Often overlooked, it had real technical merit and its titles were very good. It was a 16bit console made in 78, with a succesor using the 68000 cpu planned by the time of the crash. You could feel the difference if you played games like autoracing and motocross, on par only with games released much later for the 65c02 based nintendo. All in a 500Khz cpu... They even ventured with sound speech and keyboard modules.
TI had a speech module before Intellivision IIRC, and it was good, but I have to agree Intellivision was nothing to sneeze at. IIRC the whole keyboard thing wasn't all roses... you had that Intellivision Keyboard Component slated for 1982 that no bugger could get for the life of them. Shared a printer with the Aquarius system IIRC. Needless to say this pissed of people who spent good money on the Intellivision based on the fact that they could get a keyboard addon. The Entertainment Computer System was designed to be a cheaper alternative. But it wasn't really marketed, so anyone frustrated about the Keyboard Component were still frustrated. You then had the M network focus [the cure for the video blues] of porting their popular games to other consoles, but in the end they abandoned everything.
So if Mattel Electronics had survived the crash, and the 68000 based Intellevision III could have been released, maybe things would have looked a bit diferent today. Remember: Japan didn't exported RPG games to america at first because they thought the americans were "too dumb" for them. Check Dragonquest and Final Fantasy history.
I find it doubtful that a spiffy console system would have changed much of anything. Consoles are always those things that have spiffy value for 3 to 5 years and then get replaced with something else. Technicaly speaking it boiled down to what games you could get for a system and the price, and I have to admit the Intellivision with the "System Changer" could use all those 2600 games, but IIRC that sucker cost as much as a 2600. Probally because it was a clone of a 2600.
The big issue was the fact that execs percieved the whole game market as being "just a fad".
I don't remember anyone being upset by the quality of games on the Atari. Everyone I know, myself included, was amazed they they could have Pong, Pitfall, Frogger, Centipede, and Asteroids right on their own TV. It didn't matter that they sucked, because we had nothing to compare them to!
Yes we did, the arcade game. There was no contest, arcade games were superior by far. I mean this is to be expected for something that was released in 1977. The crash of 1983 was a combo of two facts. One there was a flood of crappy games on the market. I'm not talking Pong, Pitfall, Frogger or anything classic, a flood of 200 titles that were pretty much released as fast as they were written without testing, which annoyed the living hell out of atari because even though they didn't make the game they got the phone calls. Even atari didn't consider pacman when they released their spiffy 360 controlers for their 5200, had they actually taken the time to test the controlers they would see they didn't work well for games that needed right angle turns and they broke quickly. And the other issue was sort of created by the execs them selves seeing this whole console thing as a fad. This is rather why Nintendo and Atari were so hip on the idea of actually controling what games were released on their systems after the fact. "M Network" is a good example of this... hitting the market full steam [M Network is the cure for the video blues] making available intellivision titles for the aging 2600 then poof by 1983. It's my belief that it was the panicing execs thinking this all was just a fad who created their own nightmare. The main reason people put down their 2600 was the fact that they couldn't buy anything new for it, or at least no one knew how. So why buy another game system that will only have new games for only a couple of years?
Rotton 2600 games lived somewhere between ET and Custer's Revenge in the plane between unplayable and outright obnoxiousness. The system just didn't have enough oomph for Pac Man, Defender, or Star Raiders, but the 2600 version of Asteroids rocked.
Keep in mind the time period. The 2600 was released in 1977 though the more common version was released in 1982, and games were limited to 4K IIRC and not even 1K of system RAM. The NES was released in 1987 IIRC.
What they are describing is the console market crash of 1983. The parent might have not noticed this crash because games for the consoles were still plentyful, just the companies who made them folded and they ended up marked down to 5 bucks at Toys R Us. Remember the Adam, TI, Timex-Sinclair, Intelivision? Poof by 1984. Quite sad as all were pretty good products, well except the Timex. But there was much in the way of crap during that time as you pointed out, but a few gems here and there. For some reason though the atari 5200 and 7800 didn't become very popular, which isn't shocking as Atari's focus by this point was in a computer.
Commodore and Atari stuck around for a good long while though... though the Commodore was very much stronger in the game department.
They love pirates of the carribean so much that they are making another. Somewhat of a double standard!!!
They are actually going to make a film about dvd pirates in the Carribean? With ships and 300-pound canons? I can just imagine the Sweedish Pirate Captain Anakata ordering "Klarp skepp!" AAARRGH!
Why buy a physical disk player and physical disks when bandwidth provides the same experience?
I'm with you, believe me I am. But there is still a good reason to buy or rent a physical disc. For one thing speed. I can go to the local video store and rent a flick in about an hour. That's 4 to 8 gigs/hr. Further I can buy/rent more than one flick. That's pretty snazzy, equal to a 10 to 20mbit connection. Further I can buy/rent more than one. But the main reason to go with physical discs is for the concept of ownership. I can borrow or lend a disc and this is OK. You can't really lend a file.
It's not a question of justifications of piracy, but rather legitimizing the net as a distribution medium, having it do for music what radio and television as done.
Let's face it, there are always going to be traditionalists who will want to go in a store, flip through albums and buy something with the nice silk screened disc, cover and fly leaf artwork. We'll even have those who will collect those special editions, first pressings. But in the digital age we don't need a factory pressed disc to an exact copy. Hell, current inkjets do a mighty fine job doing covers not to speak of those disk printers from Epson or Canon. Estheticly not as good as a professional printing, and won't last as long, and costs a pretty penny, but a realistic alternative. I would "prefer" it if artists who release albums would sell their material on the net and offer a licensed cover. Income for them, a warm glow for you knowing you supported them.
...is normal, everyday, plain-Jane DVD's. Mostly so that I don't have to re-buy all of my DVD's just to keep up with the current standards, re-buy a compatible HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player, and then have to do the same thing all over again several years from now, just to "keep up with the standards."
I own a turntable. I can buy a new one if I so desire. I've even taken the time to copy vinyl to cassette and more recently copy to CD. It's a hassle but I prefer CD over cassette. But one of the nice things about this whole 5 inch disc standard is the fact that I can play my CDs in my DVD player. There is every reason to believe that the next generation will offer downward compatibility.
Why haven't they tried to do something like this then - and it seems that ABC have licensed their content for sale only over restricted avenues - free to air or cable. Do you also think that the affiliates should be in charge of selling DVDs?? Affiliates are upset, since they might lose out on income, but i don't see why they have a guaranteed income stream from ABC.
I was going to say that it hasn't been done before due to license holders not being hip to the idea, and that something that costs only 1.6m to produce like "Desperate housewives" presents an idea test case at little to no risk. "What people what to buy this crap for two bucks? Let's do it". But I know for a fact my local ABC affiliate offers podcasts of the local news.
No, they don't have a "guaranteed income stream" from ABC but there is much to be said about biting the hand the feeds you. Affiliates generate revenue for ABC by rebroadcasting their content to the local area which increases the number of viewers making advertising more lucrative. Why mess up a good relationship and a perfectly good proven business model?
oh and ABC isn't bypassing anything. the local afflicates still go to air the show first, and we could see it for free vs the $1.99 on itunes, so your arguement just doesn't stand up at all. no what this bitching is about is they feel threatened, because it's giving people what they want, not whats good for their business. ABC has done nothing even remotely underhanded.
ABC is bypassing the airwaves all together and permiting direct download of content. That *IS* the plan.
My argument is that for the past 50+ years network affiliates paid good money for exclusive broadcast rights within their coverage area of content produced by major networks for a set period of time. I remember for a time the FCC required cable providers to black out certain programs from stations they carried because it conflicted with the local broadcasters rights to air the show... for example on Comcast I couldn't catch "The Simpsons" on CBC because that would interfear with FOX's broadcast rights. So now ABC comes along, and decides to sell programs directly hours after the broadcast, where local afficaliates could reasonably expect to be the only provider of licensed programing in their region.
What I'm saying is there is a way to give the consumers what they want, and keep the affiliates happy too. Let the affiliates broadcast and distribute a net version hours after the broadcast.
Desperate Housewives commands $350,000 for a 30 second spot. There are 17 minutes of commercials in 1 episode, which means there are 34 commercials in each episode.
That comes to $11.9 million per episode. That means 6 million people need to purchase each episode in order to match what ABC currently gets from advertisers.
Somehow I think the people talking about the death of broadcast TV are a bit pre-mature.
While I agree the death of broadcast TV isn't likely to happen... keep in mind that 28 million people tuned into the debut. And would downloads include commercials?
it's comments like this that betray these media companys for the blood sucking parasites they really are. a comparable example would be dell asking walmart if it's ok for them to sell a new low budget computer, just in case they might be under cutting walmart and hurting their business.
Not exactly. Local affiliates pay for the right to rebroadcast content. Now ABC is comming along and saying that they will by-pass the local affiliates and sell content directly.
They have every reason to be annoyed. What would be more fair and reasonable is if ABC would license content for sale by the local affiliates. This seems the best way to not muck with an existing business model that works yet incorperate new technology into the mix.
They may be blood sucking parasites, but they are blood sucking parasites who have entered into prior agreements in good faith.
You do realize most of the anti-paypal stuff out there is just people bitching and complaining because they were attempting some sort of fraud and paypal caught them on it. There are a few valid complaints yes, but I've never heard of anyone without an account paying through them having any problems. They havn't had any breaches in security that would cause your CC data to be worrysome.
I like many others got their paypal frozen. No valid explanation, no correction, no fraud. Granted I just created another account using a more verbose form of my e-mail address but regardless there are people who bitching who have just cause... hince that class action lawsuit.
Oddly enough, my Matsonic Athlon XP/PC133 mb ran like junk for the first 6 months and it hasn't had trouble ever since. I guess whatever burned out wasn't helping performance:)
What season was it for the 6 months it was flacky? If it was summer then you might have a cooling problem.
What's odd about my Matsonic board... aka pcchips M509 IIRC, after it caught fire it continued to fuction, and in fact I had a hard time returning it because to return something at this shop it had to not work, and it tested OK. The guy didn't notice the burn marks, or the smell of ozone.
In the UK, SVHS models have been around the 150ukp mark for a good number of years now. Mine was 220ukp when I bought it, but when I replaced it after a burglary a year later it was down to 150ukp.
Either I wasn't paying attention after 2000 or so, or the units were not as popular in the states, which given our TVs suck it's very likely. I last remember was the cheapest thing you could buy was the JVC edit deck for about $500, which I considered till I noticed them start to fail prematurly. 2000 was about the year I gave up on the idea because they were still spendy and I could get away with using VCD/SVCD and a multi-disc dvd player. At least with a VCD odds were they were playable on other people's machines, where unfortunatly SVHS wasn't so playable.
...there has allways been several problems with this solution:
* price of daughterboard were at least as high (and often higher) as new mobo.
* a full reinstall of OS and app's is often needed
* daughterboards and a set with the CPU (it has not been cost-effective)
* there has been problems with the CPU cooler
In this case, the motherboard costs $80ish and has this extra feature. The cpu is pointed tward the power supply so cooling isn't likely an issue if you choose to go with a daugherboard mounted cpu. And I don't know about your experence swapping out motherboards with different cpus / chipsets and such but in 99% of cases i've experenced windows detects the new chipsets, reboots and continues to operate perfectly well.
That leaves the cost of the daugherboard, which well you're right. While i'm fond of the idea of basicly a backplane and detachable cpu card for the purpose of lowering the work involved with upgrades not to speak of the modular nature. Right now we have full ATX, MicroATX, FlexATX which if they went with a card motherboard and a backplane it would eliminate the need for different form factors, just change the size and shape of your backplane to accomidate shoebox, pizzabox, or desktop. But such things were never really standardized on the PC, not rarely seen save the rackmount market and a few odd balls here and there.
Apparently their reputation had become so bad that they choose to become a generic "no-name", rather than alert customers to their bad name.
PC chips sold things under their own name. But being a rather major OEM they also sold stuff to be rebadged, like under the Matsonic or Amptron label. Buying under one of the no name labels you might end up getting a pirated bios. Quality was pretty piss poor though if you were lucky you got one that lasted for a while with only a few oddball problems.
I bought into PC Chips in the pentium age... under the Matsonic label IIRC. IBM/Cyrix and motherboard for under $100. I had issues with the motherboard catching fire somewhere around the PC speaker circuity. I had to return a few of those boards.
This has been done before, and even today you can buy adapters to get next-generation CPU's working on older motherboards. However, most of these hybrids have to make trade-offs that do not benefit the end-user. It would benefit ECS for economy of scale, but end-users would always be stuck with proprietary expansion modules that may or may not be available anymore by the time they want to change CPU.
IMO you're better off selecting the mobo+CPU that fits your needs today, and by the time you need to upgrade just select a new mobo+CPU du jour..
Such a design wasn't really all that common on desktop PCs since the ISA days, and even then it was very rare.
Swapping out your existing CPU and Motherboard do the new MB+CPU du jour requires at least two case screws, 1 to 7 card slot screws, and 9ish motherboard screws. Looks like would allow you to peform a major upgrade with three screws. You save time, you waste less materals, everything is happy. The only thing that would remain to be seen is if it would be cost effective to buy a new SIMA for the latest and greatest.
Not to mention planned obsolescence. There was a slashdot article a few weeks ago asking about CD archives and if there would even be any red laser mechanisms available to read those discs in a few decades.
Think of vinyl. You can still buy turn tables and you can still get styli for them. I have to admit on some players they are hard to find, but in a pinch you can often replace the whole cartridge with something that is easier to find like shure or audio technica.
OK, so does anybody actually know of a device that's basically just the equivalent of a vcr with a hard drive? Sure, having the super duper tv guide on the tivo is cool, but it's not $15 a month cool.
Why not go with a digital VHS deck or DVD recorder?
You must be joking. Scratched DVDs can be resurfaced inexpensively, but a damaged VHS tape is damaged forever unless you want to send it off to some forensic lab. And have you ever had a damaged/dirty VCR "eat" your tape? Impossible with DVDs.
Ever have small children eat your VHS tape? Every have small children eat a DVD?
You can resurface the plastic layer, but if you loose the data layer, well, you are screwed. It takes alot to make a VHS tape unwatchable. You'd pretty much have to mangle the tracking segment through out the entire tape, which i've only seen happen when a walnut shell got wedged on the head and etched little potmarks everywhere.
I may have no big love for VHS but those tapes are pretty damned durable.
I like my VCR. It records what I tell it to. I don't have to put up with any crap about shows deleting themselves, or not being allowed to record them in the first place
My only issues with the VHS VCR are space and quality. Those takes are freaky bulky in contrast to a DVD in a longbox, or better yet standard jewel. Slim jewels or quadjewels are where it's at if you collect series. Pre-recorded tapes are not too shabby, but recording anything in SLP mode is total crap, LP recording isn't supported all that often, and SP is a silly old 2 hours for all that bulk.
I would have been less annoyed with VHS if SVHS was slowly worked into consumer units. Or better yet if 8mm was established as a standard above and beyond camcorders. While I respect analog tape as being a very reliable means of recording in realtime, I for one am happy VHS is going the way of the 8 track.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think so. I have Nintendo Tennis (a great game, actually) which is copyright '84.
I stand corrected. I didn't pay that much attention to Nintendo till well the mid 80s.
Often overlooked, it had real technical merit and its titles were very good. It was a 16bit console made in 78, with a succesor using the 68000 cpu planned by the time of the crash. You could feel the difference if you played games like autoracing and motocross, on par only with games released much later for the 65c02 based nintendo. All in a 500Khz cpu... They even ventured with sound speech and keyboard modules.
TI had a speech module before Intellivision IIRC, and it was good, but I have to agree Intellivision was nothing to sneeze at. IIRC the whole keyboard thing wasn't all roses... you had that Intellivision Keyboard Component slated for 1982 that no bugger could get for the life of them. Shared a printer with the Aquarius system IIRC. Needless to say this pissed of people who spent good money on the Intellivision based on the fact that they could get a keyboard addon. The Entertainment Computer System was designed to be a cheaper alternative. But it wasn't really marketed, so anyone frustrated about the Keyboard Component were still frustrated. You then had the M network focus [the cure for the video blues] of porting their popular games to other consoles, but in the end they abandoned everything.
So if Mattel Electronics had survived the crash, and the 68000 based Intellevision III could have been released, maybe things would have looked a bit diferent today. Remember: Japan didn't exported RPG games to america at first because they thought the americans were "too dumb" for them. Check Dragonquest and Final Fantasy history.
I find it doubtful that a spiffy console system would have changed much of anything. Consoles are always those things that have spiffy value for 3 to 5 years and then get replaced with something else. Technicaly speaking it boiled down to what games you could get for a system and the price, and I have to admit the Intellivision with the "System Changer" could use all those 2600 games, but IIRC that sucker cost as much as a 2600. Probally because it was a clone of a 2600.
The big issue was the fact that execs percieved the whole game market as being "just a fad".
I don't remember anyone being upset by the quality of games on the Atari. Everyone I know, myself included, was amazed they they could have Pong, Pitfall, Frogger, Centipede, and Asteroids right on their own TV. It didn't matter that they sucked, because we had nothing to compare them to!
Yes we did, the arcade game. There was no contest, arcade games were superior by far. I mean this is to be expected for something that was released in 1977. The crash of 1983 was a combo of two facts. One there was a flood of crappy games on the market. I'm not talking Pong, Pitfall, Frogger or anything classic, a flood of 200 titles that were pretty much released as fast as they were written without testing, which annoyed the living hell out of atari because even though they didn't make the game they got the phone calls. Even atari didn't consider pacman when they released their spiffy 360 controlers for their 5200, had they actually taken the time to test the controlers they would see they didn't work well for games that needed right angle turns and they broke quickly. And the other issue was sort of created by the execs them selves seeing this whole console thing as a fad. This is rather why Nintendo and Atari were so hip on the idea of actually controling what games were released on their systems after the fact. "M Network" is a good example of this... hitting the market full steam [M Network is the cure for the video blues] making available intellivision titles for the aging 2600 then poof by 1983. It's my belief that it was the panicing execs thinking this all was just a fad who created their own nightmare. The main reason people put down their 2600 was the fact that they couldn't buy anything new for it, or at least no one knew how. So why buy another game system that will only have new games for only a couple of years?
Rotton 2600 games lived somewhere between ET and Custer's Revenge in the plane between unplayable and outright obnoxiousness. The system just didn't have enough oomph for Pac Man, Defender, or Star Raiders, but the 2600 version of Asteroids rocked.
n t_System1 983
Keep in mind the time period. The 2600 was released in 1977 though the more common version was released in 1982, and games were limited to 4K IIRC and not even 1K of system RAM. The NES was released in 1987 IIRC.
What they are describing is the console market crash of 1983. The parent might have not noticed this crash because games for the consoles were still plentyful, just the companies who made them folded and they ended up marked down to 5 bucks at Toys R Us. Remember the Adam, TI, Timex-Sinclair, Intelivision? Poof by 1984. Quite sad as all were pretty good products, well except the Timex. But there was much in the way of crap during that time as you pointed out, but a few gems here and there. For some reason though the atari 5200 and 7800 didn't become very popular, which isn't shocking as Atari's focus by this point was in a computer.
Commodore and Atari stuck around for a good long while though... though the Commodore was very much stronger in the game department.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainme
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_
They love pirates of the carribean so much that they are making another. Somewhat of a double standard!!!
They are actually going to make a film about dvd pirates in the Carribean? With ships and 300-pound canons? I can just imagine the Sweedish Pirate Captain Anakata ordering "Klarp skepp!" AAARRGH!
Yes, I borrowed this from thepiratebay's legal page.
http://static.thepiratebay.org/lensmannen.jpg
Why buy a physical disk player and physical disks when bandwidth provides the same experience?
I'm with you, believe me I am. But there is still a good reason to buy or rent a physical disc. For one thing speed. I can go to the local video store and rent a flick in about an hour. That's 4 to 8 gigs/hr. Further I can buy/rent more than one flick. That's pretty snazzy, equal to a 10 to 20mbit connection. Further I can buy/rent more than one. But the main reason to go with physical discs is for the concept of ownership. I can borrow or lend a disc and this is OK. You can't really lend a file.
How many justifications of piracy will be posted?
It's not a question of justifications of piracy, but rather legitimizing the net as a distribution medium, having it do for music what radio and television as done.
Let's face it, there are always going to be traditionalists who will want to go in a store, flip through albums and buy something with the nice silk screened disc, cover and fly leaf artwork. We'll even have those who will collect those special editions, first pressings. But in the digital age we don't need a factory pressed disc to an exact copy. Hell, current inkjets do a mighty fine job doing covers not to speak of those disk printers from Epson or Canon. Estheticly not as good as a professional printing, and won't last as long, and costs a pretty penny, but a realistic alternative. I would "prefer" it if artists who release albums would sell their material on the net and offer a licensed cover. Income for them, a warm glow for you knowing you supported them.
...is normal, everyday, plain-Jane DVD's. Mostly so that I don't have to re-buy all of my DVD's just to keep up with the current standards, re-buy a compatible HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player, and then have to do the same thing all over again several years from now, just to "keep up with the standards."
I own a turntable. I can buy a new one if I so desire. I've even taken the time to copy vinyl to cassette and more recently copy to CD. It's a hassle but I prefer CD over cassette. But one of the nice things about this whole 5 inch disc standard is the fact that I can play my CDs in my DVD player. There is every reason to believe that the next generation will offer downward compatibility.
Why haven't they tried to do something like this then - and it seems that ABC have licensed their content for sale only over restricted avenues - free to air or cable. Do you also think that the affiliates should be in charge of selling DVDs?? Affiliates are upset, since they might lose out on income, but i don't see why they have a guaranteed income stream from ABC.
I was going to say that it hasn't been done before due to license holders not being hip to the idea, and that something that costs only 1.6m to produce like "Desperate housewives" presents an idea test case at little to no risk. "What people what to buy this crap for two bucks? Let's do it". But I know for a fact my local ABC affiliate offers podcasts of the local news.
No, they don't have a "guaranteed income stream" from ABC but there is much to be said about biting the hand the feeds you. Affiliates generate revenue for ABC by rebroadcasting their content to the local area which increases the number of viewers making advertising more lucrative. Why mess up a good relationship and a perfectly good proven business model?
oh and ABC isn't bypassing anything. the local afflicates still go to air the show first, and we could see it for free vs the $1.99 on itunes, so your arguement just doesn't stand up at all. no what this bitching is about is they feel threatened, because it's giving people what they want, not whats good for their business. ABC has done nothing even remotely underhanded.
ABC is bypassing the airwaves all together and permiting direct download of content. That *IS* the plan.
My argument is that for the past 50+ years network affiliates paid good money for exclusive broadcast rights within their coverage area of content produced by major networks for a set period of time. I remember for a time the FCC required cable providers to black out certain programs from stations they carried because it conflicted with the local broadcasters rights to air the show... for example on Comcast I couldn't catch "The Simpsons" on CBC because that would interfear with FOX's broadcast rights. So now ABC comes along, and decides to sell programs directly hours after the broadcast, where local afficaliates could reasonably expect to be the only provider of licensed programing in their region.
What I'm saying is there is a way to give the consumers what they want, and keep the affiliates happy too. Let the affiliates broadcast and distribute a net version hours after the broadcast.
Desperate Housewives commands $350,000 for a 30 second spot. There are 17 minutes of commercials in 1 episode, which means there are 34 commercials in each episode.
That comes to $11.9 million per episode. That means 6 million people need to purchase each episode in order to match what ABC currently gets from advertisers.
Somehow I think the people talking about the death of broadcast TV are a bit pre-mature.
While I agree the death of broadcast TV isn't likely to happen... keep in mind that 28 million people tuned into the debut. And would downloads include commercials?
it's comments like this that betray these media companys for the blood sucking parasites they really are. a comparable example would be dell asking walmart if it's ok for them to sell a new low budget computer, just in case they might be under cutting walmart and hurting their business.
Not exactly. Local affiliates pay for the right to rebroadcast content. Now ABC is comming along and saying that they will by-pass the local affiliates and sell content directly.
They have every reason to be annoyed. What would be more fair and reasonable is if ABC would license content for sale by the local affiliates. This seems the best way to not muck with an existing business model that works yet incorperate new technology into the mix.
They may be blood sucking parasites, but they are blood sucking parasites who have entered into prior agreements in good faith.
You do realize most of the anti-paypal stuff out there is just people bitching and complaining because they were attempting some sort of fraud and paypal caught them on it. There are a few valid complaints yes, but I've never heard of anyone without an account paying through them having any problems. They havn't had any breaches in security that would cause your CC data to be worrysome.
f id=3&tid=5223&old_block=0
I like many others got their paypal frozen. No valid explanation, no correction, no fraud. Granted I just created another account using a more verbose form of my e-mail address but regardless there are people who bitching who have just cause... hince that class action lawsuit.
http://www.paypalsucks.com/forums/showthread.php?
Oddly enough, my Matsonic Athlon XP/PC133 mb ran like junk for the first 6 months and it hasn't had trouble ever since. I guess whatever burned out wasn't helping performance :)
What season was it for the 6 months it was flacky? If it was summer then you might have a cooling problem.
What's odd about my Matsonic board... aka pcchips M509 IIRC, after it caught fire it continued to fuction, and in fact I had a hard time returning it because to return something at this shop it had to not work, and it tested OK. The guy didn't notice the burn marks, or the smell of ozone.
In the UK, SVHS models have been around the 150ukp mark for a good number of years now. Mine was 220ukp when I bought it, but when I replaced it after a burglary a year later it was down to 150ukp.
Either I wasn't paying attention after 2000 or so, or the units were not as popular in the states, which given our TVs suck it's very likely. I last remember was the cheapest thing you could buy was the JVC edit deck for about $500, which I considered till I noticed them start to fail prematurly. 2000 was about the year I gave up on the idea because they were still spendy and I could get away with using VCD/SVCD and a multi-disc dvd player. At least with a VCD odds were they were playable on other people's machines, where unfortunatly SVHS wasn't so playable.
...there has allways been several problems with this solution:
* price of daughterboard were at least as high (and often higher) as new mobo.
* a full reinstall of OS and app's is often needed
* daughterboards and a set with the CPU (it has not been cost-effective)
* there has been problems with the CPU cooler
In this case, the motherboard costs $80ish and has this extra feature. The cpu is pointed tward the power supply so cooling isn't likely an issue if you choose to go with a daugherboard mounted cpu. And I don't know about your experence swapping out motherboards with different cpus / chipsets and such but in 99% of cases i've experenced windows detects the new chipsets, reboots and continues to operate perfectly well.
That leaves the cost of the daugherboard, which well you're right. While i'm fond of the idea of basicly a backplane and detachable cpu card for the purpose of lowering the work involved with upgrades not to speak of the modular nature. Right now we have full ATX, MicroATX, FlexATX which if they went with a card motherboard and a backplane it would eliminate the need for different form factors, just change the size and shape of your backplane to accomidate shoebox, pizzabox, or desktop. But
such things were never really standardized on the PC, not rarely seen save the rackmount market and a few odd balls here and there.
Apparently their reputation had become so bad that they choose to become a generic "no-name", rather than alert customers to their bad name.
PC chips sold things under their own name. But being a rather major OEM they also sold stuff to be rebadged, like under the Matsonic or Amptron label. Buying under one of the no name labels you might end up getting a pirated bios. Quality was pretty piss poor though if you were lucky you got one that lasted for a while with only a few oddball problems.
I'm not buying anything from PC Chips, ever.
I bought into PC Chips in the pentium age... under the Matsonic label IIRC. IBM/Cyrix and motherboard for under $100. I had issues with the motherboard catching fire somewhere around the PC speaker circuity. I had to return a few of those boards.
This has been done before, and even today you can buy adapters to get next-generation CPU's working on older motherboards. However, most of these hybrids have to make trade-offs that do not benefit the end-user. It would benefit ECS for economy of scale, but end-users would always be stuck with proprietary expansion modules that may or may not be available anymore by the time they want to change CPU.
IMO you're better off selecting the mobo+CPU that fits your needs today, and by the time you need to upgrade just select a new mobo+CPU du jour..
Such a design wasn't really all that common on desktop PCs since the ISA days, and even then it was very rare.
Swapping out your existing CPU and Motherboard do the new MB+CPU du jour requires at least two case screws, 1 to 7 card slot screws, and 9ish motherboard screws. Looks like would allow you to peform a major upgrade with three screws. You save time, you waste less materals, everything is happy. The only thing that would remain to be seen is if it would be cost effective to buy a new SIMA for the latest and greatest.
Not to mention planned obsolescence. There was a slashdot article a few weeks ago asking about CD archives and if there would even be any red laser mechanisms available to read those discs in a few decades.
Think of vinyl. You can still buy turn tables and you can still get styli for them. I have to admit on some players they are hard to find, but in a pinch you can often replace the whole cartridge with something that is easier to find like shure or audio technica.
OK, so does anybody actually know of a device that's basically just the equivalent of a vcr with a hard drive? Sure, having the super duper tv guide on the tivo is cool, but it's not $15 a month cool.
2 47805-7425544?v=glance&n=172282&n=507846&s=electro nics&v=glance0 6GWIJO/qid=1129380861/sr=8-7/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i4_xgl 23/104-2247805-7425544?v=glance&s=electronics&n=50 7846
Why not go with a digital VHS deck or DVD recorder?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000ACY2B/104-2
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
You must be joking. Scratched DVDs can be resurfaced inexpensively, but a damaged VHS tape is damaged forever unless you want to send it off to some forensic lab. And have you ever had a damaged/dirty VCR "eat" your tape? Impossible with DVDs.
Ever have small children eat your VHS tape? Every have small children eat a DVD?
You can resurface the plastic layer, but if you loose the data layer, well, you are screwed. It takes alot to make a VHS tape unwatchable. You'd pretty much have to mangle the tracking segment through out the entire tape, which i've only seen happen when a walnut shell got wedged on the head and etched little potmarks everywhere.
I may have no big love for VHS but those tapes are pretty damned durable.
I like my VCR. It records what I tell it to. I don't have to put up with any crap about shows deleting themselves, or not being allowed to record them in the first place
My only issues with the VHS VCR are space and quality. Those takes are freaky bulky in contrast to a DVD in a longbox, or better yet standard jewel. Slim jewels or quadjewels are where it's at if you collect series. Pre-recorded tapes are not too shabby, but recording anything in SLP mode is total crap, LP recording isn't supported all that often, and SP is a silly old 2 hours for all that bulk.
I would have been less annoyed with VHS if SVHS was slowly worked into consumer units. Or better yet if 8mm was established as a standard above and beyond camcorders. While I respect analog tape as being a very reliable means of recording in realtime, I for one am happy VHS is going the way of the 8 track.
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Think it'll work?
It would take a miracle.
Bye bye!
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