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Remember the days when you had just managed to get the latest releases from your contacts, friends, or that guy you all knew at school or work?
Going home in anticipation, not just to play the game for the first time, but also to see who had cracked the game, and if it was one of the familiar cracktros from a group like Fairlight, or a new cracktro with some cool 3D animations or bouncing text and music.
Still miss those days.
Now now H.....
Stop showing your Age! :D
You're older than me mate! ;)
Indeed but I ain't the one Grieving about the Past! :p
You are on a retro site after all! It's what we do.
But not grieving. Remembering things that were fun and exciting. Like going into a record store and diffident some new music. I love the streaming age for instant access to complete libraries of games and music for monthly subscriptions that cost peanuts compared to the amount we used to waste on media, but it's the little things that are lost along the way as the process of media consumption has become a bit sanitised.
we've just come out of an unprecedented Pandemic that's leaving a wake of other issues yet to show their ugly faces. :eyebrow:
But I know fella... ease up eh! :lol:
Bygone day's .... Jesus Ones ....
& that's not a Religious statement either, .... unless we're talking about the crew that slammed that beauty together back in the day! :D
I also know what you mean about selecting Music & Digital Downloading.... but things have changed bud.
I was never really into the cracking and piracy scene on the Amiga as I didn't have many friends with Amigas or contacts in the scene at that time.
Even so, the anticipation of any new game or device - would things work, would it be any good, have I wasted time/money, it was much more tangible then.
I'm actually with Harrison there, while things are undoubtedly technically superior now, it's almost like the high level of media exposure means we know so much more about the products and things before we even get to try them.
Of course, it's hard to separate out all that stuff from the fact that we were young back then and so in hindsight it seems super fun.
I've stated here many times how I loved the feel of physical media in cartridges / caddies. Like slotting a minidisc into a player, that slight plastic/metal rattle, or hearing the thunk and mechanisms engaging when inserting a VHS tape.
That's a good point about physical media. With each new device often came a completely new media to experience. With consoles you had different cartridges and packaging. Then you had the CD based game, Dreamcast GDRoms, Gamecube mini CDs, and the Playstation black CDs and then PS2 blue DVDs. And computers went from tape to various floppy disk and then CD and DVD.
With the ability to play games on any current system using digital media you have nothing on your shelves to show what you own or box art and manuals to look at. Playing games didn't really feel any different on any platform other than the different controller or system frontend.
The one thing I definitely don't miss is VHS tapes. Waiting for them to rewind, time it takes to load them. Fast forwarding etc. Not great quality. And they took up so much space. On demand and streaming content is a renolution in video delivery. And I much prefer it. I don't actually remember when I last played a DVD or BD. In fact I don't currently have a dedicated player setup, just aPS4.
Aye, VHS Tape was crap. My old Panasonic VHS was a stunning Player though & it's still in it's box in the Loft! - I certainly don't miss the Tapes Chewing up where the Tape jams around the Head with Tape Dust becoming like a static glue.
Betamax should have been the Standard. Far superior Video Quality. - (Kin walks off to Hurl..... Fecking Sony Products...) :puke:
Boxes are now a thing of the past with Digital Downloads. I remember Dopus 4 Box, Lightwave, Imagine @ such sat on my Shelves whilst playing Alien Assault & Pinball Fantasies... *sigh!
However, I've been lucky over the years with regard to CD & DVD ROM's. I retired my Denon DVD Player years ago & invested in the Dune HD Max
Now out dated, I spent £7.50 for a replacement Blu Ray Laser Head & fitted it myself. She played DVD's okay but still refused to play a Blu Ray disk. Despite being a dated bit of Kit in terms of 4K & it won't play Blu Ray ROM's, this media Player still rocks. Any DL that is a full Blu Ray Rip will give you the Full DVD Blu Ray front end Menu's, as if you had a Real Blu Ray Disc. :cool:
So, I retired her, pulled the 6TB WD NAS Drive & bought one of these bad boys from here
This Media Centre absolutely Rocks & 4K Movies on our Panasonic OLED are quite simply breath taking....
Unfortunately, I'm now looking at a Larger Hard Drive & considering a 12TB Synology HAT5300 Enterprise drive. It's the best bang per TB @ £26.23 with a 5 Year warranty. The 16TB version comes with 512Mb Cache rather than 256Mb & works out @ £32.84 per TB, with the 8TB coming in last @ £34.25 per TB. :huh:
Not looking at putting 2 x 12TB in her yet. We'll see how much longer the Magic Smoke will last in the 6TB WD NAS drive. - They're not as reliable as they should be. :eyebrow:
Putting a disc into a slot-loader - boring
Being presented with a sliding tray to put the disc into - nice
Slotting a cartridge into a pop up mechanism - yeah baby
@Kin. I don't really use any dedicated media player any longer as smart TVs and Sky Q have pretty much everything needed these days. Plus subscribing to every streaming service I dunt need to hold much locally as everything I ever want to watch is 99% of the time available on one of the services. There are the odd exceptions, but it's not often.
I do have a 5 bay Synology NAS with 4TB drives in it that holds everything locally for instant access if needed. But again not needed that often these days.
And audio I never touch the massive MP3 collection I built over the years, or the 100s of CDs I own. Nearly everything I can ever think of is on Spotify. And it's matured into such an integral music streaming service these days. Able to seemlessly listen to it in the car, in any room via echo/alexa, directly though any smart tv, console etc. Pretty much every network connected device has spotify access these days.
There are exceptions. It doesn't have every more obscure Indie, gothic, metal, shoe gazing etc artist and album. And one thing missing are the video game audio albums and concert recordings. So there is still a place for alternative local collections.
I used to have DUNE media players before, they're quite good. But as I'm only streaming from my NAS or watching Plex, Netflix, Prime or YouTube, I'm using the nVidia Shield, the normal model, not the Pro version even, as the only downside it has compared to the Pro model, is that it's less powerful for gaming. But the form factor was my main reason for buying it, it looks like a small 0.25l Coca Cola can and fits behind any other device I have, so you don't even see it. Remote control is fantastic, very small, responsive and has only minimum buttons, plus looks very fancy. Plus I'm using the built in Chromecast to send stuff from my iPad to TV.
I agree with Harrison that most TVs nowadays are smart, my Sony Bravia too, but navigating is much slower than with the Shield. Plus if I use the beamer, I need it, as the beamer has no built-in smart whatsoever.
Spotify is for people that don't listen to REAL music ;) Nothing to do with obscure.
:lol: Spotify has nearly everything that days. Most metal and alternative stuff. Actually quite hard to find things it doesn't have. F.ex. I just tried to think of something and whilst The Dead Kennedy's are on there I didn't expect to find their lead singer, Jello Biafra on there, or some of his other groups such as Lard, but it's all there.
Regarding smart TVs. Many current models are adopting Alexa control. The Samsung 4K TV we bought last Dec does. Really annoys Tom that I can turn it off from anywhere. And interfaces are being less relevant recently because each streaming service has its own identify interface pn every device. I'd been hoping for proper convergence for years.
:DQuote:
Originally Posted by J T
@ DC
Several folk I know tried pointing me to the nVidia Shield but it doesn't play Blu Ray disc menus. - It wasn't what I was looking for as a, ....more Professional Solution ....for a more.... "Home Cinema Experience".
But I'm 0ld School & like to sit down with a Real Movie & watch it on my Home Cinema set up whilst eating decent food. - Sky are Butt Munchers. Reduced all Sound to friggin Stereo & lets not even discuss BT.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harrison
I can still do above, even if the good old Cracktro day's are long gong. :thumbs: (Even my Miggy works through it)
Btw, anyone remember Laser Disc?
I do agree to get the best image and sound you still can't match a BD. All streaming services compress video far more than physical media can deliver. But I must say that Disney+ and Netflix are not offering a lot of 4K HDR content and it looks really good. Shows up some of the higher compression and subsequent artifacting in some Sky content. Although some of the Sky 4k stuff is looking good. F1 is great in 4K.
As for Audio. Stereo? Most things are in 5.1 at least these days. Netflix, Disney and prime all deliver proper multi channel audio. And all films I've watched on sky have had proper surround sound audio.
Sky Broadcasts are in just plain old Vanilla "Stereo".Quote:
Originally Posted by Harrison
Anything in UHD sounds like a frickin 2 bit sh!t boom box from the 80's with a Cassette shoved up it's ass! :mad:
Definitely not in my experience. My reciever decodes most content to Dolby 5.1 and quite a lot of films in Dolby Digital Plus or Atmos. Most live Football matches are in Atmos. F1 is in 5.1 etc.
Press the info button on your Sky Remote. It tells you what they're broadcasting in.
S = Stereo
You have a problem with your setup then. Currently watching F1 qualifying in UHD with 5.1 through my Sony receiver.
I've always had Digital 5.1 since Sky+HD days and pro logic surround before that with analogue Sky.
Yeah it's not always as simple as plug-n-play (although sometimes it is) as there is sometimes device incompatibility, or settings need tweaking, or even wires needing to go into a different port.
FOR EXAMPLE
My Samsung TV just won't output surround to the Yamaha amp through the HDMI cables. I've tried all the ports and all the options and they just wouldn't play nicely. It'll happily route picture and stereo sound
HOWEVER
The TV does have an optical out, and will output proper 5.1 through there AS LONG AS we go into the TV menu and change the sound output from TV speaker to Optical. If I don't make this output change, the thing is working in stereo but not 5.1, so it can easily 'trick' the unwary listener. Luckily the amp display screen has little icons for each speaker, although they are small, so it's possible to see what it's doing.
It's a bit of a faff but it actually works, so this is how I do it.
Moral of the story - you gotta piss about a bit before you get the results.
You have to have ARC support and at HDMI 2.1 cable for all audio channels to correctly send via HDMI. My older Samsung HDTV didn't have ARC support, but I could connect the TV to the AV amp via optical to make it send 5.1. Worked for Sky and all streaming services.
The 4K Samsung I got last Dec does support it and didn't need an optical cable. So even 7.1 is passed to the Amp. Limitation of optical is 5.1.
It's possible the cable may not be 'new' or 'good' enough as they are all probably relative cheapies, but I think I tried different ones before I got fed up..... it's a second hand amp so is a fair bit older than the telly.... and also, and this is the big thing here - i can't really be bothered to pull all the cables out from the ports and mess about in the cabinet again (I tidied the cables up when I set it all up) so I'm just going to leave it as it works well enough for me. I have no current interest in going above 5.1 right now.
The only benefit for 5.1 by switching from optical to hdmi is one less cable, so not really worth it.
All ARC & HDMI configured correctly here.
Sky are still broadcasting in Stereo for me.
Sky Settings Audio Set up.... The higher the Quality of sound you select, the quieter the sound goes. - Then the Adverts come on & the volume level to actually hear the Dialogue suddenly BLASTS you out of the Armchair.
NetFlix & Amazon or my Dune 4K Max Vision are fine.
If Deb wasn't insisting we have Sky, I'd tell 'em to "Do One" in a Heartbeat! :mad:
Very strange. I've never had an issue with Sky Q or Sky+HD before it. Always managed to get digital 5.1.
Adverts are definitely louder, but that's true on Freeview too, although my amp has normalise that helps to level the volume. But it then clips the top and bottom, so I don't use it for things like films.
Hi guys,
Speaking of cracktros, Void released such a styled intro this summer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP3hQ_KBUqs
It is called Birthtro 36 and was coded by AlienTech from Italy. :)
Hope you like it! :thumbs:
I want you all to know that this problem is now resolved. My children managed to resolve it by, uh, breaking the TV with a wii remote in a fit of anger. No telly, no problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by J T
- - - Updated - - -
This is the third (!) broken TV in around two-and-a-half years
- - - Updated - - -
I like the music but I'm a grumpy old man now and found it hard to read a single line of scrolling textQuote:
Originally Posted by Puni/Void
Will take a look this weekend. Great to see some demos still being released.Quote:
Originally Posted by Puni/Void
We also released this one at Revision:Quote:
Originally Posted by HarrisonWill take a look this weekend. Great to see some demos still being released.Quote:
Originally Posted by Puni/Void
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UODnvTGNJXE
Very happy with this one. Hope we can do something alien inspired for the next years party as well.