i was right .. well .. halfway anyway ..

[frenchy]

back in the late 70's they invented the vcr for the everyday man .. not just corporations and government institutions that were weary of usin 8mm projectors to make their point.. and the whole evolution of the idea has taken quite a twist along with quite a few turns to get to where we are today .. and it almost didn't happen .. its seems that the original inventors of video tape had a problem .. they were old school boys and they had a great idea of bein able to put visuals as well as sound on tape .. problem was everything they knew involved tubes .. and tubes got hot and took up a lot of room .. so they knew it was time to figure out how to shrink things down and the way to do that was with .. transistors.. which of course they knew nothin about .. so they put an add in the paper for anyone with experience with transistors and guess who answered it ?? the president of the sony corp. .. he just happened to be in n.y. that day .. wanna talk about fate ?? and he sat down with the engineers of the then known vtr machine and they struck up a deal .. sony would help them shrink down the size of the vtr and agree not to compete in the corporate world and they would agree not to compete with sony in the consumer market .. its been awhile since i read the book but i believe the corp they made the deal with was ampex .. and ampex laughesd so hard after the meetin thinkin who in the world would wanna buy a vtr and park it in their livin room let alone even be able to afford one .. they thought they got the best end of that deal ..

skip ahead 10 years or so and while the first vtr ( which eventually became known as vcr's ) were boat anchors they were a far cry from the size of your kitchen counter .. and they were quite attractive to consumers who loved gadgets and had a little extra money to spend .. sure ampex sold their machines to airports and hospitals and universities . but sony marketed theirs to the everyday guy who was tired of bein at tv's beck and call and wanted to do more than just be stuck with whatever they were handed .. and close to the same time in some markets cable tv was just startin to happen .. and then a few years later video stores popped up all over the place ..  

i saw all this happenin and knew then it was the future .. you see we are livin in a time where technology is very fluid if you get my drift .. so many new things and so many ways to get your attention that simply didn't exist 35 years ago .. and 25 years ago .. and 15 years ago .. and even 10 years ago .. 

this one might be a little long so i'll break it down to 2 parts ..

[frenchy]

so the video store is where i came in .. i thought it was a great idea before they even had them back in the late 70's but at the time i didn't have enough money to start one up myself .. yet .. but eventually i did and i did ok with it at first .. i don't mean to brag but i went from havin the smallest store in town to the biggest store in town in less than 2 years .. my store was the size of a blockbuster and probably did as much money as they did ..and none of this included what i made on the photo end of my business . ( i also had a 60 minute photo and a portrait studio and i had my own custom darkroom where i did enlargements up to 16x20 .. there wasn't a lotta call for 16x20's  tho.. thats a really big print .. but the 8x10's and 11x14's kept me pretty busy along with the 5x7's and 6x8's .. but the photo was also a business that when digital came around it was killed off deader than shit .. anybody remember kodak ?? where are they now ?? who woulda thought they'd go tits up some day huh ? ) but on a friday and saturday nite i was jammin in there ..rentin tapes like it was goin outta style .. til it finally did .. i was the first one in town to have a computer and then 2 computers networked together cause one wasn't enough to handle the traffic on a weekend .. it was assholes to elbows in there .. and i made it a point to keep it as friendly as i could .. our motto was we were the friendliest place in town and we tried to live up to it everyday .. but as i said technology is so much more fluid in todays world then it ever was  even 35 years ago .. today we're movn ahead so fast we're bound to hit some speed bumps on the way .. and video stores were one of the first big bumps .. along with 60 minute photo's .. 

i should have seen it when it first happened but you know when you're in the thick of it all you can't always see the forest from the trees .. the first major blow or should i say change came in the form a little tiny disc.. no not the dvd .. that came later .. the disk i mean is the satelite dish .. you see up to then if you wanted to see somethin other than what was on regular tv you had only 2 choices.. cable .. or your local video store .. and there were lottsa people who didn't have any cable access in their area cause it cost too much to run the wires all the way out to bfe .. so that left me .. and only me .. till satelite tv was born .. that was a major game changer .. it was only a ripple at first but most trends start as just a ripple .. and then get a lot bigger .. well before you know it i had not only cable to contend with i had satelite too .. and then of course came pay per view .. cause cable and satelite were so far behind me it wasn't even a contest .. i bought a house on a canal in the cape ( don't ask me why cause i never had any time to actually enjoy it ) and it came with a satelite dish.. not one of them little winky dishes cause they weren't invented yet ,but one of them 12 foot wide dishes that could get i love lucy on the moon .. and it almost became a real stickin point of the whole sale cause the guy had invested thousands in this dish and i told him i didn't want it and he tried like hell to give me his best sales pitch as to why i should want it .. and i finally told him .. look if i was anybody else what you're sayin might make me reconsider but i own a video store and there ain't nothin you're gonna get on this dish that i won't get at least a year before you .. this was back in 92 .. so because the thing was such a monster to move the guy just left it there and the deal went thru .. but it was one of them ahh ha moments as to the vunerability of the whole technology thing and how at one point its such a hot commodity and then .. poof .. who shives a git ?? .. that big dish just sat in my back for about 12 years and we never used it .. i hooked it up once and i think we got the sci fy network and that was it .. we never bothered with it again ..i gave the house to my ex in 98 and i think the dish fell down durin hurricaine charley  in 2004..

then next came the dvd's and pay per view had almost caught up to me and was only 30 days and sometimes they were even steven with me on release dates .. which of course only made me order less of those particular titles but in the end i knew it was commin so i sold out when i still could .. gave the ex the nice house and i bought the little shitbox i live in now .. don't get me wrong tho .. i love this little shitbox and don't regret it one bit ..

so now i'm just a regular consumer like everybody else and i'm watchin the trends tryin to figure out where its all gonna end up .. ( you mighta thought i had no point .. but i do ) and this is it .. the future of home entertainment as i see it is .. not in cable .. or satelite .. but in streaming .. over the internet is where its gonna go .. just the other day they took a poll and the the numbers might surprise you .. how many people get to see the newer movies in the theatre ?? i think that number was like 12% .. at home it was 84% .. now i'm sure that some who were watchin at home might have used their phones and streamed that way and perhaps that other 4 % watched on the go perhaps back and forth to work on the train or the bus with their i phone ..but the major majority watched at home .. now i'm sure that as of me typin this right now cable and satelite are way out front .. but them numbers are changin fast .. and cable and satelite will never keep the lead they have now .. their market will only shrink more and more each year .. they havent' thrown in the towel just yet just like a lot of video stores didn't either but the truth is weather they like it or not their goose is cooked .. why do i say that you ask ??

roku has a new channel thats just makin its debut called sling .. now to be honest i've cut the cord from cable and satelite close to 2 years ago .. i wasn't sure at first how i'd do cause i like to watch somethin interestin on tv as much as the next guy .. my days of goin out on a nice day and playin tackle basketball are pretty much over .. i have to find more sedentary ways to enjoy myself or up my insurance coverage and get a dr. to write me some scripts for some really good pain meds cause i ain't holdin together like i did when i was younger .. and the one thing that i was havin a heluva time gettin unless i paid thru the nose was basketball .. i'm not a sports fanatic but a good football game i can still get over the air .. but basketball was not so easy .. well sling is a new channel that costs 20 bucks a month and it has tbs and tnt and espn along with a few others .. and thats where the basketball is .. and .. hbo is gettin ready to launch a special hbo channel too that you can buy without havin to go thru comcast or dish or time warner .. its from them to you .. and you stream it  .. everybody is lookin at netflix and they see the writtin on the wall .. now i'm sure that hbo for the roku will probably be a bit more limited at first so as not to anger all the satelite and cable co's they've been in bed with for all these years .. but once they see how many will subscribe they will offer more and more .. till they won't care if the cable and satelite people like it or not .. at the moment this is not availble on the apple tv but the roku and the amazon have it .. and soon the smart tv's will too , along with blueray players and xboxes ..

so .. i was right .. if you give people a choice of where to see a movie 84% will say at home .. and with the advent of all the smart tv's and streamin players and huge tv's and sound systems it will only get better and better .. and who wants to be held hostage to whats on now ? as opposed to what do you want to see when you want to see it ??

i was right .. i was right all along .. i just got my platform wrong as to how to deliver the content to the home was concerned .. just a small technical error on my part .. if i only knew then what i know now .. lead follow or get out of the way but streamin is gonna be the dominant force in home entertainment in less than 10 years ..    

[blithe spirit]

I have Netflix and the streaming is much better than it was last year...they still need to work on the browsing features. I do have a smart TV and do some other streaming from a lot of PBS programming. I still have cable cause I have friends and family in and out of my house a lot and it's easier to use. The streaming thing needs to get more user friendly, but I'm sure in time it will. I ended up having to get different speakers for my smart TV ... The sound was crappy.I still have issues with some of the dialogue on some programs..oh well..I've had my hearing checked and it's not me.Some of it just sounds like mumbling...seems like commercials are clear...of course..and news is clear..lol.
But yeah...hindsight has always been 20/20 it seems..if only...I coulda been contender...another time, another life.

[frenchy]

well vickie its not you as far as your sound on your tv goes .. i have a samsung which is supposed to be one of the better ones and its the worst tv i ever owned when it comes to sound reproduction .. if you want it to sound better my best advice to you is to get a cheap surround system .. doesnt' really matter which brand .. any one will probably sound better than what came with your tv .. and it don't have to have mega watts .. if its 2 watts a channel it will sound better than whatever you have now .. i think the trend nowadays is to put really shitty speakers in your tv cause they figure you're probably gonna get some kinda surround system anyway .. them days of buyin a tv with a stereo console built in where it looks like a piece of furniture are way way gone .. if you want good sound you ain't ever gonna get it from the 40 inch flatscreen you just bought .. no way no how .. they don't leave any room in them things for speakers that are any bigger than than the head of a pin.. your hearin is probably fine .. trust me on this .. it ain't you ..

 

[ProblemAgain]

the echo comes from the minute delay between the existing tv speakers and the sound bar or external speakers. you have to have the existing tv speakers off to do away with the echo

[crestofwaves]

True about the sound system.  It really does help.

[blithe spirit]

I got a sound bar too Chief and it had an effect but really hasn't helped my issue...thinking I might go to the neighbors or my sisters and watch some of the programs and see if it's the TV or the programming.
I miss some of the dialogue during Downton Abby and House of Cards... it's about clarity and its only some of the actors. I have DVDs of the last three years of Downton and the sound and clarity are great but watching when the program is on or when I DVR it isn't always clear.
I do have to switch from the sound bar to the TV or I get an echo, but It's a quick fix and quite noticeable.

[frenchy]

i just have an old teac stereo receiver in my bedroom for my samsung flatscreen .. without that the sound is sooo bad its freakin unbearable .. in the livin room i have one of them big old sanyo 36 inch square tv's .. its a monster .. but it still works pretty good .. the rf cable hookup died years ago but the rest of the thing just won't quit ..the monster tv that won't die .. and i keep sayin when this one dies i'm goin for a 60 inch flatscreen mounted to the wall on a scissors mount that i can swivel more ways than a 22 year old yoga instructor .. namaste ... so i have everything runnin thru a splitter box with rca cables goin to a sherwood and a marantz stereo with surround .. the bedroom sounds pretty good ..as good as most peoples stereos or better . i don't think the amp pushes more than 50 watts a channel .. but thats a lotta power for your bedroom .. sometimes you can get carried away with that more power syndrome.. i had an old radio shack receiver that i thought put out 15 watts a channel and i came to find out that it was really 1.5 watts . and while it wasn't loud enough to blow you outta the room it was more than adequate for most situations .. so most of the smaller surround systems you can buy as a kit would probably be more than enough for most people ..  but the livin room sounds awesome .. and the thing about the livin room is i have the marantz setup just to drive the rear channels and i can set a delay for whatever milliseconds i want it to be .. and its that 30 millisecond delay that gives the whole thing its ambiance and depth ..maybe thats what them soundbars do automaticly and there's some kinda switch to either lengthen or shorten the delay ?? or some kinda onscreen menu you can use to drop the delay down ??  i don't know much about soundbars but they never looked like they would work all that well to me .. anybody know what they load them with ?? my old monster sanyo has decent sound for a stand alone tv ..i just measured the speakers and they're actually 2.5 x5 ..of course they're probably metric so thats not exact but close enough and it sounds passable .. i'd guess the thing puts out less than 2 watts a side but again don't let the watts fool you .. in the bedroom i can't even find the speakers on that samsung which is probably the case vicki and chief have too.. lemme see if i can dig anything up about them soundbars ..  

[crestofwaves]

I remember sitting in front of the Sylvania TV with the halo light around it. Then my father brought home a color TV, and I thought I died and went to heaven.

Yes, I love movies at home, but everyonceinawhile, I like to go to the movies as well--maybe once every couple of months.  I like the whole night out, eat popcorn, maybe go to eat as well.  And some movies call for the big screen.

 You know what show I love on TV--a guilty pleasure--Girls.  I am forty years older than they are, but I love the show.  It's more about life in NY than anything else.  I have lots and lots of favorites. When people say TV sucks, well, the reality shows are not my favorites, but TV certainly does not suck if you know what you are looking for.  For example: The Vikings--to me it is the best show ever that has been on TV.