On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 18:39:50 GMT, "James Sweet"
wrote:


I looked at Panasonics latest offering a couple of months ago, A flat
screen plasma going for just under 3,000, still too costly for the
average consumer. It was a bit small as well.
What the home viewer want's in a flat screen is to recreate the
theatre experience in their own home.
Taking into consideration the distance to size ratio of the average
cinescope screen that we all grew up watching in the movie houses and
the average size of the home den this would require a 60" minimum size
for the home sceen.
This size unit is still priced at a premium.
True the price will drop. It's a stand off between consumers and the
industry, we learned the hard way during the 80's with over priced
vcr's.
As long as consumers stand firm and don't buy they'll have to bring
down the price to an "honest" level.


They'll bring the price down once they've sold enough to recoup the hundreds
of millions spent developing them. There's a lot more out there than
flatscreens, I got my 50" rear projection set for free, it's got a faint
channel logo burned into one corner but the picture is still pretty good,
there's plenty of deals like that out there for someone who can fix stuff.
I've gotten at least a dozen 27"+ TV's for free and most have been fairly
easy to fix.


As for my computer, I bought many new components and I built the whole
thing
myself. For computers, you really ought to get what's up to date
(doesn't mean
highest end). Hell, I needed a computer that was powerful enough to run
WindowsXP reliably. I would've went with Win98SE, but that OS runs
unstable on
my computer, so necessity dictates that I run WinXP.

What's wrong with win2kpro?
XP is the bane of my business with all it's short comings.


2K works pretty well, though unfortunatly it's not available anymore. You
can find a used copy occasionally, but if you want to buy something new and
be legal your choice is pretty much just XP. Thankfully you can set the UI
to look pretty much like 2k, but that argument is pretty silly since XP and
2k both have such similar hardware requirements.

Win2k runs lots lighter on the system, freeing up system resources for
intensive apps. Also XP has all kinds of bugs regarding burning
duplicate media.
a friend running XP on his video editing setup has problems getting
his dvd burner to run under xp when duping his dvd masters.XP sees
them as copyrighted material and shuts his burner down about half the
time. He's gotten it about debugged but why go through the hassle when
2k has none of these issues?
XP was SO misreported when it was released that Bill oughta be
ashamed. Takes up to 4 times the system required ram etc... to
actually get it to perform without any hitches or dragging sooo slow.
As for availablilty it's everywhere and can be had "legally" for
reasonable prices.
I opted to get it free since the tower I purchase originally had XP
and ran really sucky with it.
I consider this a bad faith violation since M$ lied like a thief about
XP to begin with. Do you think they'd swap out the OS's to satisfy the
customer though?
My copy of XP went in the circular file pronto and I don't miss it a
bit.



People oft confuse need and want and tend to go for the latter.
I always ask myself if I really need something.
That's the only reason I have much of the electronics I do have.
For business reasons(I do video/film work).
While you went with a Sony dvd I purchased a Daewoo that offered more
in features and performance.(It's a clone of a commercial unit made by
panasonic.) at less than half the price.
From the day we open our eyes the programming starts.
We are trained to be consumers and always buy whatever is new when it
comes out. It's been made the cornerstone of our economy.
We're conditioned to feel "good" when we buy something new.
Why do you think there's a car dealership on every block and a 7/11 on
every corner.


I don't think everyone confuses want and need, if I only spent money on
things I need I'd be renting a little room somewhere and sleeping on a cot.
It's nobody's business but my own what I want and choose to spend my money
on, I buy stuff that brings me enjoyment, it doesn't have to be factory new
for it to be "new" to me. Granted there are certainly people out there who
have to constantly have the latest and greatest, but that's great because if
not for those people I'd have a hard time picking up discarded stuff for
free, everything used would hold it's value much better and that'd force me
to buy a lot more new stuff.

Not everybody, just the vast majority.

Can you really say that Sony is superior quality?
I don't even service Sony anymore it's such a pain to get parts.
I have a back storage room full of new broken down Sony.
That old sales slogan "It's a Sony" is about as lame as Nikon's old
bit, "It's not a camera it a Nikon".
Neither have turned out the quality products that made their name
famous in quite some time.


I have a Sony TV that looks significantly better than most other TV's, at
least to me. I've had several other Sony's that have come and gone, and I've
fixed quite a few other sets. Sony isn't the one end all be all, but the
older Trinitrons were very good sets, plenty of them still around and it's
what I've come to prefer. For projection TV's I'd look elsewhere, Sony does
seem to be very unforgiving to parts substitution, their Trinitron direct
view CRT's are where they really shine. Gotta watch out for their lower end
made in mexico stuff though, it's all too common today for a company to
outsource to someone cheaper and slap their name on it, it's a downward
spiral with everyone having to do it to compete with everyone else, I see no
end in sight, and if I had the power to do the things I feel would help to
fix this, I would become very unpopular very quickly.

Experts would argue that Sony's single gun "Trinitron" tube is a poor
concept lacking in resolution and yielding poor color quality.
(Noise is higher as well as poor specs for saturation etc...)
But your preference proves that it's largely a matter of personal
taste.
I like JVC's myself or commercial Panasonic monitors.
The Consumer JVC's give the sharpest image, yet still have good color
rendition. To their minus JVC still hasen't gotten the vertical
linenarity stage bugs out and with ome video signals you'll get
noticeable ripple in vertical edges.(I open them up when I buy them
and tweek it out of them and have no problem after that.)
If you really want the best color in a consumer tv then Zenith still
produces a good set for the money and the later models have addressed
the issue of lack of sharpness which the older models fell down on.
I have a dozenor so of those "old" Sony vcr's in a back room with one
problem or another. All were high end videophile models costing in the
5-700 dollar range and all exibited problems in either the audio
output stage or video input. Problems range from no audio signal to
constantly shifting video signal or no chroma/burst signals.
It's a shame that Sony felt it ok to produce so many crappy vhs
machines. I often thought it was their attempt to drive consumers off
the vhs market to beta.
the fact that you've had good fortune with your units could be counted
as indicative as to Sony's spotty record in production control.
I alsohave a box full of walkman's from various generations that all
crapped.
Sony's policy with the small personal stereo products was that only
they would service it. so the consumer was strapped to shipping it to
japan and waiting six months to get it back.(I've heard they have
repair centers stateside now but that repairs take nearly as long.)
I just think that if you pay top dollar for a product it should be
very reliable and it shouldn't be a crap shoot with one hoping they
got a "good" unit this time.(This is what killed Campo's. They were an
exclusive Sony retailer, would lie to the customer about how Sony was
so rock solid. then when the consumer brought the unit back after a
week or so crapped out Campo's would tell them THEY had to ship it
back to Sony. Even it their last days when it was obvious that they
were going under the change in policy where they'd ship it back to
Sony for the customer wasn't enough for the ****ed off customer.
Had an Aunt who without consulting me went out and bought a 200 dollar
Sony walkman only to have it burn up after a few hours of use.
Campo's all but told her to **** off.
she mailed it back to sony in Japan waited 8 months got it back
unrepaired. Sony issued her a rebate certificate for credit towards a
new Sony product from Campo's. Campo's was OOB by then and it took her
a year of wrangling to get her money back.
200 bucks for ANY personal stereo is insane in my book but most
consumers not knowledgeable in electronics generally try to compensate
by buying the most expensive model in the hopes of getting quality.
Sony has always preyed on these types.