-time world is becoming, I want to hit them with a brick till they're unconscious, chain them to an uncomfortable chair, glue their eyes open, and make them sit thru 72 continuous hours of Twitter rubbish.

The myth of "the little people being empowered to make fascinating low cost entertainment" died its final death in the late sixties after the "Easy Rider" experiment resulted in a flood of total crap. At least back then, even the druggies were literate and had some serious pretensions to culture. We're not all born creative geniuses, no matter what our parents or the New York Times magazine section tell us. Todays hipsters have no context and nothing to say beyond their own Twitter/Facebook/CellPhone/Blogger mutual masturbation. I would rather sit thru a well-crafted hack job like "Duplicity" than endure a generation of "Blair Witch", "Hump Day" and Noah Baumbach derivatives. The "low budget" types have already shown us what happens when they inspire or create "entertainment": check the ratio of dance contests and Oprah knockoffs to engaging, scripted material we now have. You see a handful of savvy pros like Lisa Kudrow doing great, small, low profile projects and guerilla web series, but most of that "small" stuff is really, really bad. Its not gonna be an improved replacement for big-budget bad stuff thats headed for the tar pits.

So if the big movie studios and TV producers crash and burn--and lose their monopolistic lock on the airwaves, movie theaters, and DVDs--maybe more opportunities will open up for small, innovative producers who can do interesting and original work on small budgets?


There's no guarantee that it will be interesting or original. The budget has little if anything to do with quality, and there is plenty of crap put out at Blair Witch budgets. We'll just see the high end stuff drop off, and probably more crappy low budget stuff taking over. I'm sure a few good artists will emerge, but that happens now, and there'll be nowhere to go except low budget opportunities. We'll just see more "Joe Bob with a camcorder" productions involving stories only the filmmakers care about starring their woefully untalented friends.

Caught this on the radio driving home right after I made my post: http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/scratchpad/2009/10/scary_things.html

On the positive side, if the movie/TV industry tanks, it'll leave us plenty of time to watch all that stuff we've archives......

Movie night at DigaDo's place? :)

As for Paranormal Activity, that's a once in a decade film (it's been ten years since Blair Witch had a similar effect.) I don't see a flood of quality low budget films coming out of this.

The business model is transitioning. BB already announced they were closing a bunch of their stores. Mail-order disk rentals have taken a big chunk of the market and lots and lots of little RedBox machines are popping up all over. They have to be buying their disks of new releases somewhere. There is a Blockbuster near me in a shopping center. Including the 2 grocery stores and a couple drugstores, there must be at least 6 RedBox machines within 1/4 mile of the BB. I was friendly with the manager of the BB while I was still a customer (before NetFlix got me). He once told me that 90% of his rental activity was for "new releases", yet 80% of his in-store rack storage was for "old stuff" nobody wanted to rent. It was the "old stuff" that got me into NetFlix.

what hacks me off is that BB selection is now all recent stuff. I went to THREE BB in town tryng to rent The Rapture and Blod Simple (niether are obscure movies!) - they sold off their copies years ago.


BB is useless to me now.

I'm a big fan of Redbox. They seemed to really take off during the recession with their $1 / night business model. The only common complaints I see with them is the long lines they can form (on weekends mostly) and being out of the latest new releases. The second problem can easily be avoided by renting online before going to pick it up. The majority of Redbox users don't do this for some reason.

Traditional rental stores are at 45% market share and falling. 36% is rent-by-mail and 19% is DVD rental kiosks.

When Redbox starts carrying a bigger selection of Blu ray titles (also $1 / night), this'll be the point at which I buy my first Blu ray player. Until then, I'm in no rush.


I just bought my first BD player last month - I think by next summer BDr disks will hit the $1 mark on Mertline/Shop4tech. They are 3 bucks now - too high for me.

The Pioneer BD burner is now 200 and by next year will porbably be under 150 - it has soild reviews on the net too.

there is still the question of longterm data integrity though ;-(.

probably as poor as DVDrs ;-/.

It leaves us getting used to badly dubbed chinese kung-foo flicks and lots of bollywood musicals.

Now, would you even want to see any of that on BluRay.


I'd like to see the cute Bollywood Indian gals in high def!!!

definately!!!

I think you are overlooking a lot of cases where what filled the gap was unequivocally, qualitatively worse than what it replaced. Remember those classic old movie houses? and how they were replaced by those econobox impersonal multiplexes? How about when the profit motive for VCRs evaporated? and how the only VCRs now available are cheapo models?

Sure, sometimes gaps are filled with good stuff. And sometimes gaps are filled with crap.

At last, something we more or less agree on. However, if the big budget studios all fail, I would remind everyone, that besides the occasionally brilliant tiny budget film, like El Mariachi,, there are consistently a fair number of rather good moderate budget films like Memento. So, if the major studios fall, perhaps the independents will get more attention, and $, and we will still have some good films. Well, surely a LOT of crap too...

I'd be hesitant to call El Mariachi brilliant, but that's my taste (it's a fun film, but still...), and Rodriguez does deserve props for making a film like that on virtually no money.

I think the small budget films, if they're good, do get attention. The studios constantly look at them for talent to put on their bigger budgeted films (not to mention buy those cheap films and make monster profits on.) Plus, would we even hear of some of them if the studios didn't promote them? Yes, the Internet has potential to put them out there, but a lot of viral stuff is crap, too, so there's no guarantee the good stuff would get any more attention.

Discussing "quality" is like wrestling a greased pig, anyway; "quality" is a religious issue. Do the vast majority of viewers all define quality the same way? Actually, they do, but the folks who claim to be the most fervent and intelligent fans of the medium would claim that the vast majority of viewers like crap.

If you want to know what's going to becoming increasingly less common, look at the price tag: The expensive stuff -- that's the stuff that's going to have trouble getting made. Now look at the list of the most popular stuff -- remarkably, almost everything on that list is also on the expensive list!!! So without regard to quality (because quality is a religious issue), what we can see is a path to where the vast majority of people will no longer get what they prefer. That doesn't matter to the folks who enjoy what will end up getting dumped onto viewers -- it will "only" adversely impact the vast majority of people.

what hacks me off is that BB selection is now all recent stuff. I went to THREE BB in town tryng to rent The Rapture and Blod Simple (niether are obscure movies!) - they sold off their copies years ago.


BB is useless to me now.

I looked all over the place for Blood Simple but I ended up buying a copy on-line. I have given up on BB completely. Of course Netflix didn't have it either.

Some folks actually prefer high production values -- big epic productions. Those folks lose out.Count me in that group. It's hard to blow things up convincingly on a low budget.
I think you are overlooking a lot of cases where what filled the gap was unequivocally, qualitatively worse than what it replaced. Remember those classic old movie houses? and how they were replaced by those econobox impersonal multiplexes? How about when the profit motive for VCRs evaporated? and how the only VCRs now available are cheapo models?

Sure, sometimes gaps are filled with good stuff. And sometimes gaps are filled with crap.Of course, a prime example being the topic of this thread, namely DVDR's.

Caught this on the radio driving home right after I made my post: http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/scratchpad/2009/10/scary_things.htmlAs for Paranormal Activity, that's a once in a decade film (it's been ten years since Blair Witch had a similar effect.) I don't see a flood of quality low budget films coming out of this.A quote from the linked article sums it up perfectly:

"YouTube on the big screen"

I've always wanted to see backyard wrestling and stupid pet tricks on a 40' screen.

I looked all over the place for Blood Simple but I ended up buying a copy on-line. I have given up on BB completely. Of course Netflix didn't have it either.I don't know when you may have looked, but NetFlix currently has both The Rapture and Blood Simple available for rental.

Discussing "quality" is like wrestling a greased pig, anyway; "quality" is a religious issue.

No, it's easy! Quality = what I like :cool:

Just kidding. OK, not entirely, but your definition is more useful for describing the economic future of the entertainment industry.

You see a Funai tag on Magnavox because Funai more-or-less owns that brand name now. I've been heavily testing a couple of refurbished Mag H2160 DVD/HDD recorders I picked up for friends this week, and I'm very impressed with their recording quality using cable as the source. These Mags equal or surpass the performance of Panasonics and Pioneers I've used, although their operation and handling is awfully klunky compared to those twice-more-expensive recorders. Funai is capable of incredible price-performance engineering when they set their minds to it. Items they make for Toshiba will not have a Funai label because they are subcontracted under the Toshiba name. Most current Toshiba home video recording products have been made by Funai since 2006, and I would not be at all surprised to hear they subcontracted their new BluRay players to Funai as well. After investing millions mfring the failed HD/DVD, why should Toshiba bother ramping up to produce their own BluRay gear now, when its a profitless commodity? Better to take advantage of an existing relationship with Funai, just to say they have a BD presence.

People are fanatical when it comes to VCR brands, no two hobbyists will ever agree. In the end, what counts is durability coupled with acceptable performance, and in that regard the only units that have stood the test of time are the Matsushita-made designs. Not all of them, not by a long shot, but there are enough decent Panasonic and Quasar VCRs dating back to the early 90s still chugging along, functioning perfectly. The higher up the scale you go, the higher the probability of a Panasonic surviving in usable (or at least easily repairable) form. For high-end VHS-to-DVD dubbing tasks, you are way, WAY more likely to find a reasonably-priced, properly-functioning Panasonic AG1980 than you are to find anything from JVC, Toshiba or Mitsubishi.

The "legendary" top Toshiba VCRs with their supercalifragilistic 16-head designs and Star Trek noise reduction were so ridiculously fragile that virtually none have survived, except in the hands of a few owners who managed not to break them. They are never available second hand, and are now unrepairable. The handful of used samples I've tested all had major problems with horrible luminance noise and lousy tracking. They may have been top-notch when new, but forget finding a surviving unit that still performs that well. I love Mitsubishis, and have owned quite a few, but they were perverse in that the more expensive the model the more chintzy and flimsy the loading mechanism- the loaders in the x80 and x90 editing decks literally decompose and crumble to pieces. The sturdier x70 series had a known tendency to warp their circuit boards from heat, causing a short in the video feed that looked like a hailstorm of dropouts. Only the very last Mitsu VCRs had the improved loader and good reliability- the 448/49, 748/49, and the DVHS models. JVC was JVC: you either got a good one and you loved it, or one so bad you swore you'd never touch them again. Sony was hopeless in VHS: the more you spent, the more performance you got, but the greater your risk it would spend more time in the shop waiting for a one-off power supply replacement and transport adjustment.

The ability of some plain-jane VHS decks to "fake" the playback of SVHS tapes just meant the deck had the common "SVHS Quasi Playback" feature, it had nothing to do the decks inherent quality. They could play most SVHS tapes back with reduced regular-VHS image quality, but true SVHS bandwidth always required a true full-bore SVHS recorder.
Just wanted to thank you Citibear for your knowledge and information. It's people like you and Wajo, amongst others, who are INVALUABLE to us out here in 8 to 5 land and don't have the history or time to spend with our hobby that we would like to.
So, again, thank you for a great post with some very cool information!
Mickboy

Count me in that group. It's hard to blow things up convincingly on a low budget.Actually, these days, you're more likely to see the real thing in a lower budget flick (maybe not the lowest of the low - but "lower" - such as an independent film. Those filmmakers can usually get ahold of a junker real cheap to blow up).

In a "higher budget" one, the money is often going to other things before "realistic special effects". You're more likely to see CGI or other special effects (like miniaturization) in place of the real thing (and yes - even explosions are often CGI'd nowadays).

Even the "hordes of soldiers" in all those high-budget gladiator flicks these days are CGI. Practically all animals, too - at least beyond just sitting there looking at the camera or walking around normally - anything that wouldn't involve training, or "tricks".

Remember - the more money involved in anything, the more lawyers are involved and the safer they're going to play things.

I suppose a good amount of people out there get completely fooled by them, but having dabbled in special effects movie-making on a very small scale myself (I'm currently working on that very thing for an individual from CA's extremely low budget Science Fiction movie - just a side thing), I'm not one of those. That's why I don't like action flicks these days as much as I used to.

I didn't mind the Harryhausen-style EFX, because it was pretty obvious that they weren't real, and they weren't necessarily trying to "put one over" on people. Plus, those are extremely hard and tedious to do well. Nowadays, they even try to pass off CGI as clay-mation or puppet animation - such as in "The Nightmare Before Christmas" or "Robot Chicken" - and that really bugs me (not the movies themselves - just the way they lie about it).

Don't get me wrong - I think CGI's a great and extremely useful tool - I just think they way overuse it in non-fully animated features (especially in the place of real people or animals).

CGI is starting to worm its way into even fairly low budgeted stuff. A couple friends of mine involved in filmmaking have showed me projects with CGI explosions. Nothing truly spectacular, granted, but I was surprised they were able to get ahold of the effects in the first place. And these were definite low budgeted stuff (like $5 million tops, if that.) Lots of Sci-Fi Channel originals have CGI monsters and stuff. Cheezy as hell, but there it is. Lots of actors on green screen sets, too. Looks like crap 70% of the time, but I suspect it will become more and more commonplace.

Yeah, that's to be expected that it's going to eventually filter down. You can do anything with computers (you don't really see it as much in good, independent films, though - not yet, anyway - maybe sparingly, because they're more often less about "blowing up stuff" - but it's all pretty easy to do now for anybody). I even wanted to green screen the effects I'm doing, but my partner doesn't seem to want to do it that way. The "old" ways are too much work and trouble (in our particular case), and weren't really turning out as good as we'd hoped anyway.

The guy that's making the film has some GS scenes in it already, and it really doesn't look that bad (I think being B&W helps. The fact that the movie's supposed to be cheesy in the first place does, too).

Yep, CGI went pretty quickly from being just one of many tools to being the only tool, and it shows. Every action or sci-fi movie now looks exactly like every other action or sci-fi movie, no matter what the budget or how "evolved" and up-to-date the software. CGI always looks like CGI: this worried directors at first until it dawned on them that 90% of their audience sits parked in front of an Xbox all day and could care less about organic realism. Now anything goes, with the stunts and fx so patently outrageous they destroy any sense of realism you may have talked yourself into.

But its mostly a generational thing. Movie geeks over 40 have memories of what real, physical fx look like and how much work, style, and distinctive individual talent went into creating them. We liked having the seams show a little bit, it made us feel a part of things and that we were agreeing to play along with the filmmakers in an adventure. Even though you could see upfront that it was fake, you unconsciously understood it was partly real: there were actual physical objects photographed, be they miniatures, matte paintings or puppets. Now, you just see this noxious overlay of CGI constructed in software, and it blows. Yeah, yeah, the designers are very talented, and CGI is not easy to do, they're to be commended, but it just sucks the joy out of the whole thing.

Imagine "Close Encounters" or "Blade Runner" being done today with soul-less CGI instead of Douglas Trumball's once-in-a-lifetime skills. Or John Carpenter's amazing remake of "The Thing". Or "Apocalypse Now". Or the first "Alien". And so on. Hell, all you have to do is look at the travesty George Lucas wrought when he tried to "improve" the original Star Wars trilogy- yecch. Yesterday I saw coming attractions for Unviersal's "Werewolf" remake, and there was more CGI than reality (I even think Anthony Hopkins was digitized). Compared to the exhausting work that went into "The Howling" or "American Werewolf In London", its just boring as dirt.

The last time I saw CGI that was so convncing I didn't realize it was CGI was in "Titanic". Apparently James Cameron no longer cares for such realism, the trailers for "Avatar" indicate it will be 100% overt CGI for the entire running time. I got a headache after just 60 seconds of the blue headed characters. If I blinked I would have missed Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver as actual human beings.

One of my niece's wants to get into animation and is going to school at Columbia College here in Chicago for computer graphics.

I hope my sister's ready to have her hanging around for a long time after she graduates. Hard enough for a college student to get a job, let alone in that extremely overcrowded field.

Everybody wants to create "video games" now.

Funny thing was, one of the projects I saw a clip of was a thriller, and they had a car crash rendered in CGI. I guess they took real images of a car and a van and then had them "crash." It looked kind of cool and it was a fast take (maybe a second, max), and I guess if you weren't looking for it you wouldn't notice, but still, they CGI'ed a car crash.

Most of their production stills had the actors in front of a green screen, too, so I suspect 90% of this movie will be on a tiny sound stage with images of the outdoors and such edited in.

In principle, I'm not really opposed to this. Filmmaking in general has some degree of faking it, depending on what you're doing (Disney built their entire empire on images that never existed outside of drawings), and I imagine CGI lessens the costs (why else would they do CGI of relatively mundane stuff), but it hasn't matured to the point where you don't think, "This was done on a computer."

I just like to suspend reality, sit back and enjoy. I'll take CGI Transformers any day over a couple guys dressed up in robot suits.

The last time I saw CGI that was so convncing I didn't realize it was CGI was in "Titanic".

Really? I could have sworn they did Leo DiCaprio in CGI... ;) :D

I looked all over the place for Blood Simple but I ended up buying a copy on-line. I have given up on BB completely. Of course Netflix didn't have it either.


WWWWWWWWWWWhat!?! Netflix no longer has Blood Simple? I rented it from then 3? 4? years ago (since BB no longer had it even back them).

I have Blood Simple now - no I didn't keep the rental.

...........

I hope my worst fears are not coming true (i.e I've been afraid that Netflix/BB on line would likewise start SHINKING ther Libraries).

When I joined up in 2005 both online services were expanding and BB online had more titles - so I went with them, UNTIL right in the middle of renting the TV series Night Gallary - the series dissappeared on thier site! - then within a week or so all my NG discs just stopped showing up to my house. I only got two of the 15 or so DVDs before they removed the entire series!

so I joined Netflix in protest.

I had hoped that this was an aberation instead of a trend.

they must outsource the more obscure shows maybe? (is Night Gallery obscure!!!!!???).

oh well.

Yep, CGI went pretty quickly from being just one of many tools to being the only tool, and it shows. Every action or sci-fi movie now looks exactly like every other action or sci-fi movie, no matter what the budget or how "evolved" and up-to-date the software. CGI always looks like CGI: this worried directors at first until it dawned on them that 90% of their audience sits parked in front of an Xbox all day and could care less about organic realism. Now anything goes, with the stunts and fx so patently outrageous they destroy any sense of realism you may have talked yourself into.

But its mostly a generational thing. Movie geeks over 40 have memories of what real, physical fx look like and how much work, style, and distinctive individual talent went into creating them. We liked having the seams show a little bit, it made us feel a part of things and that we were agreeing to play along with the filmmakers in an adventure. Even though you could see upfront that it was fake, you unconsciously understood it was partly real: there were actual physical objects photographed, be they miniatures, matte paintings or puppets. Now, you just see this noxious overlay of CGI constructed in software, and it blows. Yeah, yeah, the designers are very talented, and CGI is not easy to do, they're to be commended, but it just sucks the joy out of the whole thing.

Imagine "Close Encounters" or "Blade Runner" being done today with soul-less CGI instead of Douglas Trumball's once-in-a-lifetime skills. Or John Carpenter's amazing remake of "The Thing". Or "Apocalypse Now". Or the first "Alien". And so on. Hell, all you have to do is look at the travesty George Lucas wrought when he tried to "improve" the original Star Wars trilogy- yecch. Yesterday I saw coming attractions for Unviersal's "Werewolf" remake, and there was more CGI than reality (I even think Anthony Hopkins was digitized). Compared to the exhausting work that went into "The Howling" or "American Werewolf In London", its just boring as dirt.

The last time I saw CGI that was so convncing I didn't realize it was CGI was in "Titanic". Apparently James Cameron no longer cares for such realism, the trailers for "Avatar" indicate it will be 100% overt CGI for the entire running time. I got a headache after just 60 seconds of the blue headed characters. If I blinked I would have missed Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver as actual human beings.



I could'nt dissagree more.

CGI is a tool, like anyting else, you can do it well or poorly.

I loved the model of the Enterprise orbiting those cheezy planets in the original show, but I like the cheap CGI found in the great Firefly series too. The effects are not very good technically, but creatively they are tops. The seens in space where the effect is an out of fucus or over zoom and then corrected into focus is done to give the effect of a physical camera is getting a fix on that ship in space.

this technec(sp) I noticed right from episode One where the crew is looting the settler ship.


lets not confuse poor adolescent movies (like 300?) with CGI (i.e. the craft).

Filmmaking in general has some degree of faking it...Really, the whole industry is built on illusion and fantasy.

I don't know when you may have looked, but NetFlix currently has both The Rapture and Blood Simple available for rental.

You are correct. But a few months ago it was listed as "Save".

You are correct. But a few months ago it was listed as "Save".I'm not surprised at that fact. I have noticed that previously available titles in NetFlix will suddenly disappear from the rental list and appear on the Watch Instantly list and the Save list. Then at a later time come back on the rental list. I also see that many titles have a finite lifetime on the Watch Instantly list.

I'm just annoyed that I no longer seem to be able to trick the Netflix system into sending me three discs on my two-discs-at-a-time plan!