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Posted by Bill Vermillion on 11/13/05 03:55
In article <1571n15fgbvomu1b5vp6m51qjig18eorov@4ax.com>,
NunYa Bidness <nunyabidness@nunyabidness.org> wrote:
>On Tue, 08 Nov 2005 02:15:01 GMT, bv@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) Gave
>us:
>>In article <icqtm1pt9haq7nmjs56g5lrmer2tdo1oj9@4ax.com>,
>>NunYa Bidness <nunyabidness@nunyabidness.org> wrote:
[lot of extraneous stuff deleted - wjv]
>>> You're an idiot. VHS was not a trap. It was an affordable form
>>>factor. Beta was a high priced, if not even overtly overpriced pile.
>>>Had Sony set the price point right, they would have won the battle.
>>Prices for VHS were only about $100 less than Beta and when you
>>talk at $1000+ that is not a big difference.
> The tapes were twice the price... blank, much less with content.
Not when I got mine. 1 hour Beta tapes were $18.00. 2-hour VHS
tapes were $23 each. But the price per hour was cheaper on the
VHS.
What I did have was the 'auto-loader' that Sony sent out for a free
90-day trial, and then let everyone keep them. It was a mechanical
device with a spring and when Sony developed an electric device
they sold it and let us keep the old one.
That meant I could record 4 hours in a row on Beta I - the only
speed on the 7200 - with only about an 8 second gap when it
changed.
It was funny to watch. When the end of the tape was reached the
lever for the record came up, tripped a finger on the device, which
pushed down a lever to eject the tape, which came out and slid down
and a tape from above slid into the top load slot, and another arm
pushed the tray down and then pressed the play and record buttons
simultaneously. I got as much entertainment out of watching it
work than I did recording long things.
>> My SL7200 Beta cost
>>me $1495. The VHS units - then just coming on the market as Beta
>>had over 95% share - were at least $1295. Then the prices started
>>falling, but the Beta equipment was built better, and the Faroudja
>>circuits in the better Betas made them the choice if you wanted
>>great video.
>>However a vast majority of people didn't know what great video
> A lot did.
>>looked like and used RF connections - while most of the Beta people
>>used composite.
> And extremely expensive monitors as well. Curtis Mathis and Sony
>were among the few that had composite inputs.
And the interesting thing on the 7200 was that it only had
composite outputs. The 7200A - the next model - had composite in
and out. And the timer was an external electric clock that powered
the machine up when the time came, after you had loaded the tape
and pushed down the play and record buttons.
>>I got my Beta in March of 1977.
>>>>I can hardly wait for HD DVD, and willing to pay for it.
>>> Oh boy, you're right up on the video realm.
>>>>Don't buy CRAP, and they won't sell it.
>>> No shit. Consumers have always driven the market and survival of a
>>>given product. Look at the example above to see proof.
>>> Don't spew crap, and we won't pick it apart.
>>And through the course of 'home entertainment' each new version
>>lasted about 1 generation - as many people didn't want to change.
> Lately it is more technology based. Back then there was but a
>handful of consumer goods. Stereos, TVs CBs, two meter... not a
>whole lot else. When CCDs came into being, they were also expensive
>for most average joe consumers.
Correct. But the technology adoption used to be a generation - as
people didn't want to get rid of their old 'stuff'. Now the
time change is faster.
>>That has not held true as much now - but the revolutionary products
>>almost always had a bigger impact than the evolutionary productcs.
> The electronics industry as a whole has made huge advances since
>then. Things mutate and advance much quicker than in the past.
It's getting the people to adopt them. SACD evolved from CD but
so many saw no reason to go with that - but the move from LP and/or
cassette to CD was evident - even to non-technophobes.
>>The first phongraphs were accoustic and windup. In the late 1920's
>>electric recording and players - running at 78 RPM became popular.
>>And 25 years later the LP and 45 came in replacing the 78s. Those
>>was first introduced in 1949.
>The reason was mainly advances in plastics technology. Softer vinyl
>sounds better, and can be slowed down, yet still contain much audio
>BW. We couldn't slow down the harder mediums.
There were vinyl pressings before WWII. Those were 16"
transcriptions for radio stations. But they used a 2.7 mil
cartridge tip so at 33 1/3 RPM they only were good for 1/2 hour.
It was interesting in that when a program was on two 16" disks
the first part started at the outside and part 2 was an inside out
cut that you started from the label.
This was because the frequency response changed as the linear speed
under the needle changed. So making the change from the end of
side 1 to the start of side 2 was not as noticeable. If you started
both on the outside the frequency response change was quite
apparent.
There were EQ devices that changed the EQ during cutting to try to
overcome that, and I think there was a way to attach one to my
RCA 7B cutting lathe [circa 1947] but I never had that nor the
advance ball support to keep the stylus cutting depth constant.
>>Philips made a dictating machine using a small cassette that became
>>the main music medium replacing the 45's and LPs - something that
>>4-track and 8-track never did.
> The reason that 8-track died is due to the fact that it is a flawed
>mechanism. Tapes stretch, break, get caught, etc. Bad for the
>audiophile.
The CompactCassette did a good job of killing it too. It was
thought of as a dictating only machine - but the world saw better
uses.
The interesting thing about the CC was it's design for
compatibility. The stereo versions had two-tracks close together
so if you played a mono tape - with it's wider track - you would
get sound out of both channels. The 4-track reel-reel had
interleave track and there were compatibility problems playing
a 2-track tape on a 4-track machine as the center tracks only
covered part of the other channel.
And Philips even had the specs for a quad device - so that quad
tapes would play in stereo on a 2 channel machine and in mono on
a mono machine. But those tracks were very narrow. I don't know if
they ever produced any but they did have the specs for them.
Working as an audio engineer I kept up with a lot of that stuff
then.
>>By the 1980s CDs came out - and the compact size and the novlety of
>>shiny silver disks made them take off like nothing ever had before.
> They took off because of size and audio quality. They were so good
>that they even revealed flaws and noise in the audio masters used in
>the studios for making the vinyl pressings.
But they captured the imagination. I remember the local TV news
people being fascinated by the shiny silver disks - and that free
advertising helped. I saw my first CD player when Sony and Philips
introduced them to the world at the AES [Audio Engineering Society]
show in NYC - that was probably late 1970s or early 1980s. I got
in to see that as we were a SPARS studio [Society of Professional
Audio Recording Studios - where you had to have TWO multi-track
studios OR a multi-track room and a disk mastering room].
As to flaws you could hear those on master tapes and high-quality
recordings. And I have sone direct-to-disc recordings that were
later on CD. The CDs were made from master tapes cut as safeties
during the DtoD sessions. The LP sounds much better - and that was
because of the problems with analog tape. Disks are a much better
RECORDING medium - but the playback is touch so to get that same
quality in playback you spend gobs of money on equipment and
keepitn things clean.
I was reviewing a test acetate with another engineer in the control
room - and our turntable was hidden underneath the producers desk.
And about 10 minutes in I said "It's hard to believe we are listen
to a disk" He said something like "I'd forgotten we were".
But keeping things sounding great almost requires operating room
cleanliness and the last 10% of quality improvement always seem to
make up 90% of the cost.
>>When DVD came out in about 3 years everyone saw how much better it
>>was to be able to skip to chapters, take something out and put it
>>back without rewinding, etc.
> Laser disc was around for at least a decade before DVD ushered in.
>Once it did, it took less than 3 years for mass acceptance.
The first DVD player were pretty bad. I was astonished at how peole
could put up with the blockiness. It was a lot like the first
DirecTV broadcasts that weren't up to MPEG2 - sort of MPEG 1 1/2.
But in a year or so everyone got them under control. My first laser
player [actually my first two] were top-loaders with a real glass
laser tube. My later players were the solid-state players. And
my LD-WI took 2 disks to play 4 sides with only about 8 seconds for
the side and/or disk change.
>>Each of those were revolutionary. The SACD was evolutionary and
>>never really took off.
>
> Cost. of manufacture... and ownership. CD audio is already at the
>max price. Nobody wants to pay even more for a small gain in dynamic
>range. Priced the same or less than regular CD's, and they would have
>taken off.
But there was not the great advantage for MOST people of SACD over
CD. On a great system it's impressive. We had a group of about 6
people at a friends house [a great recording engineer and he calls
me his mentor] and a fairly well known DVD pre-mastering engineer.
With all the goodies - and with ugly looking studio monitors - it
was at least a $15K system. And mastering engineer played some
test recording of a new process that is not finished yet but was
amazing.
Digital processing let's you perform 'magic'. This device dried up
the sound. If something had too much reverb you could take it.
Or you could take the existing reverb out and add something better
or different. Audio is just like the movies - you don't know what
is real or what is manipulated by a computer.
And the prices keep falling. A 24-track pro device with SMPTE time
code can give better quality than the $75,000 24-track Studer I had
in the studio.
>> The HD and Blu-Ray are evolutionary so
>>there won't be the great rush among the average users to go
>>to those.
> If the difference is a lot more than current DVD quality, it will due
>to the fact that monitors got better, and were embraced.
As more and more people switch to HD and digital capable systems
they will be added. I see the big uses for Blu-Ray in data storage
as it will hold a lot and be cost competitive with tape. Once you
cross the 100GB threshold though tapes and drives become expensive
and the 500GB/1TB tape devices will set you back a LOT of money.
>> I say that based on looking at the history of home
>>entertainment for the past 100 years.
> Yet, the industry has learned some important lessons in the past ten
>years. Look how quick movies go to DVD now. Look how the TV series
>DVD releases have taken hold, albeit slightly overpriced.
That's a marketing move. Since movies are now released nationwide
at the same time and then go to the cheaper houses for a few
months, if you bring out the DVD relatively quickly you can
capitilize on the memory that people have of the big TV ad
campaigns when the film was first released. The closer those come
together the more the DVD sales will benefit from the film ads.
But the studio have to decide how close they can get before they
reach the point that people will automatically wait for the DVD.
>>If the often predicted 'movie on a chip' or 'cube' something so
>>small that you could carry several in your shirt pocket [for those
>>who have shirts with pockets] that would be revolutionary and
>>would gain widespread adoption.
> There are millions of laptop hard drives out there in the "last
>year's goods" market. Someone should make a "player" that has a port
>for switching them out. Then, we could put whatever media we wanted on
>them, from books to films, and collect a library of scratch free, high
>reliability temporary storage devices. That would fit on my shelf
>nicely.
Things like that have been predicted for at least the last 25 years
- but only now are we getting closer.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
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