Robber Baron craps out...
 

In article , Silk
scribeth thus
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:08:55 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

In article , Silk
scribeth thus
On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:37:16 +0000, Keith G wrote:

No I'm not - that shop is no worse than some of the other St Neots
shops I've had dealings with. They've had a captive (Fenland) market
for a century and they have grown fat exploiting the
ignorance/transportation difficulties of their clientele.

Every area has it's good and bad points. I'm sure the quality of life is
nice and tranquil in the Fens. Unfortunately, there's a price to pay for
living away from civilisation.

Pay up or move, I say.

St Neots isn't in the Fens!.

Suggest you get a map M8!......

It's near as damn it, old chap; same part of the world. My argument still
stands. If you live away from civilisation, you can't expect the same
advantages.

Shows hoe often you get out and about, and your ignorance of
geography!...
--
Tony Sayer

Robber Baron craps out...
 

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 12:28:43 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

Shows hoe often you get out and about, and your ignorance of
geography!...

I travel the UK more than most and have been to that part of the world on
several occasions. I know exactly what I'm talking about.

Robber Baron craps out...
 

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 10:23:55 +0000, Keith G wrote:

I still think you are Keira, but I'll address the point you are making -
you are suggesting the sales guy asks the customer if he is from 'out of
town' and hits him with a surcharge if the answer's 'yes' then?

No, I suggest, if he wants to stay in business, he charges what the
market will stand. It's up to the customer to decide how he wants to
spend his money.

Would expect a corner shopkeeper not to sell you a pint of milk because
it's cheaper in Tesco?

P.S. I don't know who "Kiera" is.

Robber Baron craps out...
 

In article , Silk
scribeth thus
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 12:28:43 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

Shows hoe often you get out and about, and your ignorance of
geography!...

I travel the UK more than most and have been to that part of the world on
several occasions. I know exactly what I'm talking about.

With due respect .. Hollyhocks..

Ever been to Wisbech?, theres a world of difference twixt there and
St Neots.

Or does life and civilisation end at Watford for you?..
--
Tony Sayer

Robber Baron craps out...
 

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 15:16:37 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

In article , Silk
scribeth thus
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 12:28:43 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

Shows hoe often you get out and about, and your ignorance of
geography!...

I travel the UK more than most and have been to that part of the world
on several occasions. I know exactly what I'm talking about.

With due respect .. Hollyhocks..

Ever been to Wisbech?, theres a world of difference twixt there and St
Neots.

Or does life and civilisation end at Watford for you?..

No, civilisation ends at Membury Services on the M4 - and that's going
Eastbound.

Robber Baron craps out...
 

In article , Silk
scribeth thus
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 15:16:37 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

In article , Silk
scribeth thus
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 12:28:43 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

Shows hoe often you get out and about, and your ignorance of
geography!...

I travel the UK more than most and have been to that part of the world
on several occasions. I know exactly what I'm talking about.

With due respect .. Hollyhocks..

Ever been to Wisbech?, theres a world of difference twixt there and St
Neots.

Or does life and civilisation end at Watford for you?..

No, civilisation ends at Membury Services on the M4 - and that's going
Eastbound.

;)...
--
Tony Sayer

Robber Baron craps out...
 

"Silk" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 10:23:55 +0000, Keith G wrote:

I still think you are Keira, but I'll address the point you are
making -
you are suggesting the sales guy asks the customer if he is from 'out
of
town' and hits him with a surcharge if the answer's 'yes' then?

No, I suggest, if he wants to stay in business, he charges what the
market will stand. It's up to the customer to decide how he wants to
spend his money.


Yep, but there was an element of trust involved with the neighbour I
mentioned - he simply didn't know that VCRs were/are worth bugger-all
nowadays and could be got for peanuts. The phrase is 'taking candy from
a baby' - it will bother some people (me) and not others (you)...



Would expect a corner shopkeeper not to sell you a pint of milk
because
it's cheaper in Tesco?


I don't see how that relates. Nobody (including my neighbour) expects a
corner shop to match one of the biggest retailers in the country on
prices; but that said, the only shop I really ever go in is a 'Paki'
convenience shop and I don't think it's particularly expensive for the
odd bits of emergency topup I buy possibly once or twice a year -
usually when Swim's away on biz.



P.S. I don't know who "Kiera" is.


Don't worry about it...

Robber Baron craps out...
 

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:32:48 +0000, Keith G wrote:

Yep, but there was an element of trust involved with the neighbour I
mentioned - he simply didn't know that VCRs were/are worth bugger-all
nowadays and could be got for peanuts.

It's not the job of the retailer to wet-nurse its customers.

The phrase is 'taking candy from
a baby' - it will bother some people (me) and not others (you)...

No one is "taking" anything. A fair price was agreed for the work
beforehand. Maybe you should have a word with the pensioner's family and
suggest he be put into a home or just not allowed out on his own, if it's
that much of a concern to you.

Robber Baron craps out...
 

Thatcher's Child "Silk" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:32:48 +0000, Keith G wrote:

Yep, but there was an element of trust involved with the neighbour I
mentioned - he simply didn't know that VCRs were/are worth bugger-all
nowadays and could be got for peanuts.

It's not the job of the retailer to wet-nurse its customers.


When does retailer 'backup and service' suddenly become 'wet
nursing'....??



The phrase is 'taking candy from
a baby' - it will bother some people (me) and not others (you)...

No one is "taking" anything. A fair price was agreed for the work
beforehand.


Nope. That's where we disagree....


Maybe you should have a word with the pensioner's family and
suggest he be put into a home or just not allowed out on his own, if
it's
that much of a concern to you.


Definitely a Thatcher's Child....

Robber Baron craps out...
 

In article , Signal
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:


Goodbye Philips.

Philips can put out some seemingly good products, but in my experience,
far too many have quirks, glitches, reliability problems. The manuals
are great though!

The manual for their DVDR3380 is awful. As is the recorder. However, that
for the DVDR70 was good.

My DVDR75 crapped out two years ago, thanks to those nice folk at Richer
Sounds I got a Panasonic replacement with bonus hard drive. Never looked
back. Now I would agree the Philips could produce a good picture, but it
suffered the 'chroma bug' error via RBG SCART. You can particularly spot
this on the BBC3 screen with the cartoon characters when they are off
air. I would expect yours to be the same, which if I recall correctly,
was the DVDR70?

Yes. It was. But like your '75 it is now replaced due it failing.

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...ug-4-2001.html

I can't say that I've ever specifically noticed the above 'bug'. But this
may be because I am used to similar 'comb' effects from interlaced TV, so
would have put it down to that.

TBH I find other effects on video more annoying. e.g being badly done
'PAL'/'NTSC' conversions which 'jerk' regularly a few times as second as
frames are dropped or repeated. Truly awful example of this being the
recent BBC Music Magazine cover disc which was a DVD of a Prom. For heaven
knows what reason they'd taken the UK/'PAL' original and converted it into
'NTSC' by the crude method of allowing the frames to be used until a full
frame out of synch, then doubling to bring them back into step. Made
watching fingering of soloists and the bow movements of violins absurd to
watch.

FWIW I also find the lower resolution of 'NTSC' annoying, and wish the
makers of European material would use 'PAL rather than perstently assuming
'NTSC' for region-0 or region-free concerts of serious music.

Above said, my eyesight isn't very good, and the vision artefacts matter
less to me that the sound quality. Most of my interest in DVD is for
musical items.


Jim I wanted to ask you about your PL1 TV.. I recently got a PS1
(practically identical) and wonder how you like(d) yours in the long
term? This telly has super rich colours, excellent sharpness and detail,
geometrically it's pretty sound.. but there's some convergence weirdness
which very occasionally crops up on very slow horizontal pans. Also
there's a bit of black crushing. Shame really, cos it's a cracking TV in
every other respect. Also do you have any experience with the service
menu?


I have been quite happy with the Panasonic. I did alter the contrast and
brightness a lot as it did start out very dark with excessive contrast. Is
this what you mean by "black crush"? That sounds like a fair description
of the result until adjusted.

Yes, I used the service menu, so if you need it I can dig out my copy of
some notes on how to access/use that and let you have a copy. But IIRC I
mainly used it to remove the overscan. So far as I recall, there was
nothing like a 'gamma' adjustment, but there may be a black level
adjustment, etc. Can't recall.

FWIW I continue to prefer the CRT and have avoided any 'pixel based'
displays. I've encountered too many people with problems due to things
like vision-sound lipsynch caused by long display delays, and I tend to
find the individual pixels too obvious, giving an effect which seems nasty
to my eyes. I tend to feel that such displays suffer from the absence of
any proper post-reconstruction filtering from the 'samples' of having a
rectangular pixel array. CRT helps to smooth over this.

My main gripes about the Panasonic as a display are that the image size
ands shape tend to alter dynamically with the image brightness pattern,
and that my model only have one RGB SCART. But the image pumping isn't
distracting in use, and I just use a scart switchbox. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html