OT New Technology
 

Being an Electrical Engineer, I always tried to be on the cutting
edge in new technical advances in electronics.

Hi-Fi systems in the 50's, Stereo tube type component systems in the
60's (McIntosh, Marantz, Dynaco, etc), reel to reel tape recorders,
and those amazing little cassette recorders that sounded better than
the big reel to reel units.

And then, transistors. Hugh step forward in electronics, but the
transistorized sets, at first, just didn't have that full, smooth,
sound of the 6L6 tube type amplifiers.

I was one of the first owners of a video recorder in my town. A
Panasonic, $2000, that required 1 hour blank, 1" tapes, $28 each, the
size of a library book.

Recorded Sugar Ray Leonard's Olympic fights. The USA had an awesome
boxing team that year. Needless to say, I was overjoyed when the VHS,
VCR's became available. Blank tape expense dropped dramatically.

Then the satellite systems. I had the only 10 foot diameter satellite
dish, sticking up above my roof, in the neighborhood. I could get all
the raw feeds. Dan Rather scratching his nose, Larry King sucking
desperately on a cigarette during commercials and trying to wave the
smoke away before going live. None of the programs were scrambled
back then. Don't know why the neighbors didn't make me take it down.
Beautiful reception, cable wasn't even close. And then, those
amazing little tiny satellite dishes.

Got one of the first hand held calculators, Texas Instruments SR-10,
slide rule calculator, in 1973.

Then the really big event, the personal computers came out. DOS at
first, then Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 98 and on and on.

Well, I've kept up, pretty well, with new technology, until now. But
with the unbelievable flood of new products on the market in big
screen TV's, Tivos, HDTV tuners, different aspect ratios, etc, etc.,
this old engineer is beginning to feel a little overwhelmed.

I shopped, for a TV, for a month before I could decide what to buy.
Then I bought the wrong one. The salesman didn't tell me that
beautiful picture I was seeing in the store was not what I would get
at home. Connected it to my Dish satellite feed and the reception was
worse than the old 1950's black and white TV's.

I'm beginning to believe that all this new electronics technology has
passed me by.

So, as the great Gen. McArthur once said, maybe it's time for this old
soldier to just...............fade away. (Heh, Heh)

Fortunately, I found this newsgroup, and can get all the current
information I need for future purchases.

Thanks, you young whippersnappers.

Aging fast.

OT New Technology
 

wrote

...The salesman didn't tell me that
beautiful picture I was seeing in the store was not what I would get
at home. Connected it to my Dish satellite feed and the reception was
worse than the old 1950's black and white TV's.

I'm beginning to believe that all this new electronics technology has
passed me by.

I'm a fellow adventurer through the wilds of geezerhood, but my HDTV
experience has been the opposite. After I hooked by JVC G-series D-ILA to my
Bell Expressvu HD dish and receiver, installed a good digital HDMI cable and
a Panasonic home theatre audio system, and tuned everything up using the
owner-accessible menus, my video and audio is better than anything I
experienced in any of my many visits to a wide variety of stores.

Good luck and keep on trying. We're not dead yet.

OT New Technology
 

"full, smooth, sound of the 6L6"? I thought that all of the old true HI-FI
guys were into triodes? :-)

Phil

wrote in message
...
Being an Electrical Engineer, I always tried to be on the cutting
edge in new technical advances in electronics.

Hi-Fi systems in the 50's, Stereo tube type component systems in the
60's (McIntosh, Marantz, Dynaco, etc), reel to reel tape recorders,
and those amazing little cassette recorders that sounded better than
the big reel to reel units.

And then, transistors. Hugh step forward in electronics, but the
transistorized sets, at first, just didn't have that full, smooth,
sound of the 6L6 tube type amplifiers.

I was one of the first owners of a video recorder in my town. A
Panasonic, $2000, that required 1 hour blank, 1" tapes, $28 each, the
size of a library book.

Recorded Sugar Ray Leonard's Olympic fights. The USA had an awesome
boxing team that year. Needless to say, I was overjoyed when the VHS,
VCR's became available. Blank tape expense dropped dramatically.

Then the satellite systems. I had the only 10 foot diameter satellite
dish, sticking up above my roof, in the neighborhood. I could get all
the raw feeds. Dan Rather scratching his nose, Larry King sucking
desperately on a cigarette during commercials and trying to wave the
smoke away before going live. None of the programs were scrambled
back then. Don't know why the neighbors didn't make me take it down.
Beautiful reception, cable wasn't even close. And then, those
amazing little tiny satellite dishes.

Got one of the first hand held calculators, Texas Instruments SR-10,
slide rule calculator, in 1973.

Then the really big event, the personal computers came out. DOS at
first, then Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 98 and on and on.

Well, I've kept up, pretty well, with new technology, until now. But
with the unbelievable flood of new products on the market in big
screen TV's, Tivos, HDTV tuners, different aspect ratios, etc, etc.,
this old engineer is beginning to feel a little overwhelmed.

I shopped, for a TV, for a month before I could decide what to buy.
Then I bought the wrong one. The salesman didn't tell me that
beautiful picture I was seeing in the store was not what I would get
at home. Connected it to my Dish satellite feed and the reception was
worse than the old 1950's black and white TV's.

I'm beginning to believe that all this new electronics technology has
passed me by.

So, as the great Gen. McArthur once said, maybe it's time for this old
soldier to just...............fade away. (Heh, Heh)

Fortunately, I found this newsgroup, and can get all the current
information I need for future purchases.

Thanks, you young whippersnappers.

Aging fast.

OT New Technology
 

I shopped, for a TV, for a month before I could decide what to buy.
Then I bought the wrong one. The salesman didn't tell me that
beautiful picture I was seeing in the store was not what I would get
at home. Connected it to my Dish satellite feed and the reception was
worse than the old 1950's black and white TV's.

I'm beginning to believe that all this new electronics technology has
passed me by.

So, as the great Gen. McArthur once said, maybe it's time for this old
soldier to just...............fade away. (Heh, Heh)

No, please don't stop!! We need people like you who buy the cutting
edge technology so that the prices drop.

OT New Technology
 

Uhh, I don't do that no more.

I'm shopping for bargains, now.

AF

On 16 Jan 2006 08:34:59 -0800, "Larry Bud"
wrote:

I shopped, for a TV, for a month before I could decide what to buy.
Then I bought the wrong one. The salesman didn't tell me that
beautiful picture I was seeing in the store was not what I would get
at home. Connected it to my Dish satellite feed and the reception was
worse than the old 1950's black and white TV's.

I'm beginning to believe that all this new electronics technology has
passed me by.

So, as the great Gen. McArthur once said, maybe it's time for this old
soldier to just...............fade away. (Heh, Heh)

No, please don't stop!! We need people like you who buy the cutting
edge technology so that the prices drop.

OT New Technology
 

Maybe so.

The 6L6's were the ones in my McIntosh MC-240 power amp purchased in
1966, wow 40 years ago. Still got it. Haven't fired it up in 20
years, but I'll bet it still works.

The original cost was about a months pay. When I'm gone, my kid will
probably sell it at a garage sale for $10.

I built two mono Dynaco amp kits, and they had two hugh tubes in each
amp. They ran so hot you had to put a fan on them. After I bought
them, the Hi-Fi salesman told me they needed to be replaced every
year, and matched pairs were required to maintain the proper fidelity
of the system. (Smile)

Since a pair cost almost half the price of the amp, I quickly unloaded
them on a CPA, and bought the McIntosh.

Aaah yes, the good old days. High powered, none airconditioned muscle
cars. Hemi's, solid lifter 302's, 327's, 396's, 427's, stop light
drag racing, birth of rock & roll. (Snap, snap, wake up.) Time to go
to bed. Uhhhh, what year is it?

Aging Fast

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 18:20:43 GMT, "Phil Ross"
wrote:

"full, smooth, sound of the 6L6"? I thought that all of the old true HI-FI
guys were into triodes? :-)

Phil

wrote in message
.. .
Being an Electrical Engineer, I always tried to be on the cutting
edge in new technical advances in electronics.

Hi-Fi systems in the 50's, Stereo tube type component systems in the
60's (McIntosh, Marantz, Dynaco, etc), reel to reel tape recorders,
and those amazing little cassette recorders that sounded better than
the big reel to reel units.

And then, transistors. Hugh step forward in electronics, but the
transistorized sets, at first, just didn't have that full, smooth,
sound of the 6L6 tube type amplifiers.

I was one of the first owners of a video recorder in my town. A
Panasonic, $2000, that required 1 hour blank, 1" tapes, $28 each, the
size of a library book.

Recorded Sugar Ray Leonard's Olympic fights. The USA had an awesome
boxing team that year. Needless to say, I was overjoyed when the VHS,
VCR's became available. Blank tape expense dropped dramatically.

Then the satellite systems. I had the only 10 foot diameter satellite
dish, sticking up above my roof, in the neighborhood. I could get all
the raw feeds. Dan Rather scratching his nose, Larry King sucking
desperately on a cigarette during commercials and trying to wave the
smoke away before going live. None of the programs were scrambled
back then. Don't know why the neighbors didn't make me take it down.
Beautiful reception, cable wasn't even close. And then, those
amazing little tiny satellite dishes.

Got one of the first hand held calculators, Texas Instruments SR-10,
slide rule calculator, in 1973.

Then the really big event, the personal computers came out. DOS at
first, then Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 98 and on and on.

Well, I've kept up, pretty well, with new technology, until now. But
with the unbelievable flood of new products on the market in big
screen TV's, Tivos, HDTV tuners, different aspect ratios, etc, etc.,
this old engineer is beginning to feel a little overwhelmed.

I shopped, for a TV, for a month before I could decide what to buy.
Then I bought the wrong one. The salesman didn't tell me that
beautiful picture I was seeing in the store was not what I would get
at home. Connected it to my Dish satellite feed and the reception was
worse than the old 1950's black and white TV's.

I'm beginning to believe that all this new electronics technology has
passed me by.

So, as the great Gen. McArthur once said, maybe it's time for this old
soldier to just...............fade away. (Heh, Heh)

Fortunately, I found this newsgroup, and can get all the current
information I need for future purchases.

Thanks, you young whippersnappers.

Aging fast.

OT New Technology
 

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:13:36 -0600, wrote:


The original cost was about a months pay. When I'm gone, my kid will
probably sell it at a garage sale for $10.

Care to divulge your address?

OT New Technology
 

OT New Technology
 

Smiles all around.

No, it's a big secret. Maybe he'll hang one of those Garage Sale
signs on a telephone pole.

I'm really just joking about an early demise. If I stop sleeping so
much, maybe I can handle another 20-30 years. I know, I know, that's
a little optimistic, but you never know.

That boy better leave my stuff alone are I'll take him with me.

AF

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 22:01:42 -0600, Phil Witt
wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:13:36 -0600, wrote:


The original cost was about a months pay. When I'm gone, my kid will
probably sell it at a garage sale for $10.

Care to divulge your address?

OT New Technology
 

Yes, the store signal was a High Definition signal.

I went back to the salesman and asked him to change channels to the
Dish Network feed, which he reluctantly did, and the picture was just
as bad and the one I was receiving at home. I should have asked him
to do that before I bought the TV, but I didn't realize there would be
that much difference.

So, I asked them to pick up the big heavy Hitachi 46" TV, and bought a
big heavy Philips 34" HDTV CRT direct view set.

The picture on the Philips was excellent, even with the Dish signal
and Direct TV signal. Almost as good as the HD picture on the
Hitachi.

So, I'm a little wary of buying another big screen TV until there is a
lot more HD satellite programming available.

Also, the OTA programming is great on the direct view TV.





On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 02:44:45 -0500, Gadgetguy [email protected]
wrote:

That beautiful picture in the store was probably broadcasted through an
HDTV receiver and not standard digital. It's also possible that they
were using either an HDMI cable (I doubt it) or at least, a component
video cable. You're not gonna see the wonder of true HDTV with standard
RCA cables!

Also, I'm not familiar with Dish satellite feed since I have Comcast
digital cable, but you're gonna need a true HD channel to be able to see
what an LCD TV can do, and you're not gonna see the beauty of HD 1080i
reception by just flipping the channels on your dish network, unless you
have an HD service on your Dish.