Ignorant people.

[ChrisW6ATV]

JimJ, you got it right. Today's kids are eventually going to be ornery old coots who will whine about their lazy grandchildren. Those eventual grandparents will stubbornly stick to phones with keypads and maybe satellite or cable TV. They will complain that the youngsters do not even know how to use a phone by punching in a separate phone number that you have to remember or write down for each person you want to call, and the kids don't even know you used to have to recharge your phone every few days. They will describe how some phones even used to be connected to wires inside the walls of houses! This group will also describe going to stores to buy movies, books, and music in individual pieces as a normal, everyday practice. They will mention TV "networks" that made up advance lists of shows that would run live, nonstop at the same time all over the country, and the kids will think, "How silly was that? TV shows went by even without someone ordering them? You had to program a digital recorder in advance to save shows, or you could miss the show and have to wait for the network to decide to show it again?? What a ridiculous idea! And, some people didn't even have the recorders and they had to actually decide to be at home at exactly 8 PM every Thursday night to watch a show? That must have been like the Stone Age."

[similost]

Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV

JimJ, you got it right. Today's kids are eventually going to be ornery old coots who will whine about their lazy grandchildren. Those eventual grandparents will stubbornly stick to phones with keypads and maybe satellite or cable TV. They will complain that the youngsters do not even know how to use a phone by punching in a separate phone number that you have to remember or write down for each person you want to call, and the kids don't even know you used to have to recharge your phone every few days. They will describe how some phones even used to be connected to wires inside the walls of houses! This group will also describe going to stores to buy movies, books, and music in individual pieces as a normal, everyday practice. They will mention TV "networks" that made up advance lists of shows that would run live, nonstop at the same time all over the country, and the kids will think, "How silly was that? TV shows went by even without someone ordering them? You had to program a digital recorder in advance to save shows, or you could miss the show and have to wait for the network to decide to show it again?? What a ridiculous idea! And, some people didn't even have the recorders and they had to actually decide to be at home at exactly 8 PM every Thursday night to watch a show? That must have been like the Stone Age."

I remember one day a kid came to school, and was telling us about this machine his father would put a tape in, and it would record a show on the TV so you could watch it later...

We all called him a liar.. everyone knows there's no such thing...

[Keefla]

Originally Posted by similost

I remember one day a kid came to school, and was telling us about this machine his father would put a tape in, and it would record a show on the TV so you could watch it later...

We all called him a liar.. everyone knows there's no such thing...

that reminds me of a conversation i had with a friend in about march 1997 or so when DVDs were just coming around. He was reading a magazine article from popular electronics or something about the technology and whatnot. I said theyd never catch on "noone will want them cause you cant record on them, its gonna be like video discs and lazer discs, people already have everything on tape and wont switch formats.". he still reminds me to this day that i was wrong. I was right about his now useless minidisc player thow they failed both times sony tried to launch them.

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV

JimJ, you got it right. Today's kids are eventually going to be ornery old coots who will whine about their lazy grandchildren.

Back in the mid 60's my grammar school teachers absolutely hated television. Today they probably hate video games and internet surfing...

[Elfasto]

I for one must be an anachronism in a modern world. I have a cellular phone that's only a phone. I have a HUGE 26" RCA Colortrack 2000 Television (made in 1989), I haven't stepped up to component video and I'm still stuck with S-Video, still play Vinyl, OWN 2 VCR's, only 2 DVD players (one of them is a Playstation 2), still use Cassettes, and I have more movies on Laserdisc than I do on DVD.

And I must be the last person on Earth that doesn't believe in driving and yacking on a Cellular Phone.

I should be stuffed in a museum.

[JimJ[VT]]

JimJ, you got it right. Today's kids are eventually going to be ornery old coots who will whine about their lazy grandchildren. Those eventual grandparents will stubbornly stick to phones with keypads and maybe satellite or cable TV.

And whatever form AK may take then...you can be assured...we'll be complaining, er, posting on it

[Bill R]

Minidisc didn't actually fail. It is still in wide use in the pro/ concert touring world. You would be surprised how many bands (A acts included) use minidisc players on stage and only pretend to play their instruments. It just never had a real use in the home market.

I see people all the time buying calculators for the little tykes in school. The hand held electronic calculator hadn't even been invented when I was in grade school and amazingly we all still learned to do our math. The newest calculators can even graph the results. I had to use pencils and graph paper. I think kids got a much better education back then. I didn't need to know all about computers in school, but I did have to learn to read and comprehend what I had read. With that knowledge I could learn all about computers on my own.

I best not get started on the school system and modern teaching methods.

Bill R

[old_tv_nut]

I stood in line at the Aquarium 2 weeks ago while three guys in front of me tried to figure out their total cost for tickets at $24.95 each. One was punching the numbers into the calculator function of his cellphone and showing it to the other two, who weren't too sure if the result made sense (it was correct). I can't say if their dysfunctional math arose from having no training at all, or to life-long reliance on calculators, and I couldn't figure out a way to determine that without probably pissing them off. It was entertaining, in a morbid way.

Regarding cell phones, I carry one, but it's only on when I really need to make an outgoing call, or when I'm traveling on business and need to be reachable. I don't WANT to be always reachable. I started carrying it constantly after I had a heart attack and the nurses suggested keeping it handy just in case.

By the way, for personal phone use, Miss Manners says the phone should never interrupt face-to-face conversations, and the answering machine or equivalent is a courteous convenience to provide for callers so they don't have to call repeatedly. So, when people comment that they HAD to leave a message (poor inconvenienced souls) I just ignore the comment.

I agree that businesses should be just the opposite, with phone answering set up for the convenience of the caller. However, it's just unaffordable, with what people are willing to pay, for a phone company to do what Illinois Bell did, for example - hire enough service reps so every call was answered by a person between the second and third ring. You will not see those days again.

[simplynuts]

i grew up with tube sets and remember spending time with my father fixing an old round tube black and white console so many times that my mother wanted something new. My first color set was given to me by a building super. It was a round picture tube rca with a tuning fork type remote. It was a great set that only needed a break in a circuit board jumpered to get it going. i like the build of the old stuff and that they are easier to repair. I had a lcd portable player that I rarely use just die recently. I paid $150 and the company would send me a new one for $70 becuase it was out of warranty. Told them I won't buy their products again becuase I can buy a complete new one witha new battery for that price. Most of the stuff i get from garage sales or street finds. I left a pair of pilot speakers on the curb today with a free sign (no one would take them unless they were marked free). They sat the whole day until my 18 year old came home from bowling with some friends. They asked why the speakers were there and then took them. Maybe all is not lost on the young.

[Telecolor 3007]

People here think I have nothing better to do than collect old tvs. Unfortnley, my mom is one of them. She's with the new products, why buy old ones, the new ones have warranty... When I will have my own apartament (this will not be soon beacuase I don't have money) I hope I will get me some newer (post 1987-1990) tv sets, to show other people what qualty really means! The most easy way to destroy a people confidence in itself, is to destroy it's history, and this is valable in the case of the consumers - the corporations want to make us to think our products our obsolete, in order to make us, the consumer to buy thyer 2 dollars junks! . They think if I'm young (I'm 24) I'm another kid that is fashionable and will buy theyer's junks, but I ain't going to fell in theyr's trap. Why? Because I had the chance to know what a good product is!!!
A funny thing: people say that my old East-German radio that I use as an amplifier isn't good, but when they hear it they like it

About those kids: theyr's parents never talled them about V.C.R.'s?

Wonder why people prefer to buy new junks in stad of good old things? O.k., at a tv sets the tube may be used, an V.C.R. may be "absolete", but an radio?

[Elfasto]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

Wonder why people prefer to buy new junks in stad of good old things? O.k., at a tv sets the tube may be used, an V.C.R. may be "absolete", but an radio?

Good point. Radio hasn't changed much since 1920 for the AM band, and very little since around 1970 for the FM band. Shit, some of the really old radio sets from the 1920-1940 range absolutely kick the crap out of a new receiver on the AM band for sensitivity, sound quality.

[andy]

I've never owned a new TV. Even my computers are all put together from surplus stuff. I don't own a VCR that was made after 1988. I think it's more fun to see what turns up at garage sales, flea markets, surplus stores, and even the trash than to just go shopping. There's no fun in it if anyone can just go out and buy one. I enjoy collecting and using things that were the best you could get at the time they were made.

[Tubejunke]

Does anyone get the impression that the DVD player is the exception to the rule when it comes to the normal high to low quality life span that trendy home entertainment devices usually have. It seems like they flooded the market with cheap DVD players from the get go. I tend to wait a while to jump on the bandwagon of creature comfort so I might have missed $200 DVD units. I think the market wanted to eradicate VHS badly. What better way to do it than make the latest "must have" available to the working (or not) poor. You would be hard pressed to find someone on welfare in America without a DVD player and a movie club card. Get my drift?

The best VCR's certainly were made in the 80's. I think that decade saw the peak of VCR quality production. I have a mid 80's Panasonic that refuses to stop. I cleaned the switch inside once that makes them go crazy perorming the wrong function at the right time to lock up. For about the past 10 years you can go pick up a one pound $40 Magnavox at Wally World that might last 2 or 3 years.

TV's have certainly been on a downhill trend in quality pretty much since the point of solid state technology. Actually for the first 10 or so years of solid state television you got a really good product. That brings us to some point in the later 80's when industry changed to the modern tactic of PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE/AND OR FAILURE WITHOUT HOPE OF REPAIR.

By the 80's I think the electronics industry relized that for one they had perfected the technology of solid state technology. With that perfection of a product that was likely to perform without fail in the case of a TV until the CRT finally burned out. Our 1984 Sears 27" console JUST got to the point of needing its first repair last year. Thats 23 YEARS and its NOT the CRT!! I still have it trying to decide if I want to see if a repair shop (exists) will repair it, a set that has proven its worth. Or should I go throw Wally world a couple hundred for a Chinese set thats CRT will go in 5 years.

Even home Stereo equipment got crappy somewhere in the 80's. I'll take my 70's Marantz Receiver anyday over just about anything else. I have not yet progressed to Surround or whatever. I'm happy with what I have. Furthermore I have an old Quadraphonic receiver in the closet that has FOUR channel stereo instead of three like surround.

I'm not meaning to be flying a solid state flag as far as what I prefer although in the case of Television for heavy use solid state is/was indestructable. Personally I love tube equipment. For Television it is more from a nostalgic standpoint. Now for sound/music equipment I would prefer nothing but tubes. People give me a funny look when I tell them that the most high end audio equipment available on the market is tube operated. It really can't be beat. Sure it takes maintenance but to me thats part of the fun. I feel like I have beat the system in a way when I can repair my own equipment, plus a sense of accomplishment.

[JimJ[VT]]

It seems like they flooded the market with cheap DVD players from the get go.

I remember DVD players being somewhat pricey when they first came out...just like what's going on with HD DVD players now. But they hit critical mass pretty quickly.

Even home Stereo equipment got crappy somewhere in the 80's.

Going to have to disagree with that one, unless you're talking about completely mainstream stuff sold at the consumer level, the Best Buys and the Circuit City's. Unless you limit yourself to that market, there's a ton of very high quality stuff still being made everyday. Rotel, NAD, Forte, Classe, ARC, CJ, Marantz, Parasound, etc, etc. Too many to name.

[Tube Radio]

What really bugs me is the quality stuff people throw out just because the newest model has one extra button on the remote. Most of my stuff except the computer and DVD/VCR player is stuff from flea markets and like places.