Posted by Jo's LOTM hubby on January 11, 2000 at 00:37:03:
WARNING!!! this post may contain adult material so if you're under 18 or offended by it, please jump ahead to the Disney Channel.
Well after prompting from my wife it seems it's time again for one of my irregular posts. As I recall, the last time I posted, I had my handle attached to a porn site. I found it strangely funny although Jo was not amused. Well the girls weren't bad looking and it was a little bit of excitement and controversy to liven things up.
Anyway the reason for this post is relate the saga of the Christmas Gift.
As Christmas drew near, I was informed that this Christmas the love of my life wanted a DVD player. I found it funny because this was a rare request, normally electronic devices aren't of any interest to her, but as this would make her happy, her wish was my command.
When I got our new audio/video preamp for our system a few years ago, her first question was where do I plug in the turntable. Opps! No provision for them We had provisions for five video source components, five audio source components and one Auxiliary, but no turntable. So last year I bought her a turntable (remember those?) with a preamp in it to run on the auxiliary input. Funny that was where we first plugged in those new fangled CDs. It went over well, so maybe a DVD would have the same result.
I choose a Sony. It seemed to have good resolution, an on board Dolby Digital Decoder, and excellent forward and reverse features. It was a mid range model. When Christmas day came it was well received. However, she talked to her videophile artist friend, she found out my choice lacked an important (to her at least) feature. That was ZOOM. I felt if the lack of zoom was a problem I'd be happy to return it for another. Our next choice was a Toshiba. It had a similar on board decoder for Dolby Digital, good resolution, and zoom. It didn't have the same forward and reverse features as the Sony and for some reason it didn't have the same resolution. I didn't understand why, but the difference would probably be undetectable. With this addition we could probably watch LOTM in every Video format known to man save the RCA one that played movies from records. To temporarily make room we retired the BETA, although the Lazer disc player is probably the more likely candidate to be banished to the closet.
I wired it up and turned it on. The indicator panel flashed "read the manual" "read the manual". Didn't it know I was a male and had no use for manuals? I read the manual it seemed there was a set up feature requiring the TV on. Well I got it started and what a difference. The dark hue of the LOTM video version was non existent, the picture was sharp, and the colors extremely vibrant. The sound was crisp and as good as any CD. I got an Idea and stopped the movie. Protests were raised, "What the heck are you doing now?" I raced to get the video version we had and fired it up in the VCR. The TV we have has a feature called "picture in a picture" to check out other channels or video sourceswhile watching something else at the same time. Normally people protest me turning it on. By turning on this feature with both the DVD and VCR running LOTM you could track the movie almost frame by frame and compare each cut or addition. She was happy and it was interesting. It was hard to keep them in sync. I wished I still had the Sony with it's forward and reverse features. but the Toshiba's was adequate.
Oh yes the Zoom feature, well you can zoom in and enlarge the screen at will. It shifts it from letterbox to closer than regular format. For example, when Hawkeye falls down when entering the Indian camp, You can zoom up almost under his loin cloth. Girls, I don't think that's hair visible there but a shadow from his thigh maybe.
Oh well enjoy. I'll be driven out of the house in a weekend or two by the sisters when the meet here to screen the film. I figure they'll wear out the zoom feature.