DVDs & AV...

Everyone¹ needs a hobby; something to stave off the boredom.

I hesitated (until the great radiator flood of January 2010) to reproduce my first-ever hifi magazine article² (but you can now read all about "Living with Dolby B" in a small, unsuitably-shaped flat) from 1975. And here is some evidence of my audio-visual adventures. These include my ever-evolving (April 2001) hifi-audio/visual components and (perhaps) my ongoing attempts to document their current interconnection. And my desultory attempts to remote control them (five universal programmable remotes tried, and discarded, so far) efficiently, effectively, and in a manner suited to domestic harmony. Translation: push one button to watch a DVD by switching on screen, player, amplifier, and switchbox, and setting everything to the appropriate inputs. I started using a second Logitech unit, but it belied its early promise.

A message to people who email asking for copies

I receive occasional requests for copies of various items. My position is very simple: I do not distribute copyright material.

Meanwhile, to celebrate the arrival of Spring 2009 (and completely uninfluenced by the failure of three pieces of kit within one week) I had refreshed the system and brought it gently into the wonderful world of 1080p hi-def Blu-ray on a 60" plasma screen. To celebrate the arrival of Autumn that year I then gave the audio amplifying and video scaling side of things a further lick of high-resolution paint...

The latest (April 2010) of numerous iterations

I now (April 2010) declare the system stable (for the time being!)

Glittering delights in store

I long ago finished the tedious (real-time) task of transcribing my library of several hundred expensive analogue video LaserDiscs³ on to cheap blank DVDs before "laser rot" (a condition the video industry wasn't keen to admit ever existed) finally finished rendering them all unplayable, or at least unwatchable, which is much the same thing. And I thus retired my top of the range third Pioneer LD player (they manufactured the last 3,000 or so of these in January 2009) after seven years of faithful service. (This is surely what's meant by "paying your dues to the video industry".) My few pre-recorded VHS tapes are of such depressingly poor technical quality they are simply not worth archiving. How did we ever put up with such fuzzy, jittery, low-resolution, pan-and-scanned rubbish? Let alone pay for it? Hi-def, thank goodness, is usually a different story.⁴

I've generated simple text lists of my videos, giving me an excuse to prove that I can eventually do on a PC what always seemed to be trivially easy on a RISC OS machine. Still, at least I can now emulate RISC OS under Windows XP Pro and enjoy the dubious benefits of three separate, world-class DTP systems. (Not that I do, any more, since Saint Pilling ported his superb DTP system over to the dark side.)

Footnotes

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²  I found a cache of these that Christa had kept all these years. She used to type them for me at a tedious 39 characters per line (to make the magazine column lengths very easy to predict). I also used a variety of pseudonyms to help disguise the fact that I might appear as often as three times in a single issue.
³  I once calculated that a LaserDisc could store three complete IBM MVS/XA address spaces — we used to think that was a lot. Now (after hiring my first LD player for a year in 1983 while I waited to see if this technology would ever catch on here in the UK — it never did) even my tiny iPod Classic 160GB MP3 jukebox has (far) more capacity. Not to mention a tiny colour video screen.
⁴  My latest plasma screen's resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 does my old eyes fine, clearly revealing (when they try to cram too many channels in) all the digital weaknesses of standard definition UK satellite and terrestrial broadcasts. Blu-ray discs and the BBC's HD channel are (generally) an entirely different, better, story.