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Powered Descent posted:I knew it as "VCR Plus+". (Jokes about whether you pronounced both pluses may or may not have been made in C++ programming class.) Yeah, I think my parents used it like 3 times before going back to their normal, record the 5 minutes before and after the scheduled time.
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 18:07 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 03:25 |
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Collateral Damage posted:Speaking of remotes and programming, Panasonic released a series of VCRs in the late 80s where the remote had a barcode reader. For programming scheduled recordings you'd just take out your handy sheet of barcodes and swipe the reader over them. I guess some marketing exec at Panasonic really really liked that scene in Labyrinth.
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 18:09 |
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The_Franz posted:Networks are contractually obligated to air games to completion, at least in their home markets, after they cut a game short in 1968 to air the movie Heidi, which resulted in such a massive tidal wave of angry phone calls that NBC's switchboard blew. Even when they decided to put the game back on, they couldn't call the control room to make the switch because there were no available phone circuits. That's dumb as poo poo. A football game lasts for 60 minutes, if they want to do a bunch of time outs and commercials that makes it run longer, people should have to tune back in later to see the rest.
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 18:36 |
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Cojawfee posted:That's dumb as poo poo. A football game lasts for 60 minutes, if they want to do a bunch of time outs and commercials that makes it run longer, people should have to tune back in later to see the rest. you've never met a football fan have you?
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 18:52 |
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The_Franz posted:Networks are contractually obligated to air games to completion, at least in their home markets, after they cut a game short in 1968 to air the movie Heidi, which resulted in such a massive tidal wave of angry phone calls that NBC's switchboard blew. Even when they decided to put the game back on, they couldn't call the control room to make the switch because there were no available phone circuits. You're forgetting that the 'Heidi Game' was also really famous because the losing team managed to come back and win in the last minute of the game, after they'd already cut away. So they had to awkwardly display the final score during the movie and basically tell everyone they hosed up and didn't air a really heroic comeback.
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 18:52 |
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Our first family VCR was a General Electric. It recorded like normal, but there was something weird the way it registered time. If you were two hours into a tape, it didn't display that, but a different number. I think they were called tracking numbers. The 1290 on the right side is the tracking number. I don't know if it was cumulative seconds elapsed on the tape or if it had no scientific basis at all. It was a gigantic pain and Dad meticulously labeled his tapes so he could find what he wanted. You could also program the VCR via a front panel that opened up and it had all kinds of little switches.
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 19:29 |
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I think it's just seconds since you reset the counter, but I was pretty young when we had a vcr with that feature. Numbers that count up are inherently cool to a kid though
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 19:31 |
RC and Moon Pie posted:Our first family VCR was a General Electric. It recorded like normal, but there was something weird the way it registered time. If you were two hours into a tape, it didn't display that, but a different number. It might be a tape counter.
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 19:42 |
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taqueso posted:I think it's just seconds since you reset the counter, but I was pretty young when we had a vcr with that feature. Numbers that count up are inherently cool to a kid though ...as are vacuum fluorescent displays. What kid didn't shine a light into the VCR or stereo display to see all the elements which weren't used on your machine?
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 21:09 |
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Remember when TBS or WGN or some station used to start all their shows at :05 or :35? I never had anything worth taping on that channel, but I remember having to watch 5 minutes of some crap show before whatever I wanted to actually watch came on. They might have been good, but I probably thought they were crap because I only saw the end credits and commercials.
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 21:44 |
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On a related note, half the charm of watching Qi from outside the UK though entirely legal offline backups is that little five-second glimpse into a parallel universe that you get when the video includes a few seconds past the credits. "And now, another brain teaser as Brian is once again deep in it in Up Your Down Hat, followed by the dark mysteries of The Other Manor". British TV sounds absurd when all you hear are the titles and blurbs - and it feels like it's never the same show twice. Computer viking has a new favorite as of 23:12 on Aug 13, 2020 |
# ? Aug 13, 2020 23:09 |
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Computer viking posted:"And now, another brain teaser as Brian is once again deep in it in Up Your Down Hat, followed by the dark mysteries of The Other Manor". "On Dave" Huh? Who's Dave?
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# ? Aug 13, 2020 23:13 |
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Powered Descent posted:But there was no way to use those codes to tell the VCR to keep recording an extra hour or so after the scheduled end of the show you wanted. At least in the UK there was, via PDC : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_Delivery_Control ..which worked with those Videoplus codes. Not sure about other countries, or how well it actually worked in practice, but it was supposed to solve that exact problem.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 02:05 |
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evobatman posted:Wasn't that ShowView codes in Europe?
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 05:02 |
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taqueso posted:I think it's just seconds since you reset the counter, but I was pretty young when we had a vcr with that feature. Numbers that count up are inherently cool to a kid though Also perfect for returning the porno tape you found back to it's exact position your dad had it at so didn't know you been snooping for xmas presents.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 06:58 |
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Humphreys posted:the porno tape Oh you mean the "Finland-Sweden cross-country skiing final 1987" tape?
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 08:47 |
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Horace posted:...as are vacuum fluorescent displays. What kid didn't shine a light into the VCR or stereo display to see all the elements which weren't used on your machine? Gotta admit the VFD on the first family VCR I can remember was nowhere near as snazzy as that GE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiS0at1RrYY Wasn't even sure it was the right one until I heard that loading mechanism @ 22:49. Now I can put a name to that distinct sound ingrained in my early childhood.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 10:22 |
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First family VCR, rented (as was the TV) and dig that wired remote control!
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 13:39 |
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spookygonk posted:First family VCR, rented (as was the TV) and dig that wired remote control! reminded me of our old wooden cabinet TV with the very clacky channel knob...if you ripped through a few channels at once it felt like it was going to break. not mine, but ours was very similar
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 13:52 |
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Woweee! 100 whole hours?!
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 18:02 |
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Johnny Aztec posted:
It was harder to spend all day online when you had to dial in and got kicked off if someone picked up the phone.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 20:04 |
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LifeSunDeath posted:reminded me of our old wooden cabinet TV with the very clacky channel knob...if you ripped through a few channels at once it felt like it was going to break. My grandparents console lasted so long that the power button quick working.They plugged it into a switch and turned it on that way. It was still going when everything went to digital, probably a 30-year lifespan.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 20:21 |
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Growing up, my Nintendos, all the way up to the GameCube, connected to a wood panel knob TV via vcr. The TV eventually smeared red all over the screen then would only display the colour green, but it lasted a very long time and gave my gaming setup some serious aesthetic. The vcr still functions as the console hub and even had its heads repaired so it can play tapes again! It's just connected to a different crt.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 20:26 |
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RC and Moon Pie posted:My grandparents console lasted so long that the power button quick working.They plugged it into a switch and turned it on that way. It was still going when everything went to digital, probably a 30-year lifespan. One of your ancestors should have been an electrical engineer. They weren't a sweet wood console, but we did have two TVs where the power button broke, and my dad the EE just replaced it with a switch, looked weird but it worked. We definitely kept those TVs until we moved out of that house in the early 00's
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 20:30 |
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Oh man, the day I discovered that our console TV had a little door on it with knobs inside that let me mess with the colors.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 20:32 |
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Cojawfee posted:Oh man, the day I discovered that our console TV had a little door on it with knobs inside that let me mess with the colors. And the horizontal and vertical. Has UHF channels been mentioned? There were the regular 11 or so channels but the UHF knob had dozens. Mostly static. Here in NY there was maybe another PBS station and a couple of Spanish ones. It was this magical other world. Like going to the Nether. RoyKeen has a new favorite as of 21:45 on Aug 14, 2020 |
# ? Aug 14, 2020 21:42 |
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The Ape of Naples posted:And the horizontal and vertical. You stay on your side of the outer limits, Ape
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 21:48 |
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The Ape of Naples posted:And the horizontal and vertical. I had my own TV in my room for my Nintendo that had a VHF and UHF dial. A quick glance at wikipedia says that UHF didn't really take off because older sets didn't have the UHF dial, so people wouldn't be getting these UHF channels until they decided to upgrade their TV. Considering how expensive TVs were then, people probably weren't likely to upgrade their TVs that often. Because of that, stations weren't really interested in the UHF licenses. By the time I got this TV, it was really old. I think it was my aunt's old TV. Old enough that I had to use a RCA to RF to antenna adapter to plug my N64 into it.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 22:19 |
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The Ape of Naples posted:And the horizontal and vertical. Reminded me of this. Peak of British comedy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7-Wzvh2B-w&t=240s
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 22:21 |
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Cojawfee posted:I had my own TV in my room for my Nintendo that had a VHF and UHF dial. A quick glance at wikipedia says that UHF didn't really take off because older sets didn't have the UHF dial, so people wouldn't be getting these UHF channels until they decided to upgrade their TV. Considering how expensive TVs were then, people probably weren't likely to upgrade their TVs that often. Because of that, stations weren't really interested in the UHF licenses. By the time I got this TV, it was really old. I think it was my aunt's old TV. Old enough that I had to use a RCA to RF to antenna adapter to plug my N64 into it. By the late 80s to early 90s, most people had a TV that could receive UHF. But, the signal itself has some less-desirable properties - it falls off much quicker than VHF when there isn't line of sight from the transmitter to the receiver, and it's generally more susceptible to noise that shows up as static. You can get away with a smaller antenna on UHF, but overall quality usually turned out worse. So, the big-money network affiliate TV stations stayed on VHF channels, and UHF was relegated to weird local stations, religious broadcasters, and so forth. These days, almost all over-the-air TV is UHF. The channel numbers you see on the TV don't have any relationship to the frequency any more; part of the HDTV standard included a way for stations to present a channel number that matched their old VHF frequency (CBS Channel 4, your home for Local Sports Team) even when they moved the actual signal to channel 37 or something.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 22:32 |
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Norway only had a few analog channels, but still used UHF without much fanfare - the intensely 80s Phillips my parents used until they bought an early LCD to save some space certainly had no problems with it. This may be another of those second mover things, where being the first adopter comes with a risk of being stuck with an older system - Norway was not a great early adopter of TV, especially not in color. (Quoth Einar Førde, a Norwegian politician and later chief of broadcasting, and a man of a distinct and conservative dialect: "Sin may have arrived on earth, but we don't want it in color")
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 22:36 |
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We had Fox and PBS on UHF. They both had clever call signs that made no sense on cable. Fox was WUHF. PBS was WXXI on 21 on antenna, but 11 on cable. I guess XI is still 11.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 22:49 |
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Cojawfee posted:I had my own TV in my room for my Nintendo that had a VHF and UHF dial. A quick glance at wikipedia says that UHF didn't really take off because older sets didn't have the UHF dial, so people wouldn't be getting these UHF channels until they decided to upgrade their TV. Considering how expensive TVs were then, people probably weren't likely to upgrade their TVs that often. Because of that, stations weren't really interested in the UHF licenses. By the time I got this TV, it was really old. I think it was my aunt's old TV. Old enough that I had to use a RCA to RF to antenna adapter to plug my N64 into it. I have a little old black and white TV from the 70s and even it has a UHF dial. I got it at a thrift store and somebody had installed a little after-market board to take direct composite video input (originally for a computer)... so I hacked in RCA audio input too and now presumably have one of the only mid-70s TVs with full RCA audio/video input.
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# ? Aug 14, 2020 23:05 |
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KozmoNaut posted:Reminded me of this. Peak of British comedy. I think the only reason we were allowed to watch it was that our parents were nostalgic for The Young Ones and figured this was basically just more of the same, if they had bothered sticking around and checking it out for more than thirty seconds that tape would've gone straight in the bin Flying zebras! Look at them go!
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# ? Aug 15, 2020 08:38 |
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KozmoNaut posted:Reminded me of this. Peak of British comedy. I love Dangervision! Always reminds me of Leo Wanker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpmyw2ZDRfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqGNgE1mr8k
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# ? Aug 15, 2020 15:52 |
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Humphreys posted:I love Dangervision! Sad he had to wear boomerang-face to make it into the american market.
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# ? Aug 15, 2020 15:55 |
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Space Gopher posted:By the late 80s to early 90s, most people had a TV that could receive UHF. But, the signal itself has some less-desirable properties - it falls off much quicker than VHF when there isn't line of sight from the transmitter to the receiver, and it's generally more susceptible to noise that shows up as static. You can get away with a smaller antenna on UHF, but overall quality usually turned out worse. So, the big-money network affiliate TV stations stayed on VHF channels, and UHF was relegated to weird local stations, religious broadcasters, and so forth.
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# ? Aug 15, 2020 16:13 |
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I worked at a UHF station in the mid-late 90's. My dad actually worked there years before I did (unrelated to my employment. no overlap). It was more or less the station from Weird Al's UHF movie when he worked there, complete with locally produced variety/comedy shows late at night. Then they became a FOX affiliate which honestly didn't improve the quality of the station that much.
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# ? Aug 15, 2020 21:48 |
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I have identified some very specific black holes in my mental conception of math. Things where I will mentally perform an operation or I have to convert a fraction into a decimal. I have a bunch of mental heuristics that I want to erase and have a more concrete conception. Enter The N-902 ES simplex trig slide rule I'm a very "physical" person, always using my hands and seeing how things move and relate Eg I always have enjoyed building model planes and the like I'm interpreter level competent in sign language Doing perspective based art etc etc My hope is that by spending a few afternoons working through some high school math problems , having the my slide rule round the house for random nerd-snipe style math problems I'll have to slow down my mental processes and utilise my manual learning tendencies I will fix these problems. As well as learning an entirely useless skill in 2020
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# ? Aug 16, 2020 12:14 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 03:25 |
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I still keep a slide rule on my desk, although I don't think I can remember how to use it properly. The tangible, interaction of the numeric relationships really appeal to me. If you like the slide rule, you should look into getting some Vernier calipers to aid in the model plane building and perspective art. BTW: Jestery posted:I'm interpreter level competent in sign language You own for this.
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# ? Aug 16, 2020 12:36 |