[NJARC] RCA SelectaVision!

[john ruccolo]

Folks,

Never mind about me in kilts. ;-)

Tonight's Dungeon Adventure featured an RCA
Selectavison player loaned to me by Rich Skoba. I had
brought a couple of disks to the meeting last night to
loan to Rich, but I think sanity (his, not mine)
prevailed and he loaned me the machine instead (his
idea, not mine).

Anyway, I did have some fun with it tonight. First, I
got the worst of the grime off the top and front panel
with Windex and paper towels (my two favorite
"restoration" tools). Then, I had to acquaint myslef
with the loading procedure for CED's (Capactive
Electrnic Disks). Silly me, I thought you just slipped
the whole thing in and it played. After staring at the
machine for a minute or so while it delivered an
assortment of interesting noises [Side note: this
thing would be great for sound effects for a Martian
spaceship for the War of the Worlds show -- it
produces most of the weird noises that you'll ever
need] I realized that I had to pull the container out,
and the machine would automatically grab the disk and
tray.

I started to see things on the screen, but picture and
sound quality were poor. I was disappiointed. I then
realized that the player was outputting RF on Chan. 3
and the TV was tuned to Chan. 2 (user error). Changing
to chan. 3 produced *excellent* picture and sound, but
with lots of skips. Sharkey's Machine came to life!
Wowie Zowie! A little percussive maintenance (banging
on the sides of the player) seemed to help the
skipping.... a times.

Overall, I must say that picture and sound quality
were suprisingly good -- when the thing wasn't
skipping. The skipping adds a Keystone Cops atmosphere
to the movie which can be funny -- but may not have
been quite so funny in the early 80's if you shelled
out $400 for one of these players, plus the cost of
disks.

In all fairness, I must assume that the skipping is
due to the age of the unit and its stylus, and perhaps
to the disk. I also tried Woody Allen's "Take the
Money and Run" and that also skipped at times.

Aside from the skipping, my biggest complaint is the
assortment of hums, whooshes, whines, fan-belt
squeaks, and other noises that the player makes during
the loading and unloading. It's also fairly noisy
while playing. I noticed that when you pause and
resume, you don't come back to exactly the same place.
How charming. It also has a crude form of scene
selection, which surprised me. 

Classic technology that's fun to fool with -- no
offense Alex, but thank goodness for VHS, and later,
DVD.

Regards,

John


--- John Dilks K2TQN <oldradio at worldnet.att.net>
wrote:

> Visit our web site - See http://www.njarc.org
> _______________________________________________
> 
> I thought I saw Sal and John R there?  John, you
> look good in kilts.
> 
> At 08:06 PM 10/13/2007, you wrote:
> >Visit our web site - See http://www.njarc.org
> >_______________________________________________
> >At the NJARC meeting last night someone mentioned a
> theremin concert coming
> >up in the near future.
> >I hope its nothing like this:
> >
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSJ9RFJim_E
> >
> >The size of the antenna is very unique.
> >
> >I really enjoyed meeting everyone last night.
> >
> >--
> >73
> >Larry
> >WA2DGD
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> NJARC at mailman.qth.net
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/njarc
> 



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