TechTat

Video Wars: Betamax

2012-01-15T04:38:23Z

There are few technological flops as memorable as Betamax. As notorious as the format was, I didn’t manage to pick up a Beta unit until about two years ago, and it ended up being broken anyway. For some reason, Beta holds a strange but prominent place in my collection of antiquated tech. All of the players I have seem to be subject to at least one flaw, all of the tapes I have are degraded, but there is some underlying charm that keeps me coming back.

Betamax was a video format released by Sony in 1975 based off of their previous format, U-Matic. Though it came out two years before VHS, Betamax did not end up anywhere near as popular. The video format wars ended with VHS being the victor, but why? Betamax had a head start, slightly higher video quality, and was backed by the Sony brand. What could go so very wrong? Betamax ended up crumbling due to a variety of seemingly small issues that became a major deterrent when combined. As I stated in the last article of this series, Sony kept the Betamax technology to itself while VHS was licensed off to seemingly any company that wanted it. While Beta was a superior format, consumers didn’t want the expensive product controlled by Sony, but something affordable from one of countless VHS manufacturers. Going off of their U-Matic design, Sony originally made the recording time of tapes a short 60 minutes. VHS initially came out with 120 minute recording time, giving more time for your blank tape and meaning you didn’t have to buy as many. While Sony would later market players with a slower recording speed (B-II) allowing 120 minutes per tape, this reduced picture quality and soon after VHS offered an HQ mode allowing for even higher quality at the same recording speed.

As years went by, Sony tried to regain their footing by enhancing the Beta format. In 1983, Hi-Fi units hit the shelves, offering high fidelity audio recording to consumers and professionals alike. In 1985 SuperBeta was released, offering higher resolution video and increased quality. Though both of these technological innovations predate their counterparts in VHS units, VHS already had the market share needed to succeed. It was too little too late. Sony would eventually make a move admitting defeat in 1988 when they started manufacturing VHS VCRs. Though they still claimed to be backing Betamax, marketing their competitor’s format was a mixed message to some and a final nail in the coffin to others.

Betamax continued to be manufactured well through the 1990′s, and the last Betamax player made by Sony was produced in 2002. New blank tapes are still being produced, and the format continues to be used by small circles of hobbyists and professionals. While Betamax might not have been the smash hit it could have been, it wasn’t all for naught. Betamax became subject to a lawsuit in 1984 regarding the legality of home videotaping, and this case was later cited in 2005 in a peer-to-peer software suit which ultimately agreed with the the decades earlier ruling of non-infringing uses of technology. Sony also learned from their mistakes from the Beta years when creating and marketing their Blu-ray format, which is now an industry standard. Without Betamax, many of the technological advancements of today may never have been fathomed. Even though Betamax can be equated to nothing more than a jogged memory, it had an interesting lifetime that should be rewound and re-watched.

Video Wars: VHS

2012-01-29T04:58:22Z

Unless you’re relatively young, you probably remember VHS. Even if you are so young to never have used the format, odds are you’ve seen tapes appear in film, or have seen a VCR or two for sale at a thrift store. VHS tapes were the standard for how you saw recorded media. Whether you’re watching reruns of television shows, movies, music videos, or instructional videos, VHS was used for everything and lived in the homes of countless people.

VHS tapes first rolled out in the 1970′s by JVC, and were a major pillar in the video format wars of the time. The concept of movies you could watch in your home was a relatively new idea, and VHS caught on as a standard format that would go relatively unrivaled for decades. But why did VHS take off while so many other choices were available? From a technological standpoint, a VHS tape was actually pretty low on the totem pole when compared to other formats: the video quality was sub-par. However, the recording aspects of VHS were where the format took on a large following. VHS tapes were able to record video, which is a big step compared to other formats which only let you watch prepackaged films. On top of that, VHS has a standard play recording speed of two hours, allowing you to record two hours worth of anything to single tape which was a step up from other formats of the era. Why would this make a difference? Considering the high price of blank tapes, it’s easy to understand that getting more out of a tape means more bang for your buck. When you also consider that movies are played on television over two hour blocks, this only makes VHS more preferable.

The success of VHS can also be owed to how the technology was licensed. While Sony kept their Betamax technology to themselves, JVC offered VHS licensing to nearly every company that requested it. This helped the consumers who had developed a brand loyalty, and also created a more competitive marketplace which kept prices for both tapes and players going down. VHS continued to thrive for decades and was even improved upon with longer recording modes and high fidelity audio. Later, VHS would be adapted to other formats such as VHS-C (compact) for camcorders, D-VHS (digital) for high definition recordings, and S-VHS (super) used for higher resolution picture and professional use.

While VHS is now considered a forgotten technology, being surpassed by DVD and Blu-Ray, blank tapes are still being produced to this day, along with a handful of independent films. If you don’t have a VCR anymore, get one before it’s too late. Sure, it’s nice having crystal-clear video and sound, but there is something about VHS that gives you a warm feeling… and fuzzy picture.

Vidicraft Guard Stabilizer

2011-09-21T15:07:46Z

If you were a movie fan in the 1980′s you probably had a VCR; whether it was ßetamax or VHS doesn’t matter too much for the purpose of this article. If you happened to live back in those days, you may be able to recall the prices of tapes were incredible. Prices were around $60 and even higher for the more “underground” titles. So video rental stores launched, allowing for people to check out tapes for low prices without making that $60 commitment.

So where am I going with this? If you have ever rented tapes, you might remember the occasional dud. Flickering picture, lines of static, and a ripped image come to mind. Back inn 1985, Vidicraft released the Video Guard Stabilizer. They were most likely not the first company to produce a video stabilizer, but they are one of the better-known of all those that have faded away over the years. The Video Guard Stabilizer sits between your VCR and television (or another VCR if you happen to be making a duplicate) and cleans up the video signal you see on the screen. Your tape may be mangled all sorts of ways, but the stabilizer strips down the video signal from the VCR and reassembles it clearly.

So the Stabilizer does in fact stabilize the video, but what is this guard nonsense? Back before it was called “copy protection,” many people would refer to their videos as being “guarded” when attempting to duplicate commercial tapes. Analog copy protection came around in 1984, and though not every commercial release from then on was copy protected, many of the more popular ones were. Now, if you have ever attempted to duplicate a copy protected tape, you might notice that it makes the picture brightness flash and change violently. This is because of a hidden signal stored on the tape in the same area closed captions are. When the signal is recorded, it causes the duplicating VCR to freak out because it changes the brightness of the picture randomly, and the VCR tries to compensate (which it can’t). Televisions don’t have this circuitry, which is why copy protected tapes play fine on them. Video stabilizers have a nice little side effect of blanking the fields that subtitles reside in when reworking the signal, which means the copy protection is also blanked out and eliminated.

Not only did you get a handy gizmo to make your worst tapes play like new but you also got something to make copies of any tape, protected or not. These days, you might think that video stabilizers are a thing of the past, but they do have useful applications. Want to make a DVD recording of a VHS tape that never made it to DVD commercially? A stabilizer will help you out. Maybe you have some family films you want to back up on to your computer? Some capture cards think that home tapes are copy protected because of their sometimes messy signal. A video stabilizer can be just what you need to complete the captures. I picked up mine a few months ago for $15, and it has been a great device for stubborn tapes that need transferring. If you have a stack of tapes kicking around your house that need to be brought into the 21st century, it’s well worth the investment.

Hewlett Packard Jornada 728 Handheld PC

2011-09-21T01:35:42Z

Now, if you’ve seen my Psion Series 3a article and you actually lusted after such machines, you might well have salivated enough over this beast to drown a small elephant. If you’ve never seen one before, I’ll run through a few of its vitals…

It’s an HP Jornada 728, born in the year 2002 AD, and at $1000 a pop brand new they were certainly among the very cream of the crop, being the top dog among the other Jornadas, which replaced the earlier LX series of MSDOS handhelds from HP.

Like the Psion, it’s a clamshell style device, but it’s considerably more modern in both form and function. One immediately obvious difference is the ludicrously wide (8:3!) resistive touchscreen LCD dominating the top half of the open device, containing within it 640×240 16-bit colour pixels. The keyboard features proper laptop-style keys, albeit quite small ones, that are quite pleasant to type on. If typing isn’t so much your thing, you can scribble on the screen with its stylus if you prefer, which works reasonably well but for the keyboard being exactly where your wrist wants to be. It should keep you computing for most of a day, the 1150mAh lithium ion stick attached to its backside should last about 8 hours or so of actual use, depending on what you’re doing with it. Don’t forget to keep a fresh coin cell in the backup battery recepticle too, otherwise anything you didn’t copy to CompactFlash will mysteriously vanish as your Jornada gets a bit forgetful.

It’s no slouch when it comes to the guts though, packing a 206MHz Intel StrongARM CPU with 64MB RAM to back it up (I’ve had desktop PCs with less sack), along with a 32MB ROM to hold the CE-based Microsoft Windows Handheld PC 2000 operating system. Expansion options galore adorn the case, from the 16-bit Type II PC Card and smartcard slots in the left hand side to the Type I CompactFlash door hiding away in the bottom that’ll happily hold cards up to a solid 32GB. For those connected types there’s a 56k modem in there too so you can dial up on the move just as long as you’re near a phone line. If that’s not good enough, you can shove a wifi, bluetooth or GSM/EDGE card in the PC Card hole and get your wireless on either by tethering to something else which has a connection or dialling directly into the mobile airwaves. Oh, and there’s a serial port on the back too, along with a 115k IrDA infrared port. To sync the thing, you’ll probably want to drop it in its docking station, which connects to your PC via a USB cable and talks ActiveSync, so it won’t work on modern Windows versions. Long live Windows 2000!

So what does this thing do? Well, it’s got all sorts of neat stuff, not least a full and functioning copy of Microsoft Office which allows you to create and edit all your favourite document types. That’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook. That’s gotta be worth something on its own, right? No? Well then, it’s got a voice recorder, you can play games on it, you can browse the web with Internet Explorer, play music with Media Player and watch videos too, you can do pretty much anything with it really, but you might want to stock up on applications first. Windows CE has a huge catalogue of 3rd party applications, it’s almost difficult to not find what you need. Well, unless you need something modern, that is. If, like many, you’re allergic to Windows CE and its stretch-named derivatives, you can quite simply install Linux on this thing if you have a spare CompactFlash card to stuff it on. Linux for the Jornada comes in the form of jLime and Debian, among a couple of others, and while I’ve not yet had a chance to test it, it looks decent enough. I imagine it would pair quite nicely with a 3G card. What’s not to like about an always-connected “pocket sized” Linux terminal?

So what’s the score, is it any good? Well, it’s not any bad, let’s put it that way. It pales a bit compared to what even a low end smartphone is capable of these days, but it does have the strength of having a pretty tip-top keyboard. It’s a bit chunky to be honest, you need big pockets, and even then you’re going to look a bit stupid. It puts my Asus eeepc netbook to shame when it comes to battery life, it’s got a battery pack the size of a couple of AA batteries and yet it lasts almost 3 times as long. I cannot tell a lie nor omit a truth, I only really bought one because I always wanted one as a kid. As I was dragged mercilessly around the electronics shop under the command of one or more parents looking for some dull appliance or other, I would catch a brief glimpse of these babies sitting in what might as well have been called the “you can’t afford this stuff” section. Well, now I can, so take that, nyeh.

£60/$90

Commodore 64

2011-09-21T01:23:53Z

The Commodore 64: the legendary personal computer from the 1980′s. This beast had a 1.023 MHz processor in the NTSC model (0.985 MHz on the PAL model), and a whopping 64 kB ram. To go along with all this “processing power,” Commodore gave it the graphics chip from the VIC-II and the SID 6581 chip for running audio. With two gaming ports on the side for game pads and joysticks, you could easily play multi-player games with your friends. This was one of the first personal computers to have games that you could play with more than one person. Commodore created a piece of history when they built this.

At it’s release in 1982, the Commodore 64 was priced at the amazingly low price of $595 compared to the Apple II’s price of $1200+, and the Atari 800′s price of $899. They won the marketing war of 1982 with not only the low price, but features like 64 kB RAM compared to the Apple II’s 48 kB RAM and the Atari 800′s 4 kB RAM. The individual C64 units were only made with a production cost of $135 which made Commodore very rich.

The Commodore BASIC 2.0 operating system used assembly and a built in BASIC interpreter to run applications and games. Commodore got BASIC licensed from Microsoft for a one time fee of $25,000 even though Bill Gates originally wanted $3 per unit sold, which would have put Commodore out of business because it would have cost them $1.2 million per month from one factory alone. The Commodore BASIC 2.0 operating system was also used on the VIC-20 and the PET 2001. Later versions of Commodore BASIC were run on the Commodore 128 the CBM-II Series, and the Commodore Plus.

I purchased this Commodore 64 on eBay a little over a year ago, and I have not put it to much use since. It came in the original box, which was well used, the power cord, and the RF TV switcher for switching between the Commodore and the television antenna. I paid $30 for this unit, which was a very good price for this unit because they were $595 brand new, and I have seen similar Commodore 64′s for well over $60. I was looking into one of these for a long time because I had always thought that they were cool and I wanted to have a piece of history.

$30/£20

Commodore 1702 Monitor

2011-09-04T22:41:56Z

Most people have heard of Commodore. This company was responsible for some of our favorite 1980′s computers such as the C64, VIC-20, and all the members of the Amiga family. Commodore also made it’s own accessories. There were joysticks, floppy drives, tape drives, printers, and even monitors. Now remember, back at this time, personal computers were clumped a bit with game consoles. You would hook them up to the family television set, which meant that everyone would be out of luck while one person would fool around with the home computer for hours on end. Having a dedicated monitor allowed for both a happy computer nut, and a happy family.

Of all the monitors for all the early home computers, the Commodore 1702 is arguably the most popular; even compared to others outside of the Commodore family. But what makes these monitors so good? Why are they still so sought after by collectors and videophiles alike? It all comes down to quality. Many say that the picture produced from a 1702 is on par with professional video monitors. The 1702 has even found a home in video production outfits as well as television stations because of the high quality display (at a lower price than pro gear).

The 1702 featured composite video and mono audio inputs on the front, and Y/C video and mono audio inputs on the back. There is a switch to flip back and forth between the two. If Y/C sounds a bit odd to you, it is just another way of saying video inputs for chroma (color) and luma (light) video. If that still sounds a bit off to you, have you ever heard of S-Video? JVC popularized S-Video in the early 90′s as a higher quality video standard when compared to composite. However, Commodore included this on its monitors years before it became mainstream (using two RCA ports as opposed to the standard S-Video port) and you can even wire up a simple cable that will allow you to use your S-Video devices on your 1702.

Something else I have to mention is build quality. Not only do these monitors look sleek, but they are also almost indestructible. I’ve seen some in pretty bad shape, picked them up in all kinds of condition, and they still function perfectly. The lifespan is also something to brag about. Most of these monitors are over 25 years old, and still keep firing up same as always.

Why would you want a 1702 these days anyway? Aside from the computer collector market, many others still enjoy the 1702 monitor. Many retro gamers flock to it because of the picture quality as well as the rounded tube which makes it light-gun friendly when compared to today’s flat screens. Those who use high-end video equipment also look to the 1702 as a monitor with proven display quality and compatibility. Others may just like the look of it (you have to admit it has a nice vibe) or keep it around as a spare display for a VCR or something to throw on the work bench in the basement.

As I mentioned before, I own a Commodore 1702. In fact, as of this writing, I own four of them and don’t plan on departing with them anytime soon. They have served me well in a variety of ways. They make great monitors for video cameras, good gaming displays, and I hope to deploy them again in a video production rig. I’ve found mine all over the place: yard sales, flea markets, on the roadside, you name it. Most people are just trying to get rid of them and price them out for a dollar or two or end up dumping them at a thrift store. If you are lucky enough to stumble upon one, give it a chance. You might be surprised by what you end up getting.

Psion Series 3a Personal Organiser

2011-09-21T01:17:47Z

Remember those terrible little digital personal organisers you recieved as gifts in the 90s? You know, the ones that had the memory capacity of a goldfish and less functions than your average digital watch? Had your friends and family opened their wallets and purses a little wider, you may well have been the happy recipient of a much higher calibre machine, such as a Series 3 from British organiser maker Psion. Much like this one, in fact, a classic Psion Series 3a from 1993 running the EPOC operating system in its 16bit guise, the granddaddy of the modern day Symbian OS present in many of last decade’s smartphones. This particular example is sporting a NEC V30H CPU running at a blistering 7.68 MHz (i8086/partially i80186 compatible), an entire megabyte of ROM and a spaceous 5″-ish LCD packing 480×160 pixels. Capable of being a phone/address book, calendar, world clock and alarm, word processor, calculator and spreadsheet at a moment’s notice, it’s also a voice recorder. Oh yeah, and it has its own programming language built in, Psion’s Organiser Programming Language, which is a bit like BASIC. Certainly beats my old Casio calculator watch.

At this point I would ask you to forgive any mis-typing I do, because as much as it looks like this machine has a touchscreen like its more powerful and younger brothers, it doesn’t, but some part of me doesn’t seem to be able to grasp that fact and so I keep jabbing the LCD, my fingers are unappreciative. Instead of a touchscreen, though, it has a pretty decent QWERTY keyboard. Being so small, it’s quite easy to fat-finger it if you’re not used to it, but it doesn’t take too much getting used to if you use it often enough. Mine’s a little bit squidgy, but I’m willing to put some of that down to the fact that it’s about 2 years short of a couple of decades old. That strip below the screen allows you to jump directly to a particular application by prodding the appropriate icon, though it provides no tactile feedback when you do so, it’s quite hard to do it by accident. The screen isn’t half bad, indoors at least, I’ve yet to try and use it outside but when it’s not in direct sunlight it has very good clarity and contrast. The display resolution is decent enough, pretty reasonable for its age. All in all I think it’s quite sufficient.

Naturally you’ll need some storage to put all the files you’ve thunked out on your pocket miracle, and predictably this device has some. There’s 512KB of RAM built in, 357KB of which is currently free and automatically assigned to a RAM disk (drive I, so says the PDA) where you can save your files. Now, the more alert among you might note that the aforementioned storage is RAM and that there is a fatal flaw to this storage method. No power, no data, your handy pocket pal suddenly contracts RAMnesia and you didn’t write down that important speech you just killed the batteries writing. A common flaw with many PDAs of the time, actually, but there is a coin cell installed to power the memory so if the main batteries do die then you’re not immediately up the creek without a luggable. If you prefer something a little less precarious though there are two expansion slots, one on either end, in which you can install memory cartridges. There are two types of memory cartridges, one of which is similar to the internal memory and requires another coin cell to retain its contents but the other is flash based and does not, though it does require periodic formatting because deleted and old copies of revised files continue to use space on the card even though you can no longer access them. Another optional extra was a 3.5″ floppy disk drive capable of using regular 720KB/1.44MB floppy disks but the drive was larger than the PDA itself, hampering portability somewhat. As I mentioned batteries just now, I should point out that besides the coin cell present for data retention, the main power comes from a pair of easily replaceable AA batteries, and a fresh pair will get you somewhere in the region of 20-30 hours of runtime.

Importantly, the software, little use is the lump of plastic without. The OS and included applications are remarkably responsive, doing exactly what you say, when you say. I’ve never seen this thing hang, freeze, get confused, refuse to boot, turn off unexpectedly or otherwise misbehave, it’s solid as a rock encased in concrete dusted with diamond powder. There’s a menu system throughout, accessible via the Menu key, which pops up at the top of the screen and can be navigated using the arrow keys, it also lists shortcut keys which can be used without accessing the menu first, usually consisting of the Psion key and an alphanumeric key. The home screen has scrollable application icons lined up for your perusal and bringing up the menu system here allows you to install or remove applications, work with storage devices and files residing upon them, you can format, copy, perform complete backups, etc. Other menus allow you to check disk, memory and battery stats, owner information and general OS/application information, connect to printers and modems and work with passwords. There are third party and homebrew apps but I currently have no way to install them since I’m missing the serial cable required to sync data to and from the 3a, also available are data cards that install in the memory card slots with read-only applications on them but I don’t have any of those either. If for some crazy reason you’d prefer to run a subset of Linux on a Series 3 over the ROM-based EPOC, you can do that too. It’s not the full Linux experience because the CPU simply isn’t capable of running it, but a cut down version has been ported and is available free.

I do plan to keep this little beast, it’s not the most useful device I own, but being a key player in the development of digital personal organisers in the latter part of the last century I feel that Psion more than deserve to be remembered, so in the collection of PDAs I plan to build the 3a has earnt its place. You might hear more about that collection as time progresses, if that’s your thing, stay tuned.

£2/$3

Helix HX-4635 Boombox

2011-08-26T01:52:21Z

Ah, the Helix HX-4635 (Also known as the Conion C-100FL and Clairitone 7980 ). Talk about your classic ghetto blaster! This beast was released to the public in 1984, and holds a spot as one of the most iconic boomboxes of the age. Featuring large speakers, dual cassette decks, and all of your favorite radio bands (it even has shortwave!) the 4635 was not your average K-Mart radio. The blue button on the upper right hand corner may look out of place. Why are there two buttons anyway? This is exactly what they want you to think. The blue button actually enables a burglar alarm! I kid you not, if you get too close to the boombox when it is active, it emits loud shrieks similar to an alarm you might have on your car. In a way, this boombox is also “future proof.” The back side features dual RCA inputs, so you can hook up your favorite MP3 player if you really wanted. There is also a toggle switch for PHONO, so you could even plug in a turntable if you desired. Audio outputs on the front have your standard headphone label, as well as a monitor jack if you and your buddies are making some music.

I found this bad boy at a flea market in New Jersey for $20. Best purchase I’ve found in a long time. Typically, these boomboxes are found in various states of disarray. Usually missing antennas, tape deck doors, or the storage drawer (there is a little bit of plastic on the bottom that holds 2 cassette tapes), a full unit is a dream for most people that find them. Also, one last bit to mention… this thing is loud. The volume knob goes up to 100, and I find 20 a bit loud for most activities. All in all, a nice piece to take out on a summer day, and turn a few heads.