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There will soon be only one blockbuster store left in the US
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Jul 13, 2018 00:29
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I drove through a suburb I generally hae no reason to go and found a VideoEzy (pretty much Aussie's version of Blockbuster). Had no idea they still existed. I not fondly remember doing a database transfer for a store once. hosed it up realllllly bad.
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Jul 15, 2018 07:06
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There's only six Video Ezys left in New Zealand, and one of them is just around the corner from my parent's place. That one only seems to stay in business by being part of a dollar store and post office
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Jul 16, 2018 09:19
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Until the start of this year my fairly touristy town outside of Sydney had a civic video but it’s probably a relic of even that chain of stores. I gave up going after someone with the same name as me took my account and made borrowing more pain than streaming poo poo off those dodgy sites.
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Jul 18, 2018 14:42
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Much like retro video games, I kinda miss the experience of browsing through a video store. Especially the ones that were fairly naive and assumed "Oh, this is animated, must be for kids" on poo poo like Overfiend.
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Jul 18, 2018 22:39
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That's how I first watched Ninja Scroll Kind of hosed me up in hindsight
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Jul 19, 2018 17:47
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ninja scroll is much less upfucking than overfiend i assure you
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Jul 19, 2018 17:50
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What is the story that gave this thread its title? I've always wondered
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Jul 19, 2018 21:12
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Someone was talking about working in a Blockbuster and there were a bunch of tape rewinders in the cabinet under the N64 demo thing.
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Jul 19, 2018 21:20
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:What is the story that gave this thread its title? I've always wondered
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Jul 19, 2018 21:21
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Oh, that’s..........cool
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Jul 19, 2018 22:26
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Cojawfee posted:Someone was talking about working in a Blockbuster and there were a bunch of tape rewinders in the cabinet under the N64 demo thing.
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Jul 20, 2018 02:47
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RandomFerret posted:That's how I first watched Ninja Scroll We had this really dodgy independant video store and mum got some cartoons. First was Akira which sent her mental with the blood...but Kite was the last straw.
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Jul 20, 2018 08:44
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Humphreys posted:We had this really dodgy independant video store and mum got some cartoons. First was Akira which sent her mental with the blood...but Kite was the last straw. Scarred for life with tech relics. F4rt5 has a new favorite as of 10:03 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 20, 2018 09:40
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JazzmasterCurious posted:I'd seen Akira at 14 or something, then when I lived away from home for high school at 16 a buddy came over with VHSes of Dominion Tank Police (erektakaki!) and... um... Wicked City. A few years later I found my cousin's LaserDisc collection. What's ... Urotsukiwhatever? I remember seeing the boner mines in Tank Police and thinking "wow they look like dicks but surely that's a coincidence because this is a cartoon!"
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Jul 20, 2018 14:23
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I remember several near-naked anime girls and lots of tentacles at the Hollywood Video near my dad's house. Man, I miss being 14, when the memory of a picture of cleavage was all it took to rev the engine.
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Jul 20, 2018 16:27
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   8 tapes total.
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Jul 21, 2018 22:45
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Buttcoin purse posted:Windows 98 SE and Sound Blaster 16 probably aren't much of a challenge for lots of emulators and hypervisors. Late reply: here's a dude who got all parts as NOS (new old stock). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM5uNxtT0Mk In the last part of the video he shows which games he's running and the fact that you have a 20-year old PC that can run everything from 1984 until 2004 (well, not saying the framerate on UT2k4 is great) is pretty  when you get down to it.A funny side-effect of me seeing all of this now on Youtube (and NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. games throughout the years) does make me think that barring some outliers, a lot of games are pretty much interchangeable, so recreating/upscaling is more a pain in terms of asset recreation than engine details. I guess it also helps that you can probably build a simple and rough platformer in Unity in a week or so now. Then I look at pannenkoek2012's Mario 64 videos and also wonder whether anyone sane would still build a 3d platformer like that at all anymore. Just looking at the cassette deck, you can date it by the design and decals and extra lines & poo poo they decided to add because otherwise it wouldn't be technological enough. Tacticool for stereos. You can go from brushed metal with wooden side panels and mechanical switches to mint green + pink membrane buttons to black and orange/bright mint green VFD to grey textured plastic and purple VFD to champagne with miniscule labels. I love all of it. I also judge cassette decks on how cool they look. Cooler = better playback quality of course. Laserjet 4P has a new favorite as of 23:36 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 23:32
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Laserjet 4P posted:
Oh yeah, Mitsubishi was going full word salad by the time that deck was out. That strange transition period when CDs were coming on the scene so cassette deck makers took out all the stops and tried everything, including DAT and prominently advertising digital dubbing like it was a new thing (DIGALOG). The evolution/tacticool was easy to track. While the big names got into it too (even Marantz wasn't spared, before their sale), it was mainly the 2nd string manufacturers that leaned hard into the ham. It's why I love Onkyo and other smaller names. Here's my 1950s Onkyo. No reverse, everything is electromechanical inside, and you can use a Hi-Fi timer (like this Copal, my alarm flip clock) to set up recordings or use the tape deck as an alarm, because everything can be turned on when it's unplugged and it'll start running when power is applied.  I don't have many good pics, but Optimus was a Radio Shack brand affiliate, and they made okay stuff with gimmicks, like this 50 CD linear rack (because Sony had the licenses for the round CD carousel)  Here's an Onkyo from right after the switch from silver to black anodized aluminum that everyone got infected with. They've got a lot of buttons, but haven't gone whole-hog yet on the word salad.  <In the interim, the Mitsubishi style took off - champagne, shiny black plastic, soft buttons) And here's an Onkyo from 1994. Dialed it back a little with the silkscreening, but unfortunately the "shiny plastic" infection spread and took over the host.  It's unfortunate
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Jul 21, 2018 23:59
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:extremely my poo poo  It was such a sign of sophistication to have buttons that were microswitches that controlled solenoids or whatever they stuffed in there instead of something physical that had to be moved. This was my last walkman: the WM-EX510  Unlike my 2 previous models, it only needed 1 battery and it was just barely bigger than the cassette that it had to contain. Then I found out they already had the microswitch poo poo in the 80s already with the Boodo Khan.  edit for contrast: I also have this thing.  It's in a really weird spot design-wise; of course, it's not a stereo or anything, but the design screams 70s and the release date is mid 80s Laserjet 4P has a new favorite as of 00:37 on Jul 22, 2018 |
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Jul 22, 2018 00:34
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Ah, Akai. Sell everything for 3x the cost of competitors, go bankrupt with $1.1B in debt in 2001  . They did make some quality poo poo, though. I love my Onkyo 630-D because the big piano keys actually require their length for the mechanical advantage to lift the entire play mechanism upward. It also records at a weirdly higher quality than any of the later decks, and I don't know why. It does have a big fuckoff flywheel inside for stability and reduced wow/flutter, though, which is choice. Only occasionally snaps tapes due to the flywheel mass and the adjustable friction clutch (that may or may not be getting slightly gooey, I need to bust out the pen lathe and turn a new roller), which is  . Definitely don't use anything higher than 120 minute tapes in that thing. Recording on it works thorough a mechanical linkage that pulls a spring all the way on the other side of the machine with two big 50-pole switches.  Also, wire-wrap posts  
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Jul 22, 2018 01:04
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:
Holy moley, you rich. Bet you drove here in a Porsche 944.
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Jul 22, 2018 01:27
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Ah, Akai. Sell everything for 3x the cost of competitors, go bankrupt with $1.1B in debt in 2001 They still do. The MPC is probably the most widely used production tool in hip hop.
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Jul 22, 2018 02:08
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I still love my Panasonic bookshelf stereo from 1993 with MASH: Multi Stage Noise Shaping
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Jul 22, 2018 02:10
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Remember trying to sleep with your late 90s stereo in demo mode?
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Jul 22, 2018 02:43
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jojoinnit posted:Remember trying to sleep with your late 90s stereo in demo mode? Good grief yes. I had a Sony CD carousel that was like was full-on disco in demo mode. The carousel was lighted in different colors and would blink and strobe as it spun the CDs around - on top of the light show the display and buttons provided.
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Jul 22, 2018 02:48
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:
I WANT IT
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Jul 22, 2018 02:48
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That poo poo screams 90s and I love it.
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Jul 22, 2018 02:49
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My dad pronounces that brand 'oink-o' He also talks about 'digical' cameras, 'instantgram', and 'the facebook'
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Jul 22, 2018 02:51
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Yeah I honestly like all three in that post, each in their own way. I also feel like buttons have gotten so much worse over time, but most of that is probably down to plastic and poorer weighting. Holy poo poo do I miss the feel of a really solid knob with perfect gradients as it turns.
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Jul 22, 2018 02:52
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Here's an Onkyo from right after the switch from silver to black anodized aluminum that everyone got infected with. They've got a lot of buttons, but haven't gone whole-hog yet on the word salad.
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Jul 22, 2018 03:06
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jojoinnit posted:Yeah I honestly like all three in that post, each in their own way. Boy do I have the youtube channel for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4wm4iCh2DY I'll make a quick demo video of the Onkyo. To make a long story short: I had one as a kid, it's a Latin America-special model that sold extremely poorly in the US, but it did have a  TEN CD CHANGER. Every time it loses power, even for a hot second, it has to re-index all the CD trays. I added a supercapacitor to mine at the right spot to let it remember for a few minutes, but as a kid we'd have a brownout and I'd wake up in the middle of the night to it re-indexing.When you turn it on it says "GOOD MORNING," unless it's after 1800 when it says "WELCOME HOME," and on Sundays it says "HAPPY HOLIDAY." All shutdowns are "SEE YOU." The model is the RY-505 (5.1 surround), though there was an RY-303 (2.1), and an RY-707 (7.1 surround). I actually had the 707 but they're so damned hard to find. The CD/Tape unit is the KCY-707, which was the only model of CD changer for it, using a proprietary ribbon cable to connect the two. It's one of the ones where using the remote to adjust the volume moves a motor that's attached to the knob, I love it. The KCY is so difficult to find that I actually sniffed one out on the Denver craigslist, and a goon passing through picked it up for me and took it as carry on for his flight. Super helpful, wouldn't have been able to get it otherwise. I'm on poo poo internet so it'll take a bit for the video to come up, i'll edit this when it's available. 
Queen_Combat has a new favorite as of 03:21 on Jul 22, 2018 |
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Jul 22, 2018 03:09
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Laserjet 4P posted:Late reply: here's a dude who got all parts as NOS (new old stock).  Holy poo poo they used to make LEDs that weren't blue?!  It makes me want to use some of my old PC cases, although obviously they didn't look anywhere near that cool.
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Jul 22, 2018 03:11
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Buttcoin purse posted:Holy poo poo they used to make LEDs that weren't blue?!
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Jul 22, 2018 03:23
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FilthyImp posted:Werent those the kind with the green plastic caps instead of the little nubs that output at that color wavelength like we have now?? Blue LEDs are pretty new, they only were possibly around like 2004 or so, compared to forever for red and green. It also lets you make white light LEDs The inventors actually won the NOBEL for inventing them.
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Jul 22, 2018 03:30
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Nah, green LEDs were the second type to come on the scene after red, though the green they use now is different from the green on the Onkyo. Red were aluminum-gallium arsenide, first gen green were gallium phosphide, or aluminum-gallium indium phosphide. Now they're indium gallium nitride and a much more brilliant, pure green, versus the first gen which had quite a bit of yellow mixed in. That's why the OG greens didn't look perfect, because it was an imperfect emitter filtered through usually a colored plastic. Since the Onkyo uses early-gen 2-color LEDs, there isn't any colored plastic, which is why the green is "different" than most of the era. Reminds me of early JVC car stereos with R/G LED buttons. E: here's the onkyo video. Notice how when the buttons are red they look weird and ghosty? That's because early-gen high-brightness red LEDs drift a little into the infrared, which the camera is more sensitive to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ6zIgJTf-c Queen_Combat has a new favorite as of 04:04 on Jul 22, 2018 |
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Jul 22, 2018 03:33
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I recall a factoid on one of the Batman movie docos where they brought out nearly every LED in England to make Mr Freeze's suit
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Jul 22, 2018 03:34
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:When you turn it on it says "GOOD MORNING," unless it's after 1800 when it says "WELCOME HOME," and on Sundays it says "HAPPY HOLIDAY." All shutdowns are "SEE YOU." Incredible. I always linger for a while in the audio equipment at my local thrift shops. Such interesting stuff... ughhhh these posts are making me want to go spend money on things I don't need, but would make my home theater look considerably more awesome. These pics are also reminding me I've got an old black Yamaha "Natural Sound" 2 channel amp that used to be hooked up to my music gaming PC sitting in my garage in need of repair. It's thunderously loud, I was using it to drive a pair of giant old floor speakers until the left channel just stopped working one day. I'm guessing it's a dead cap, or something. I really need to fix it. I bought a newer amp to replace it, but it just lacks the unique sound and power that amp has.
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Jul 22, 2018 06:35
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If it was the A-series, those were from the late 70's to late 80's and they had a tendency to blow the power transistors, and those can sometimes take out accessory components like early diodes. Whatever you replace on one channel, replace on the other for balance and also they're like car headlights - once one goes, the other isn't far behind. Yamaha also had a bad string of relays for like a decade, but that was generally from the early 90's-2000's. It got so bad that they sometimes dead-bugged their own replacement relays on from the factory. Bad nickel plating on the contacts that fused or something IIRC. My dad's an electrician/electrical engineermanguy who did A/V repair for 30+ years, and he always preferred Yamaha amps. I've got two myself, one he sent me with at 19 when I left and one dumpster find
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Jul 22, 2018 06:57
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It's really hard to go wrong with Yamaha.Code Jockey posted:
I'm using a Yamaha RX-495RDS stereo receiver for my secondary stereo. It's got stereotypical boring black 90s design with plastic knobs, but it's 75WPC and has variable loudness, and I got it for next to nothing.
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Jul 22, 2018 12:12
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