Widescreen Review and JVC30K will they have journalistic integrity?

"Has I have said before, Mits, put component on your deck and you may see a lot of us change. I need a DVHS deck that works

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Dave- There is a company that makes a product that will allow the Mits DVHS VCR to play back. The company is 169Time. All you need to do is connect the FW cable to your 169Time modified DTC-100 and tune it to a true digital channel that is not mapped to a different channel and the Mits will play back its recordings just fine. No need to have Mits build out an MPEG decoder and component output.


I just had to say this, couldn't resist!


Back to the serious topic at hand- Anyone who believes that print publications are done for vanguarding the subscribers are not understanding of how the publication business of magazines works. Magazines are published to turn a profit for the owners, publishers. The way they do this is to sell advertising to $$$ fat companies for exposure to those who read the publication. The subscription rates you pay are for covering the cost of getting the paper printed mailed to you. Use the magazines to find out what features the manufacturers want to talk about and use forums and user feedback to find out how well the products are accepted in the market. Any magazine editor, like Gary Reber, who publishes negative information about his advertiser's product is at great risk and doesn't understand his own business. Gary would never do that!

Personally, I don't read these magazines as I have discovered that they are what they are and I prefer to spend my time and money learning about new products on line and at trade shows. If I wish to have a magazine print piece to read, then there are plenty of free trade publications to subscribe to. Nothing against Gary, It is just the way I like to learn about new products.


On the HT Cruise, The WSR magazine covering the 30K was given out. It even states it was a "special edition" This told me right away that JVC paid for this in its entirety. Consequently, when a publisher is in the pocket this deep with a manufacturer, you will not see him side with anything negative at all. You people are mostly misinformed as to what this stuff is all about. It is NOT Journalism, it is advertising! Get it? That is what WSR does! advertising. Let us not confuse the two. Journalism can have integrity but not in a publication that is just a collection of articles that are put in and paid for by the advertiser. Those are ads, pure and simple. Journalism involves telling both sides of the story equally. Point-counterpoint, manufacturer claims-user experience; they tell the whole story. You won't find that in a JVC special edition of WSR as that was one big ad.

Dave- you have on several occasions made public commentary about not knowing why WSR is not doing anything with 169Time. I'll give you a hint- call up WSR and buy a 1 page ad in the next 6 issues and see how quickly you get a favorable article on 169Time. No brainer? right? You need to understand what WSR is all about. Not an oxymoron, just advertising for profit.

Ted- I have seen small independent companies make retrofit products for years. This is nothing new. I first bought a retrofit RS422 edit controller port for a Sony VO5600 player. I heard about this retrofit product through a trade magazine publication "review" It was clearly stated that the device when added would void the warrantee from Sony. That did not stop the magazine from running the article and advertising the product in every issue. They just ran the disclaimer. I would think that if 169Time is paying WSR in some form, free personal equipment or ad $$$ that Gary would have no problems running the article.


Dave, you made it sound like you guys wrote your own review and submitted it to WSR. IMO, this constitutes a "paid infomercial." If they run it under these conditions then what I said about WSR not being journalism but a collection of ads still holds true. True journalistic approach would be if WSR bought their own machine or borrowed one from a dealer or end user, meaning they had to return it, and did a test of the product as any user would be doing, wrote their own review and investigated all the issues and claims that users are having issues with and reported on those equally. AKA- point-counterpoint. That is journalism. If it reads like the 169Time website content then it would be an ad/infomercial. I don't fault either, I just call a spade a spade.

Quote:
Don't forget that they had a review of the Cinematrix PSM-1, which is a mod that installs a deinterlacer and scaler directly inside a DVD player or DSS Receiver. This mod also voids the warranty, yet they have been reviewed on WSR and it is advertised.


I had one put inside my DirecTivo. This was of course before the H3D card came out and it was the same price for this mod as it would have been to get an SDI mod plus an SDI input card, yet much simpler to use. Even after getting the H3D, I don't regret getting this mod.


Still, I wouldn't see why he wouldn't be able to promote the 169time mod when he has already promoted the Cinematrix PSM-1.

Well, since WSR published a rave review on the first region 1 Highlander DVD, which is arguably one of the worts DVDs ever, it's pretty clear that there is no value whatsoever to their testing.


Their excuse that the standards were lower at the time is quite lame, considering that this DVD was way worse than the LD.


Another indication of their lack of serious is the fact that they never caught up on how bad D-Theater sounds compared to DVD. The image is gorgeous of course, but the audio is as bad compared to DVD as the DVD was to LPCM LD. I gave up on Backdraft because of that, even the 2 channels PCM also available on this title was shrill and painful to listen.


That's not a DVHS flaw, since many recordings from HBO or Showtime sound as good, or even better than DVD despite a lower AC3 bit-rate than D-Theater. It's either a side effect of D-Theater encryption, or very bad authoring. WSR prides itself constantly about its "Holosonic" high end installation, so seing their review praising the audio side of D-Theater is laughable.


That said, anything, even paid by JVC, which advocates HD in any way is a good thing, and WSR is fun to peruse anyway.

Lon- I suspect so. Several of us asked questions of him during his talk on the HT Cruise and when the question began to target a future article content he politely backed out of answering and referred us to a "future article for WSR" that addressed this very issue He was most professional in this respect. I can tell you one question I posed to him that was answered in this way- Since the topic was about DTS and it's future for DVHS I had asked the question about the bandwidth being planned for DVHS and commented that with DVD's in the recent releases that DTS had been reduced in quality to squeeze it onto the same DVD as the DD5.1 track and this, IMO, was compromising the superiority of DTS and thus making DTS a superfulous add on. He said he would not answer that here but that he did address this very question and concern in a future article to soon appear.


Mike- You sure do know how to ask such relavant questions at times. You can always PM me if you are that curious. I'd be glad to tell you all about that shoot. It was an interesting project and since the case has been settled I am free to discuss it.