Play It Again Sams Latham Ny
Near MEN
ABOUT MEN; PLAY IT Over again, SAM, AND Once more AND AGAIN
See the commodity in its original context from
July 24, 1983
,
Section 6 , Page
30Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an sectional benefit for domicile delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times'southward print annal, before the starting time of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles every bit they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
MEN TODAY take more than toys than boys did when I was 1. For instance, there are now 6 meg Americans who own video cassette recorders; 25 million worldwide. On a mad impulse, I bought one three years ago. Since then, I've preserved more Crazy Eddie commercials, because they punctuated three A.One thousand. movies, than Perier has bubbles.
A VCR record son magnetic tape a programme from any station your television set up receives, at any 60 minutes, whether yous're dwelling or not or watching something else, and preserves it for later viewing. It doesn't make the programming whatsoever better; it merely makes all of it available. You tin too buy, for an boilerplate of $xl to $60 (sometimes higher, sometimes lower), hire and erstwhile movies, demonstrations of how to improve your golf swing or flatten your stomach. ("Jane Fonda'southward Workout" is one of the virtually popular cassettes, having sold about 150,000 copies, which puts information technology right up in that location with "Star Trek 2," the other best-seller.) Not to mention, to be totally forthright about it, what are called "adult movies." A man's abode is his Ten-rated castle.
Since a tape can exist reused (nobody seems to know for sure how many times), a single recording costs little. Tape prices vary wildly, simply $10 or so buys three to six hours worth. The brands are familiar - Fuji, TDK, Maxell, Sony and Scotch come up to listen - and their differences are subtle. Don't invest in a sensitive electronic instrument, though, and feed information technology plainly-wrapper junk dropped off the back of an unmarked van at midnight.
If you lot go along what y'all record, rather than reuse the tape, the price is higher, merely still less than a first-run movie ticket. The legality of doing this with copyrighted cloth is dubious, and the last conclusion is not in, but there is no chance that the gangbusters volition break into your apartment and seize your "Get out It to Beaver" hoard.
The great use of a recorder, in my opinion, is called "fourth dimension shift." You want to spend Friday night abusing your waistline at a new restaurant? So watch the Friday night movie on Sunday. Put otgether a "Masterpiece Theater" serial. Record a agglomeration of soaps during the weeik and accept your own mindless weekend anthology. On those monumental occasions when there are two things worth viewing at the same time, watch ane now and the other subsequently.
Past keeping an eye on the Boob tube schedules, you can accrue an impressive drove. Too impressive. Erase "Casablanca"? Wipe out "Brideshead Revisited"? Scrilege. Bookburning. The collecting instinct is not the species' most controllable, and presently you find yourself recording a Herbert Marshall, not because it's good, but because information technology's expert, but because it'south at that place, similar hinging in the terminal stamp on your album's Republic of mali page.
But these masterworks, unless they've been taped from PBS or pay-Television set showings, are cluttered with commercials. Would you treasure "Walden" if information technology were interrupted every few epigrams by offers for knives that never need sharpening? If yous lookout man the show while taping and keep an itchy trigger thumb on the pause push, you can cutting out the commercials, merely never actually cleanly, and the inconvenience destroys a large part of the rationale for buying the recorder. Editing them out afterward is not truly practical, involving two VCRs and other equipment. But all recorders have a fastspeed push button, and you can nix through the commercials. In fact, they're fun to see at a corybantic, early silentmovie pace.
Beta and VHS are the two major competing, incompatible systems. The VHS cassette is slightly larger and the tape runs a more complicated path; it also gives longer recording times, up to eight hours, as opposed to Beta's five. VHS is far more popular and there are more movies for auction or rent at more places in that format. Technicians seem to recollect Beta is sounder - it was the pioneer - simply information technology's hundred-to-one the residuum of us could tell any difference. Beta brands include Sony, Zenith, Sanyo and Toshiba. Some VHS labels are JVC, RCA, Panasonic and Quasar. Prices range from less than $500 to well over $ane,000, depending largely on such features as single-frame freezing, superfast frontward and more than flexible timers.
In that location are timers that will record several programs consecutively on unlike times on dissimilar days - a 14-day timer is widely available. If you can't behave to miss your regular shows while you're on vacation, you lot'll desire ane.
Equally is the example with color television sets, stereos and other objets de condition, there are common-sense precautions to have. Don't jam a VCR into a tiny chiffonier; information technology needs room to breath. Don't set up it up where information technology volition soak upwardly the sun, either. High humidity can make tapes sticky. If yous drop information technology, kick it or put the refrigerator on summit of information technology, it volition intermission. If it breaks, don't try to fix information technology yourself. Eventually, after hundreds of hours of use, the heads (the part that records or plays dorsum the magnetic signals on the tape) volition need cleaning. You tin can tell it'southward fourth dimension when it looks like the heads need cleaning. In that location are tapes designed to clean the heads, besides as kits with swabs and alcohol-based solutions. Ultimately, after more hundreds of hours of utilise, the heads themselves will have to exist replaced, an operation that could price half of what the motorcar cost in the first place. Since "ultimately" probably ways a couple of years, and a couple of years is an age in a irresolute engineering science, you lot may decide to buy a new machine instead.
There are also protable VCRs, with the record device packaged separately from the tuner and timer. If yous want to make dwelling house movies on tape, they are the only practical options. Merely there's no reason to pay for protability if the affair never leaves your den. Both VHS and Beta are improving their sound, ever the weakest link in video systems.
If y'all were the starting time kid on your lbock to own a $300 hand-held estimator - yous know, the kind yous tin can buy for $10 or so today - you might exist wary of sinking money into the country of an art that seems to alter monthly. Yet, there is no good reason, it seems to me, to await for an unspecified future improvement or breakthrough, when you lot encounter what today'south systems tin can do.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/24/magazine/about-men-play-it-again-sam-and-again-and-again.html
0 Response to "Play It Again Sams Latham Ny"
Post a Comment