In article <9fdc413a-29c7-409d-9f8a-d1af0bdff73f@outlook.com>,
Robin <rbw@outlook.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/2023 21:30, Tweed wrote:

> > If VM are running asymmetrically on XGS-PON they are going to
> > really struggle against the likes of CityFibre, especially as
> > they seem intent on charging 50 to 100% more. I'm just waiting
> > for CF to go live so I can tell VM exactly what I think of their
> > recent price hikes. Unless of course CF and VM merge, which has
> > been rumoured from time to time.
> >

> VM have made no secret of what they are doing with XGS-PON.

> I looked hard at switching from VM now Hyperoptic are live here but
> I'd have ended up paying more for a symmetrical 150 service than I
> pay to VM for 130 down/30 up *plus* unlimited anytime calls. (I
> have of course haggled down from the list price.) The faster
> upload just weren't worth it to me. YMMV.

A word of caution if I may something you may like to check.

Where I live, we're getting BRSK Fibre. They have an offer at the
moment £18/month for 24 months them £25/month. This for 100 up and
100 down. That's plenty for me.

Tempting to me on VM. Until you work out they use CGNAT which means
you don't get a real IP4 address. So no chance of running any sort of
server. Their website claims they can supply a static IP for an extra
£5 /month which would give you the ability to run a server but people
who have phoned up are told there are none available.

Trying to get information out of them is near impossible, they'll
ring you back but they don't of course.

Then there's the thorny issue of poles. There are no poles where I
live it's all U/G but as I understand it BRSK will put poles up for
their delivery. That's not doing anything for their popularity round
here.

Bob.

On 11/10/2023 09:40, Brian Gaff wrote:
> Actually, the very earliest VHS had worse performance to the N1700, What you
> might be thinking of was the N1500/1, both had times a bit like cooker
> clocks and the tapes only ran an hour. The N1700, had a wider bandwidth and
> the tapes were twice as long as the linear speed was slower. The video heads
> were angled so that they did not read the adjacent tracks. The writing speed
> for Video was nearly twice as much as the early VHS machines. And yes the
> tapes were still the double decker design. Whichever way you store the tape
> it still has to wrap around a drum at an angle so the problems of tape
> slippage and stretching was about the same of course
> Funnily enough, Scotch tape were the best choice for the Philips machines
> due to a special back coating that was low friction, and did not stick to
> itself like most other makes of hi bias tapes like basf did. When this
> sticking happened the edges of the tapes began to fold as it stretched
> affecting both the analogue audio and the tracking pulse track which were
> located near the edge of the tape.
> I happen to think that if Philips had stuck with the system they would in
> the end have won because they were doing sound in video in demonstration
> versions way before Sony or JVC, but they were slow getting it to market and
> adopting the new Grundig system using the same tapes that ran twice as long
> again. Vhs won the day over betamax due to the take up of rented tapes and
> the mass adoption of the format for porn tapes of course. Sex sells.

You're right with it being the N1500 rather than the N1700. Photos that
I can find online show an analogue clock.

However (and it is over 40 years ago!) I have a distinct memory of the
one at school have a large box at the rear of the VCR which protruded a
few inches above the main VCR box, with a clock that had 1/2" knurled
plastic "silver" knobs on the side of the box, for setting the clock and
maybe the timed recordings. That almost suggests that the timer unit was
a separate plug-in box added to a VCR that innately could only record
from a baseband (eg camera) source. I've never found a photo or
reference about that double-height box on the back, so I'm wondering
whether it was a figment of my imagination.

The whole story of 1970s consumer VCRs is a real tale of woe. Betamax is
often reported to have been technically better (*), but it wasn't
marketed as well and didn't get the market penetration into pre-recorded
rental tapes than VHS did. Ah, I've just made an unintentional funny,
given your reference to porn and "sex sells", and my use of "penetration".

It was interesting to see how VHS managed to improve and evolve: firstly
with S-VHS machines which often had timebase-correction to try to smooth
out timing jitter (wiggly vertical lines) in the playback of a
recording, and secondly with the LP (SP/2) and EP (SP/3) recording
modes. And of course the ability to record the NICAM soundtrack as a
hi-fi track embedded in the video tracks.

I still marvel at the ability of VHS to preserve a decent picture (even
in colour, for SP and EP recordings) when the tape is played fast while
searching for the start of a recording. I presume the head drum must
tilt very slightly to retain good tracking when the tape is moving more
quickly in relation to the rotation of the head, so the effective
tracking angle changes.

The advent of program counters which listed tape positions in real units
HH:MM:SS rather than some arbitrary mechanical dial number, was a real
boon. That involves the control track being read as the tape is played
at normal or fast-shuttle or even FF/REW speed, and a frame counter
being incremented or decremented to derive the HH:MM:SS time.

I remember in the AV Room at school (which used early VHS machines with
mechanical counters) that we had to index the tapes manually and write
the counter position on the spine label, for the start of each of
several recordings on the tape, so a teacher could quickly take the
right tape off the shelf and go to the correct place for the programme
he/she wanted. I have very pleasant (**) memories of teaching one young
female teacher (only a couple of years older than me when I was in the
Upper Sixth) how to use the VCR, and her "ooooo Matron" comment when I
described how you had to insert the tape very gently into the
top-loading cage and then press down on the cage with the fingers of
both hands, applying equal pressure on both sides to avoid the cage
jamming. And yes, I quite deliberately hammed-up my description to make
it sound erotic. I wonder what became of Miss B. Scary to think that
she'll be in her mid sixties now.

(*) I can't comment, having never seen a Betamax VCR or playback of a
recording on it.

(**) That's "pleasant" as in Billy Connolly's comment "that was... very
pleasant" when he was compereing a TV awards ceremony and Liz Hurley,
minus a bra, "bounced" down the stairs as she came on to present an
award. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BkwnGq2yaA

On 11/10/2023 12:14, Bob Latham wrote:

> A word of caution if I may something you may like to check.
>
> Where I live, we're getting BRSK Fibre. They have an offer at the
> moment £18/month for 24 months them £25/month. This for 100 up and
> 100 down. That's plenty for me.
>
> Tempting to me on VM. Until you work out they use CGNAT which means
> you don't get a real IP4 address. So no chance of running any sort of
> server. Their website claims they can supply a static IP for an extra
> £5 /month which would give you the ability to run a server but people
> who have phoned up are told there are none available.

Good point. Hyperoptic also use CGNAT for ipv4. It seemed I cd use
ipv6 but others have reported it's not an easy curve. I'll own up it
was another factor in my decision to hold on to nurse.

--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

On 11/10/2023 12:14, Bob Latham wrote:
> In article <9fdc413a-29c7-409d-9f8a-d1af0bdff73f@outlook.com>,
> Robin <rbw@outlook.com> wrote:
>> On 10/10/2023 21:30, Tweed wrote:
>
>>> If VM are running asymmetrically on XGS-PON they are going to
>>> really struggle against the likes of CityFibre, especially as
>>> they seem intent on charging 50 to 100% more. I'm just waiting
>>> for CF to go live so I can tell VM exactly what I think of their
>>> recent price hikes. Unless of course CF and VM merge, which has
>>> been rumoured from time to time.
>>>
>
>> VM have made no secret of what they are doing with XGS-PON.
>
>> I looked hard at switching from VM now Hyperoptic are live here but
>> I'd have ended up paying more for a symmetrical 150 service than I
>> pay to VM for 130 down/30 up *plus* unlimited anytime calls. (I
>> have of course haggled down from the list price.) The faster
>> upload just weren't worth it to me. YMMV.
>
> A word of caution if I may something you may like to check.
>
> Where I live, we're getting BRSK Fibre. They have an offer at the
> moment £18/month for 24 months them £25/month. This for 100 up and
> 100 down. That's plenty for me.
>
> Tempting to me on VM. Until you work out they use CGNAT which means
> you don't get a real IP4 address. So no chance of running any sort of
> server. Their website claims they can supply a static IP for an extra
> £5 /month which would give you the ability to run a server but people
> who have phoned up are told there are none available.
>
> Trying to get information out of them is near impossible, they'll
> ring you back but they don't of course.
>
> Then there's the thorny issue of poles. There are no poles where I
> live it's all U/G but as I understand it BRSK will put poles up for
> their delivery. That's not doing anything for their popularity round
> here.
>
> Bob.
>
Sounds like Truespeed :( Not dure if they use CGNAT though.

Mark

There was an AV version of most of the Philips recorders. They had bnc
connections at the back. I never saw the additional box myself, but there
were also time lapse versions of the N1700, that recorded still images a
frame at a time. We used them in Decca to record a whole days radar images
from a cart to video, which meant you could run through ship movements in
under an hour a day!

As far as I'm aware, all the trick play functions on vcrs are done by a
combination of many heads on the drum and some heads mounted on piezo
electric elements that twisted the heads as the tape changed speeds. That
was a tick learned from Video 8 camcorders of course. It was also used by
Philips and grundig in their flip over video format that came too late to
compete. I did have a look at some but even though my eyes were fading by
then, even I could see that there was far more noise in the picture, after
all they were only using half the width of the tape.
I did once attend a demonstration of a German new format by a maker best
known for car radios at the time, in partnership with BASF. It was called
LVR, and it had a frame store in the hardware and there were multiple linear
tracks down the length of a tape, and rather like an 8 track, it stepped up
and down the tracks with the gap between the turn around and switching
covered over by the frame store. But the speed the tape whizzed through at
and the highly complex mechanics meant that apart from a few demo models it
was never made for the public. I thought it was a stupid idea at the time,
though the picture quality was good.
Brian

--

--:
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...
briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"NY" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:dxqdnU_WN5hJELv4nZ2dnZfqnPWdnZ2d@brightview.co.uk...
> On 11/10/2023 09:40, Brian Gaff wrote:
>> Actually, the very earliest VHS had worse performance to the N1700, What
>> you
>> might be thinking of was the N1500/1, both had times a bit like cooker
>> clocks and the tapes only ran an hour. The N1700, had a wider bandwidth
>> and
>> the tapes were twice as long as the linear speed was slower. The video
>> heads
>> were angled so that they did not read the adjacent tracks. The writing
>> speed
>> for Video was nearly twice as much as the early VHS machines. And yes the
>> tapes were still the double decker design. Whichever way you store the
>> tape
>> it still has to wrap around a drum at an angle so the problems of tape
>> slippage and stretching was about the same of course
>> Funnily enough, Scotch tape were the best choice for the Philips
>> machines
>> due to a special back coating that was low friction, and did not stick to
>> itself like most other makes of hi bias tapes like basf did. When this
>> sticking happened the edges of the tapes began to fold as it stretched
>> affecting both the analogue audio and the tracking pulse track which were
>> located near the edge of the tape.
>> I happen to think that if Philips had stuck with the system they would
>> in
>> the end have won because they were doing sound in video in demonstration
>> versions way before Sony or JVC, but they were slow getting it to market
>> and
>> adopting the new Grundig system using the same tapes that ran twice as
>> long
>> again. Vhs won the day over betamax due to the take up of rented tapes
>> and
>> the mass adoption of the format for porn tapes of course. Sex sells.
>
> You're right with it being the N1500 rather than the N1700. Photos that I
> can find online show an analogue clock.
>
> However (and it is over 40 years ago!) I have a distinct memory of the one
> at school have a large box at the rear of the VCR which protruded a few
> inches above the main VCR box, with a clock that had 1/2" knurled plastic
> "silver" knobs on the side of the box, for setting the clock and maybe the
> timed recordings. That almost suggests that the timer unit was a separate
> plug-in box added to a VCR that innately could only record from a baseband
> (eg camera) source. I've never found a photo or reference about that
> double-height box on the back, so I'm wondering whether it was a figment
> of my imagination.
>
> The whole story of 1970s consumer VCRs is a real tale of woe. Betamax is
> often reported to have been technically better (*), but it wasn't marketed
> as well and didn't get the market penetration into pre-recorded rental
> tapes than VHS did. Ah, I've just made an unintentional funny, given your
> reference to porn and "sex sells", and my use of "penetration".
>
> It was interesting to see how VHS managed to improve and evolve: firstly
> with S-VHS machines which often had timebase-correction to try to smooth
> out timing jitter (wiggly vertical lines) in the playback of a recording,
> and secondly with the LP (SP/2) and EP (SP/3) recording modes. And of
> course the ability to record the NICAM soundtrack as a hi-fi track
> embedded in the video tracks.
>
> I still marvel at the ability of VHS to preserve a decent picture (even in
> colour, for SP and EP recordings) when the tape is played fast while
> searching for the start of a recording. I presume the head drum must tilt
> very slightly to retain good tracking when the tape is moving more quickly
> in relation to the rotation of the head, so the effective tracking angle
> changes.
>
> The advent of program counters which listed tape positions in real units
> HH:MM:SS rather than some arbitrary mechanical dial number, was a real
> boon. That involves the control track being read as the tape is played at
> normal or fast-shuttle or even FF/REW speed, and a frame counter being
> incremented or decremented to derive the HH:MM:SS time.
>
> I remember in the AV Room at school (which used early VHS machines with
> mechanical counters) that we had to index the tapes manually and write the
> counter position on the spine label, for the start of each of several
> recordings on the tape, so a teacher could quickly take the right tape off
> the shelf and go to the correct place for the programme he/she wanted. I
> have very pleasant (**) memories of teaching one young female teacher
> (only a couple of years older than me when I was in the Upper Sixth) how
> to use the VCR, and her "ooooo Matron" comment when I described how you
> had to insert the tape very gently into the top-loading cage and then
> press down on the cage with the fingers of both hands, applying equal
> pressure on both sides to avoid the cage jamming. And yes, I quite
> deliberately hammed-up my description to make it sound erotic. I wonder
> what became of Miss B. Scary to think that she'll be in her mid sixties
> now.
>
>
> (*) I can't comment, having never seen a Betamax VCR or playback of a
> recording on it.
>
> (**) That's "pleasant" as in Billy Connolly's comment "that was... very
> pleasant" when he was compereing a TV awards ceremony and Liz Hurley,
> minus a bra, "bounced" down the stairs as she came on to present an award.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BkwnGq2yaA