I'm A Proud Luddite!

[blastoff]

What the hell do you find worth watching on TV? I gave up on TV when I left Japan and could no longer watch the Samurai Soap Opera and Sumo.

Good fol you, ferra!

 

[Indeependent]

If the entertainment is mesmerizing the medium doesn’t make a difference to me.

 

[WillMunny]

No worries, folks, I'm back! I just had a 24 hour power outage because here on a rural part of the west coast we had a massive rain and wind storm hammering us for the past two days. No worries, I had some battery lights and kept my cabin warm with my propane stove. Without the TV and Internet I entertained myself by major masturbation sessions - without electricity in the house I depended on the electricity within my own body for amusement. I assure you I had orgasms so powerful, like water from a broken fire hydrant, it physically launched me off my bed and smashed me into the ceiling. Now the sheetrock of my ceiling is criss-crossed with dents in the approximate dimensions of my torso and pelvis....while I was thinking of 30-year-old Sigourney Weaver's little strip-tease a few feet away from the alien the whole time with those graceful hips & thighs. Ohhhh, it was soooo delicious.

 

[WillMunny]

Now back on the subject of the thread: what the fuck is the point of another modern monstrosity, car electric windows? It's just one more thing to go wrong and one more thing to interfere with the car's "nervous system." Is it really that difficult to roll down a window by hand? Will manually rolling down a car window really cause the universal "Great Rip" in the universe that cosmologists predict billions of years in the future?

 

[WillMunny]

Another electronic abomination: motor-powered wheelchhairs for so many morbidly obese, fatass, human dirigibles who look as if they were poured into their wheelchairs. Which clog up every form of public facility with their fat, disgusting grotesquery because they've chosen to do a terrible, horrible thing to their own body, I've seen so many of them I believe half of them are simply gluttonous hungry, hungry hippos who are too fucking lazy to move under their own power. Look, it utterly defies mathematical, statistical credudilty that there are just SOOOOOOOO many blubbery fat pigs in our society whose spinal columns are so destroyed that they can't just get the fuck out of those wheelchairs and just fucking WALK! Lazy fatasses!

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

First of all, I fucking HATE these overrated flat-screen TVs. Even wearing my glasses, I think the picture only looks slightly better than a picture tube TV and it doesn't make up for having the worst, stupidest-sounding, tinniest speakers of any device ever built. And they're such disposable appliances that burn out after a few years, I'm already on my second one. I used to have a picture-tube 40-year-old Sony Trinitron TV that's been passed around my family over the decades that only recently died. With much deeper, throatier speakers. And the picture wasn't half-bad for such old technology.

That's why I crave older '80s analogue technology of picture-tubes and video tapes and cassette players: their sheer long-lasting, abuse-taking RELIABILITY! Today's current digital technology only has moderate improvements on the audio/visual front and is so delicate it goes to pieces if you even think about it wrong. I have a stereo tape player/CD-player and the tape-player works fine, the CD-player burnt out years ago. I have a VCR/DVD player and the VCR half works fine and its DVD half burnt out years ago. As I write, you see the reliability pattern? I honestly prefer a slightly more old-fashioned technology if it's a reliable "workhorse" that keeps on going forever without one electronic glitch after another after another that keeps pissing me off. Because I've had cassette and video tapes that work normally after decades. I cannot say that about disks.

You know the practical reason why I'm the only person in the First World without a cell phone? Because the exact topography of the hillside in which my rural cabin is built somehow prevents cell phone reception of any kind and one has to be well away from my house for a cell phone to work in my case......yet my ancient land line is as reliable as always. I guess I'm just a guy who's probably too old-school for his own good, I suppose.

Flat screen?

Idiot stuck in 2000. I wear a headset now. VR bitch. Everywhere I look is TECHNOLOGY or pussy if that's your thing....

 

[HenryBHough]

Vinyl recordings are making a comeback.

There is no question that their analog technology produces far better sound than anything available to consumers in digital. That applies to the first time you play the vinyl. Maybe, with a good turntable, good tone arm and excellent cartridge and needle right up to about the 10th time. After that the digital has the potential to sound better.

But only the potential because the digital player will be all solid-state (integrated circuits and maybe power amplifier transistors).

Play the vinyl through a solid state amp and you'll still miss a lot. You need the multiple harmonics produced in a vacuum tube amplifier to get really good sound. Unfortunately most tubes available these days are made in Russia which gets literal panties in a twist but for the wrong reasons. The Russians just aren't up to making really good tubes. There are some British "valves" of excellent quality but they're expensive and hard to find. Best shot is to find somebody who ran a radio repair shop and may have a lot of "old stock" - American made. Vacuum tubes, not in service, last indefinitely "on the shelf".

Compromise? Digital played through a vacuum tube amp with good, heavy magnet speakers.

 

[toobfreak]

First of all, I fucking HATE these overrated flat-screen TVs. Even wearing my glasses, I think the picture only looks slightly better than a picture tube TV and it doesn't make up for having the worst, stupidest-sounding, tinniest speakers of any device ever built. And they're such disposable appliances that burn out after a few years, I'm already on my second one. I used to have a picture-tube 40-year-old Sony Trinitron TV that's been passed around my family over the decades that only recently died. With much deeper, throatier speakers. And the picture wasn't half-bad for such old technology.

That's why I crave older '80s analogue technology of picture-tubes and video tapes and cassette players: their sheer long-lasting, abuse-taking RELIABILITY! Today's current digital technology only has moderate improvements on the audio/visual front and is so delicate it goes to pieces if you even think about it wrong. I have a stereo tape player/CD-player and the tape-player works fine, the CD-player burnt out years ago. I have a VCR/DVD player and the VCR half works fine and its DVD half burnt out years ago. As I write, you see the reliability pattern? I honestly prefer a slightly more old-fashioned technology if it's a reliable "workhorse" that keeps on going forever without one electronic glitch after another after another that keeps pissing me off. Because I've had cassette and video tapes that work normally after decades. I cannot say that about disks.

You know the practical reason why I'm the only person in the First World without a cell phone? Because the exact topography of the hillside in which my rural cabin is built somehow prevents cell phone reception of any kind and one has to be well away from my house for a cell phone to work in my case......yet my ancient land line is as reliable as always. I guess I'm just a guy who's probably too old-school for his own good, I suppose.

Dear Will,

As a former electrical engineer and video/audiophile, allow me to comment.

1. The picture on a new TV should look far better than old SDTV assuming you have a decent HD source. 1080 lines vs. 425 if I remember right.
2. The speakers are shit. They make the cabinets so thin, there is no room for decent ones. They assume you are mounting them to the wall. Think of a new TV as being more of a monitor with auxiliary speakers just to get you by in a pinch. They really expect you'll plug the set into an audio amp with a pair of much better outboard speakers. (a la Home Theater).
3. Like you, I still have a Hitachi 27" color CRT set and its going strong. Use it in my bedroom, it runs 5-8 hours a day 7 days a week and is so old, it was made right after they did away with the tuning knob (with mechanical channel number in window) and started putting PIP on screen prompts right on the screen. BTW, while expensive, if you can find a Hitachi TV product, they are THE BEST. Much better than Sony or similar brands. Stores seldom carry them because they make little profit on them due to high innate cost. Fallback brand: Panasonic. Panasonic used to make a high end line called PRISM, now I think they call the line something else. Avoid the Korean crap.
4. I still use a Mitsubishi DLP set that has fabulous sound. DLP was a great technology that relied upon an actual lamp and little mirrors for every pixel. Works great. Great sound. Good bass because cabinet is big at bottom. And every few years when the lamp wears out, rather than pitch the set, you just plug in a new lamp assembly. Just bought a new lamp for mine: $43.00. DLP was displaced by LED and plasma but if you look around, you might find a used one in good shape. BTW, Mitsubishi makes a pretty good TV in general still.
5. What you write about the reliability of products is mainly because those old products were largely mechanical and HAD to be made well to work and last. The new stuff is designed as a throw away with designed obsolescence. You can buy good, long lasting digital stuff too, but you have to pay more. For instance, my main CD player was made in 1990 and still works well. It weighs 45 pounds. It also sounds as good as just about any of the new stuff. Downfall: If made today, it would have to sell for around $5,000.
6. I haven't owned a cellphone in many years. Never needed the damn thing, and after a year, the last one quit working.
7. The one true thing about technology is that NEW technology is not always necessarily better. Believe it or not, the old phono LP still sounds better than any CD---given the proper and necessary playback equipment which was much more complicated and expensive, and much less user-friendly than the CD.

BOTTOM LINE: The main purpose of new technology is GREATER PROFIT HEADROOM. They can make the stuff for a lot less money while selling it for as much or even more. All those people who copied their LPs onto cassette or threw them out for CD made a foolish mistake. There are still good deals in the modern digital age, but you just have to shop more wisely.