I am considering buying a video recorder

I just miss shows. For a while I taped them and then didn't watch them, now I cut out the middle man.

But I do have the complete Max And Paddy's Road To Nowhere on tape.

I'm considering buying a DVD recorder (with a hard disk).

I've always just hated the clunkiness and size of videotapes.

Now I download torrents of stuff if I miss them, and I do buy DVDs.

I'd be wary of buying an expensive TV at the moment cause HDTV is on its way and HDTV-ready sets still cost a bomb at the moment (in the UK, anyway).

There is no danger of me buying an expensive one, don't worry.

Our 17-incher is too small for our ageing eyes, and the settee is a long way away.

Places that do not sell the fabled normal telly - Richer Sounds, Amazon, Argos (well, only one), John Lewis, Gultronics et al, Dixons, Tamworth Co-op.

OK, some of these I haven't actually checked.

Portables abound, it is true. I don't know why.

I bought a cheapo VCR last year, it was just so noisy, a constant rumbling hiss, that's why I went for the DVD option.

I'm fairly sure Richer Sounds never used to sell tellies at all until the advent of the flat screen.

You should make your own telly, PJM. There must be a kit in the back of Electronics Today or something. Or am I living in 1974?

I'll take Steady Mike's word for it on the CRT issue. CRT = bad for environment, mind.

You can hardly buy a computer with a CRT monitor anymore either. I love my fat eMac on my desk.

Is that right? Plasma surely worse though, cos if the plasma should escape all living things will be vaporised.

I wouldn't mind having a HDD-DVD recorder but I'm sure that would further increase my carbon footprint to a size 13. Are there any HDD-DVD recorders where you can just chuck non-video stuff over from DVD-R to the hard disk until you eventually have thousands of MP3s on there, all playable through the stereo? I guess that's what some people use their laptops for but I like the idea of having a hi-fi separate for that.

(btw, does the BBC broadcast HDTV like the big 4 and PBS have to in the US? I have no idea. if so, then you can just get a decoder box and run a antenna.)

If you want just a VCR, the cheapest place to go that will most certainly have some is your local neighborhood pawn shop. If you're gonna buy one now, just get a dual deck. You might as well, shit. There's DVD-R/VCR combos out there (Samsung, Sony, JVC, Sylvania, basically everyone has one), and depending on what you want, you can get one from about $160-500. The only problem is the whole question of what format you'll want to use for DVD-Rs, and that's why I'm waiting.

If you had been recording on Betamax all this time, your recordings would actually be better off. There is a reason why the TV industry in the US made it the standard and not VHS.

No. HDTV is late to the UK, and is only going to be via satellite at first. Then cable, I guess (which isn't as big here as in the States). Most people here get (subscription-free) digital TV over the airwaves and a cheap decoder box. Unfortunately, there isn't enough room on this part of the broadcasting spectrum to fit in more than a handful of HDTV channels. So HDTV is going to take off here a bit slowly.

i think crt's are in the middle in terms of power usage (plasmas are dreadful, lcds better) and that the main problem is all the junk on the circuit boards and inside the tube when they get poor indian children to melt them down. but i guess this is the same for all consumer electronics to some extent.

empiredirect.co.uk or qed.co.uk will happily sell you a nice crt. or use unbeatable.co.uk to find a bargain (SONY KV28HX15 28" widescreen at qed for 300 including delivery looks good, for instance). ditto vcrs.

nothing hd in the uk at the moment, although the bbc has been filming everything in high def for some years now apparently. it'll be a while yet before this is popular here. (xpost)

For some reason, when PJM said he wanted a "normal telly" I thought he meant non-widescreen, but he didn't, did he?

For some reason, when PJM said he wanted a "normal telly" I thought he meant non-widescreen, but he didn't, did he?

"Authors of the California law made a strategic decision to focus on cathode ray tubes, which contain leaded glass and other toxins. The law was amended to include LCD and gas plasma displays, which contain such hazardous material as mercury, cadmium and brominated flame retardant."

which all sounds nasty. maybe we should give up tv altogether. or people should concentrate on designing better tvs rather than bigger tvs. i blame the americans (mostly because they are on holiday and won't see this)

plenty of non-widescreens listed on those sites as well. i'm only just coming around to widescreen tv now that freeview uses it a lot (and proper widescreen, not that fudged version seen on terrestrial channels). and i think if you're planning on getting a tv to last 5 years or so (and why wouldn't you?) then a widescreen one would be sensible. but, whatever you do, don't just leave it in widescreen mode if the show is in 4x3, i hate that. (actually, looking at it again, 4x3 tvs seem to be a dying breed)

(and that should be qed-co.uk rather than qed.co.uk)

How do you mean?

LCD screens might not be free of toxins, but I'm pretty sure they're a lot better than CRT, koogy. See here, for example

When I watch a DVD on my computer (with CRT screen, though I don't think this really matters in this context), it is pin sharp. When I watch one on my TV (also CRT), it just looks like well-received TV, by which I mean it's fine, but if I get close, then the picture is quite clearly made up of those little cells of red green and blue stripes.

What, in terms I might understand, is responsible for this difference? What kind of TV would I need for it to look as good as it does on my monitor? Is a computer screen intrinsically different to a TV screen in some way?

Think how much a (quite small) monitor costs compared to a (quite big) telly.

PAL is 625 lines, yes? But if you play a PAL DVD through a screen with more lines than that, will it "take advantage" in some way?

In the meantime, another thing.

I am pretty sure I saw a demonstration of HDTV ABOUT TWENTY YEARS AGO, at an Olympia or Earl's Court computer exhibition. It was some footage of some Olympic ceremony, I think. Is this possible? I remember it being billed as high-definition tv and me looking at its clarity in wonder.

I suppose all HDTV is is more lines than before, so there's no reason why not. But it seems strange now.

Oh I recall that they were supposed to be better. We had one. Not that I could tell the difference other than the smaller tapes. My friends and I tend to use this as an example of the benefits of staying in the mainstreamh. So, it's all very well going on about Betamax being 'better' than VHS, but it's not a lot of use when all you can do is watch Tom & Jerry cartoons. That was part of the point of the "think different" comment. Not that I have any interest in getting into a discussion about Macs.

There's DVD-R, DVD-R+, and DVD-RAM. Three formats. Most machines use one or the other exculsively. The first two are the most prevalent. Still, it would be a bitch to convert all this stuff to DVD, then have no ability to read it because you chose the wrong format. Same thing will happen with HD, because there's DVD-HD and Blu-Ray.

It'll probably just blow it up. You'll see some distortion in the picture and such. That's the downside with HD when most programming is still in the older NTSC and PAL formats.

>I am pretty sure I saw a demonstration of HDTV ABOUT TWENTY YEARS AGO, at an Olympia or Earl's Court computer exhibition. It was some footage of some Olympic ceremony, I think. Is this possible?<

The Japanese have had HDTV for over a decade, so absolutely. My dad's been excited about it since the early 90s and waiting for it to happen. Its inevitable.

I just bought this thing so I can be a proper dad:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HW7EAG/ref=asc_df_B004HW7EAG1881115?smid=A3DI1PQ3I3V3R1&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395105&creativeASIN=B004HW7EAG

seems decent enough