So what started you on the AV road to nirvana?

[Reid Malenfant]

As the title says, what started you travelling the long & winding road to AV where you are now?

I think for myself it was when television broadcasts were encoded with NICAM (Near Instantaneous Companded Audio Multiplex) stereo sound & the very first HiFi video recorders appeared. All of a sudden we had the sound quality of a 13 bit digitally encoded signal (sniff not as the first CD players were 14 bit ) with a superb signal to noise ratio...

At that point i realised how good a recording could be on a HiFi video machine in the audio domain only & promptly use one for any recording, 90Db+ signal to noise on analogue equipment isn't to be sniffed at. Sub 20Hz to 20KHz+ isn't either..

Of course then the new SVHS recorders came along & all of a sudden instead of only 250 lines of video we were treated to 400 lines on a 576 line TV Getting there me thinks..

Then DVD came along & the rest is probably forgotten in the mists of time


So at what point did you jump on the AV bandwagon? I guess i was there from the very early days with a Sony SLC7 Betamax way back in the day I guess i can thank my father for this as he was manager of a TV & radio shop.. He liked his music & TV to, not surprising it rubbed off on me!

[Spectral Morn]

Not working in the HiFi industry any more and being in the Brown Goods industry I needed something to spend my commission on

I like movies so got a DVD player, then surround TV and then amplifier a Sony (can't remember the model number) then Mission speakers...rest is history but AV is always secondary to my two channel interests.

Actually that's not entirely right. It was an Akai VCR with Dolby Pro logic built in and a movie called The Beast. My TV was too small so as the tank rolled into the sound track and then onto the screen and off again it was ridiculous on a 14 inch portable. It planted the seed though.....


Regards D S D L

[MartinT]

It was Laserdiscs for me. I built up quite a collection of PAL and NTSC titles and imported my Pioneer CLD-1050 dual-standard player when I was working in Tokyo - shopping in Akihabara was fun!

I was then a very early adopter of DVD and sold my Laserdisc collection while they still had some value. There was a solder link mod for the 1st generation Pioneer deck (DV-505?) which made it dual-region, as I was travelling to the USA a lot and buying DVDs out there.

Now I have a Sony Blu-ray player (BDP-S300), again dual-region modified so that I can play region A Blu-rays and region 1 DVDs.

[Marco]

Hi Mark,

You (and Mike) seem to be settling in nicely to your new domain - well done!

I guess i was there from the very early days with a Sony SLC7 Betamax way back in the day...

What were your thoughts on the old Betamax vs. VHS debate?

I was a firm believer then that Betamax was by far the superior format, and simply became a victim of the commercial bandwagon when the 'big boys' Sony, Philips, etc, insisted that VHS was going to be the next latest and greatest 'big thing'.

Are there any now obsolete AV formats that you considered offered superior performance to whatever the modern commercial bandwagon dictated was to replace them, and if so, why did you consider them superior?

Marco.

[Rare Bird]

All technical issues aside prior to beta..U-matic was good but Betamax was miles better quality than VHS imho even on long play it looked better.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

I wanted best of both worlds, so when I moved from my nad c320 marantz cd player and Tannoy m2's I bought a nad DVD/CD/SACD player, a huge nad multi channel amp a rel quake, dynaudio audience 42's and a dyn c42 centre speaker ...
It was actually really quite good until i drove the amp to hard for to long and it took offence and started dying on me ... The nad amp had to be replaced by a yam, which although nice didn't quite hit the spot for music like the nad had done ...
Actually, for a long time I used the nad in a surround sound mode called "ears" for listening to music ... Your probably going to want to string me up after I tell you this ... It was a surround sound mode no unlike prologic 2 ... It seemed to take the signal from the far right of the mix and put it behind you to the right, then do the same with the left channel ... Because for a long time I lived in a grotty little bed sit it was a way I could make the sound fill the room without to much worry for sound stage ...
Of course as soon as I had the space when I moved into a proper flat I found better results from plain stereo ... But for whatever reason, in that bed sit, "ears" was the way to go for me!

[HighFidelityGuy]

I've always been really into movies since being a kid and when Dolby Pro-Logic came out around the time I was a young teenager I really wanted an Aiwa mini system with Pro-Logic. You remember the ones with the CD multi-changer at the top with all the fancy flashing LED's. I thought they looked and sounded awesome. Luckily my parents had better taste than me and said they thought they looked crap so I didn't get one. A couple of years later my taste had improved and I talked my parents into getting me a Technics stereo mini system. That sounded much better and got me hooked on hi-fi but I still wanted a surround sound system. Around that time Dolby Digital came out and I remember lusting after Yamaha's top of the range 5.1 amp. However stereo became my main priority as I was really getting into music around that time. Once I was old enough to get a job I did a couple of Christmas jobs in Dixons and saved up enough money to buy my first proper Hi-Fi amp (a Cambridge Audio A500) and my first proper hi-fi speakers (Eltax LR6.5 floor standers). I still have both. This really sealed the deal for me and I was officially a hi-fi nut. But I still had a desire for surround sound and after a couple of years I decided to finally buy my first 5.1 amp (a Yamaha DSP-AX620). By that time I was working at Curry's and what with the amp being end of line and my 10% staff discount it cost me £120 instead of the £600 RRP (recently sold on ebay for £85 ). I was well chuffed and found I prefered it's sound over the A500 for stereo duties. Around that same time I met my future wife to be and spending on hi-fi mostly came to an end for several years. I bought a few bits here and there like a Toshiba DVD player but didn't actually buy all the necesary extra speakers to make 5.1 until about 7 years later. By that time I'd got married and moved house a couple of times. It was late 2008 when I finally decided to upgrade my hi-fi and add full surround sound. I got a new Arcam AVR300 5.1 amp which I found sounded better all round than the Yamaha. Around that time I stumbled across AoS after speaking to a certain Mr Beresford about buying one of his DAC's. It was on this forum that I found the help I needed to completely overhaul my entire system and end up with what I have today.

I now use my old Eltax speakers as the rears in my 5.1 system where they do an ok job. However I'm starting to fancy a pair of dipole speakers to get a wider rear image. That will have to wait until I get a bigger house though. Other than that I'm happy with my AV system now that I've added a Blu-Ray player and HD TV. I don't think I'll be upgrading it much for quite a while.

[Reid Malenfant]

Hi Mark,

You (and Mike) seem to be settling in nicely to your new domain - well done!

Cheers Marco I'm sure it'll get even more entertaining as time goes by.. The cave is quite homely thank you

What were your thoughts on the old Betamax vs. VHS debate?

I was a firm believer then that Betamax was by far the superior format, and simply became a victim of the commercial bandwagon when the 'big boys' Sony, Philips, etc, insisted that VHS was going to be the next latest and greatest 'big thing'.

Betamax gave a better picture than VHS simply because from the word go it had more lines on the TV if i remember correctly, the video drum & heads were better quality (looking back at it now). Betamax was Sonys' baby, it was actually JVC that was pushing the VHS format & if i remember correctly it was because they tied in with the film industry & got a load more films put onto pre recorded VHS tapes that killed off the Betamax Betamax machines were still being used professionally though due to the higher picture quality

It wasn't until JVC developed the SVHS (Super VHS) that they surpassed the Betamax system. I can't quite remember the the amount of lines Betamax rendered but VHS was 250 lines, SVHS took that to 400 lines & a vastly better picture

Are there any now obsolete AV formats that you considered offered superior performance to whatever the modern commercial bandwagon dictated was to replace them, and if so, why did you consider them superior?

Marco.

The obvious one, Betamax vs VHS.. If i give it some thought i might think of something else. I don't think that the death of HD-DVD was a bad thing simply because blu ray uses a shorter wavelength laser & therefore can store more information than HD-DVD can on the same CD sized disc.

Unfortunately i get quite envious when i see HD-DVD discs go so cheap on ebay when in reality they can give as good a picture as blu rays do, i'm not about to purchase an HD-DVD player when it's already obsolete

[HighFidelityGuy]

Legend has it that the main reason VHS was addopted by the rest of the film industry is that the porn industry chose it as their prefered medium first. Because lots of porn VHS tapes were floating around the rest of the industry followed suit. I think VHS machines were cheaper and simpler, so that probably explains why the industry went that way. Once VHS was the most common pre-recorded format in the shops there was no reason to buy Betamax. I read that the porn industry were also largely responsible for the addoption of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. I forget the reasons. I'll see if I can find the article.

I guess it's similar to the whole CD/MP3 thing that's happening at the moment. Despite MP3 being the lower quality of the two, CD sales are dropping year on year. MP3's are cheaper and quicker to get hold of and arguably easier to use, so that's the way the public goes. Cost and ease of use usually win in the mass market.

[HighFidelityGuy]

Here's the aricle:

Porn decides the fate of the universe