"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
...

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Keith G wrote:
A few days ago he told me the local Robber Baron 'HiFi Shop had
quoted
him 50 quid to fix his (presumably ancient) VCR machine. I told him
to
tell them to get stuffed and gave him a perfectly tidy Panasonic DVD
Recorder I simply never use.

The shop has apparently phoned him since and said they could now fix
the
VCR for 29 quid!

****ing shysters...

I dunno. Just how much an hour has a shop got to charge to cover its
overheads? How long does it take just to open up a VCR to say replace
a
drive belt? How much longer to find an unspecified fault?

I'll make a start. To employ a half decent service engineer in the SE
of
England will cost you about 30 grand a year - before you add on NI
etc.
So a labour charge of at least 30 quid an hour is the minimum - most
will
charge rather more.

Think you're a bit out of date as regards earning a living, Keith.
;-)

**Not that I enjoy agreeing with Keith, I understand where he is
coming from. Let me explain:

As a service guy, I assess each job as it arrives. I offer two options
to my clients:

1) A rough guesstimate of the job, based on the description of the
fault and my experience with the particular piece of equipment. This
is free (I know - stupid me). I also advise the client I feel the job
is not worth proceeding with. A surprising number of people will after
request an item be serviced, even though it is not economical to do
so.
2) A full quote, which lists the parts required and the time taken to
do the job. For this, I charge AUS$55.00 UP FRONT. That cost is
deducted from the final cost. One of my mates in the business now
makes more money from quotes (which are not proceeded with) than he
does from actual repair work.

IMO, if the story related by Keith is factual,


Like it might not be?

Here, knock yourself out and phone them (Andrew is the service guy):

http://www.anaudio.co.uk/index.htm


If Nigel answers, do me a favour and avoid the word 'Shiny'....


then, IMO, the service guy
was morally wrong. Legally, probably not, however.

Let me also state, that fixing stuff is not the path to riches that it
once was. It is hard work and the rewards are not great.

Trevor Wilson

"Keith G" wrote in message
...

"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
...

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Keith G wrote:
A few days ago he told me the local Robber Baron 'HiFi Shop had quoted
him 50 quid to fix his (presumably ancient) VCR machine. I told him to
tell them to get stuffed and gave him a perfectly tidy Panasonic DVD
Recorder I simply never use.

The shop has apparently phoned him since and said they could now fix
the
VCR for 29 quid!

****ing shysters...

I dunno. Just how much an hour has a shop got to charge to cover its
overheads? How long does it take just to open up a VCR to say replace a
drive belt? How much longer to find an unspecified fault?

I'll make a start. To employ a half decent service engineer in the SE of
England will cost you about 30 grand a year - before you add on NI etc.
So a labour charge of at least 30 quid an hour is the minimum - most
will
charge rather more.

Think you're a bit out of date as regards earning a living, Keith. ;-)

**Not that I enjoy agreeing with Keith, I understand where he is coming
from. Let me explain:

As a service guy, I assess each job as it arrives. I offer two options to
my clients:

1) A rough guesstimate of the job, based on the description of the fault
and my experience with the particular piece of equipment. This is free (I
know - stupid me). I also advise the client I feel the job is not worth
proceeding with. A surprising number of people will after request an item
be serviced, even though it is not economical to do so.
2) A full quote, which lists the parts required and the time taken to do
the job. For this, I charge AUS$55.00 UP FRONT. That cost is deducted
from the final cost. One of my mates in the business now makes more money
from quotes (which are not proceeded with) than he does from actual
repair work.

IMO, if the story related by Keith is factual,


Like it might not be?

**IME, your story could be 100% on the money.

Trevor Wilson

"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
...

"Keith G" wrote in message
...

"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
...

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Keith G wrote:
A few days ago he told me the local Robber Baron 'HiFi Shop had
quoted
him 50 quid to fix his (presumably ancient) VCR machine. I told
him to
tell them to get stuffed and gave him a perfectly tidy Panasonic
DVD
Recorder I simply never use.

The shop has apparently phoned him since and said they could now
fix the
VCR for 29 quid!

****ing shysters...

I dunno. Just how much an hour has a shop got to charge to cover
its
overheads? How long does it take just to open up a VCR to say
replace a
drive belt? How much longer to find an unspecified fault?

I'll make a start. To employ a half decent service engineer in the
SE of
England will cost you about 30 grand a year - before you add on NI
etc.
So a labour charge of at least 30 quid an hour is the minimum -
most will
charge rather more.

Think you're a bit out of date as regards earning a living, Keith.
;-)

**Not that I enjoy agreeing with Keith, I understand where he is
coming from. Let me explain:

As a service guy, I assess each job as it arrives. I offer two
options to my clients:

1) A rough guesstimate of the job, based on the description of the
fault and my experience with the particular piece of equipment. This
is free (I know - stupid me). I also advise the client I feel the
job is not worth proceeding with. A surprising number of people will
after request an item be serviced, even though it is not economical
to do so.
2) A full quote, which lists the parts required and the time taken
to do the job. For this, I charge AUS$55.00 UP FRONT. That cost is
deducted from the final cost. One of my mates in the business now
makes more money from quotes (which are not proceeded with) than he
does from actual repair work.

IMO, if the story related by Keith is factual,


Like it might not be?

**IME, your story could be 100% on the money.


Damn right it's 100% on the money - difficult it may be for you to
believe but I have *never* posted anything here knowing it to be
inaccurate or *false*. I don't try to snot over stuff I don't know
either - which is why I occasionally get losers like Plowie trying to
complete my education for me....

In article ,
Trevor Wilson wrote:
**Not that I enjoy agreeing with Keith, I understand where he is coming
from. Let me explain:

As a service guy, I assess each job as it arrives. I offer two options
to my clients:

1) A rough guesstimate of the job, based on the description of the fault
and my experience with the particular piece of equipment. This is free
(I know - stupid me). I also advise the client I feel the job is not
worth proceeding with. A surprising number of people will after request
an item be serviced, even though it is not economical to do so. 2) A
full quote, which lists the parts required and the time taken to do the
job. For this, I charge AUS$55.00 UP FRONT. That cost is deducted from
the final cost. One of my mates in the business now makes more money
from quotes (which are not proceeded with) than he does from actual
repair work.

So how does this differ from the shop offering to fix the VCR for 50 quid?

IMO, if the story related by Keith is factual, then, IMO, the service
guy was morally wrong. Legally, probably not, however.

I really don't know how you can say that on the facts provided by Keith.
It could be on enquiry the shop discovered the parts needed were now
discounted or whatever. I don't know, you don't know and Keith certainly
doesn't. He's just venting his spleen on a shop he doesn't like.

Let me also state, that fixing stuff is not the path to riches that it
once was. It is hard work and the rewards are not great.

Finding a repair shop is becoming impossible in many areas. And it will
get worse unless people are willing to pay the going rate.

--
*Income tax service - We‘ve got what it takes to take what you've got.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Trevor Wilson wrote:
Let me also state, that fixing stuff is not the path to riches that
it once was. It is hard work and the rewards are not great.

Finding a repair shop is becoming impossible in many areas. And it
will get worse unless people are willing to pay the going rate.

The local repair shop here closed down, most people aren't prepared to pay
the going rate. Most electronic stuff has evolved/ devolved? to a single
board, so you can't simply slot in another module. The domestic VCR is very
much a case in point. And unless it's a simple capacitor fault, you've got
sm components to deal with with all the special tools that requires.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Trevor Wilson wrote:
**Not that I enjoy agreeing with Keith, I understand where he is
coming
from. Let me explain:

As a service guy, I assess each job as it arrives. I offer two
options
to my clients:

1) A rough guesstimate of the job, based on the description of the
fault
and my experience with the particular piece of equipment. This is
free
(I know - stupid me). I also advise the client I feel the job is not
worth proceeding with. A surprising number of people will after
request
an item be serviced, even though it is not economical to do so. 2) A
full quote, which lists the parts required and the time taken to do
the
job. For this, I charge AUS$55.00 UP FRONT. That cost is deducted
from
the final cost. One of my mates in the business now makes more money
from quotes (which are not proceeded with) than he does from actual
repair work.

So how does this differ from the shop offering to fix the VCR for 50
quid?

IMO, if the story related by Keith is factual, then, IMO, the service
guy was morally wrong. Legally, probably not, however.

I really don't know how you can say that on the facts provided by
Keith.
It could be on enquiry the shop discovered the parts needed were now
discounted or whatever. I don't know, you don't know and Keith
certainly
doesn't. He's just venting his spleen on a shop he doesn't like.


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. The proof of this particular pudding is
the price tumbled from 50 to 29 quid *after* my neighbour cancelled the
job - if it was due to 'unexpectedly low parts costs' or summat as
someone implied, how real is the chance they would have only taken 29
quid off my neighbour?

(Trust me, the 'motorcycle trade' could teach the 'audio trade' a few
things when it comes to strimming their punters for spares and
repairs...)



Let me also state, that fixing stuff is not the path to riches that
it
once was. It is hard work and the rewards are not great.

Finding a repair shop is becoming impossible in many areas. And it
will
get worse unless people are willing to pay the going rate.


Stuff isn't made to be *repairable* these days - not that I'm saying
that's a good thing; there's nothing I like better than a good fettle
that gets the job done, myself...

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.

In article , Trevor Wilson
wrote:



As a service guy, I assess each job as it arrives. I offer two options
to my clients:

1) A rough guesstimate of the job, based on the description of the fault
and my experience with the particular piece of equipment. This is free
(I know - stupid me). I also advise the client I feel the job is not
worth proceeding with. A surprising number of people will after request
an item be serviced, even though it is not economical to do so.

I can understand why people tend to prefer to pay for 'uneconomic' repairs.
It may be because the item is a 'known' one which does what the user wants
when in good repair, and they are familiar with how to use it. One of the
risks of a new unit is that it might not do something the older unit did,
and you want. Or that it is a pest to use.

When my initial Philips DVD Videorecorder died I tried what Philips claim
is the 'replacement' model. It doesn't do all the things the original model
did, and is a pig to use. The handbook is also wrong in various places in
the instructions it gives.

Alas, repair proved impossible. In effect, it was a monopoly situation
where the option was that Philips sold you their 'replacement' which didn't
do what the original had done. Non-Philips repair bods I asked could not
get the info they needed. The problem here wasn't if the work was
'economic' or a matter of price. It was that Philips (as do some other
makers) seem to regard repair/service as a revenue stream.

There was time when many 'brown goods' items like these came with service
info, or it was widely avaliable to the repair/retail trade. Not now.
Companies may restrict who has access to the info. In effect a form or
anti-competitive practice to try and ensure you have to go to them, or the
agents who pay them, for repair. This also makes it easy for them to decide
on your behalf that a repair "isn't worth doing" and instead offer to sell
you a 'replacement'. Their decision on what is "uneconomic", not yours.

I tried a Sony, then bought a Panasonic. The Panasonic also does not do all
the original Philips did, but works well in other respects, and is far
easier to use that the Philips 'replacement' as well as having its own DTTV
tuner.

Goodbye Philips.

If the original unit had been repairable I would have chosen to have it
repaired, as it had some features I found very useful, and it gave
excellent results. That said, I've been happy enough with the Panasonic,
and now I've 'escaped' from Philips I will avoid buying anything from them
in future. Once bitten.

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

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

In article , Signal
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:

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.

I find it pretty noticable over RGB

Well, TBH these days I generally record using the Panasonic, but play back
both recorded and commercial discs on my Arcam DV137. But I can't recall
noticing the problem when using the Philips.

[snip]


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.

Please! I'd like to check the overscan.

Some delay here. I have been looking on my HD as I'm sure I got this as an
email, and kept a text file. But I can't find that. So I'll have to dig out
the hard copy I made, and scan/OCR that when I get a chance.

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

The latest crop of LCDs have supposedly fixed this?

Dunno. It was a problem makers started off by pretending didn't exist. They
may now claim to have fixed it, but I've not tried any of the screens so
can't comment.



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,

I don't understnad that???

You probably will when you remove the overscan. 8-]

The overscan disguises the problem. It arises for two general reasons.

1) That the higher the CRT beam current, the more the cathode voltage tends
to 'sag' as the PSU can't cope. This slows the electron beam, and means the
fields used to scan have more time to act. The result is that brighter
parts of the image tend to be 'stretched out' and distort the image.

2) The higher the beam current hitting the screen, the more of a negative
potential that part of the screen area picks up. The electrons do 'leak'
back by flowing across the inner surface, but this potential repels the
beam, and has an effect similar to the above.

The result is most obvious when you see that the sides of the image are not
rectangular, and fluctuate with the brightness pattern of the image.
Overscan hides this give-away symptom as the edges of the scanned image are
beyong the part of the screen which has phosphors. My Panasonic does this
quite clearly. The effect is modest, so does not irritate me, but it can
clearly be seen.

(1) could be cured if the PSU was better. But (2) would require higher
conductivity for the inner surface of the screen, which then may tend to
have an impact on attainable brightness as the conductive layer will tend
to absorb some light depending on the physical arrangements, etc. Matter of
manufacturing details. Perhaps this is one reason why some high quality
CRTs tend to me much more costly. But I don't really know enough about that
area to comment properly.

Do you see the 'goldfish bowl' type effect I'm talking about? Pretty
minor but it's there, top and right, on mine.. eg rolling text is
fractionally smaller in the top 1"

Not in the top inch, but the shape does give circles a slight 'egg' effect.
One of the service menu settings is to tweak this IIRC. So you may be able
to fix this once I can find and scan/OCR my copy of the service menu info.

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