From: MDuPree@world.std.com (Micky DuPree)
Subject: Re: Is there a safe rewinder?
Summary: I baby my old VCRs because I hate the newer models.
Keywords: rewinder, digital auto tracking, on-screen programming
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 07:28:14 GMT

Thanks to Mike Schuster and Jim Winters for the pointers about the Radio
Shack rewinder.

Someone else pointed out to me that he's used Ambico and Solidex
rewinders similar to mine without trouble.  (Maybe there's something to
the "Flaky Wall Current" theory after all.)

Yet another party dumped a load of smug, self-superior, ignorant
misinformation in my mailbox.  (What leads people to go out of their way
to do this is really mystifying.)  I won't mention names, but I do
recall that a much more reasonable chap posted on the subject of
rewinders a little while back using some of the same assumptions, so
I'll address some of those assumptions and explain why they don't apply,
at least to my particular case.

    Rewinding a tape is almost negligible load on the VCR, and may
    actually be good exercise for some of the belts in it (to keep
    things from stiffening up with age).

Far from being negligible, the belts, idlers, and motors involved in
rewinding and fast-forwarding have usually been the first parts to
develop problems on my VCRs.  The belts and idlers are comparatively
easy to replace, but once the motors start to go -- at least on MY
machines (your mileage may vary, as one net-wag puts it) -- I may as
well pack it in.  Even after replacing the motor, which is not a trivial
expense, I've discovered that many machines are just never their same
old perky selves again.

    You can buy a new VCR when the one you have wears out -- and it
    will, since other parts will wear out long before the rewinding
    part -- but you cannot as easily replace tapes destroyed by
    rewinders.

Don't take me for a total git.  After my experience with the first
malfunctioning rewinder, I never trusted archive tapes to a rewinder
again, only time-shift tapes.  At least a year or two ago, time-shift
tapes made up the bulk of what I was watching.

Finally, a gripe session, not with the guy who sent me email, but with
the manufacturers of VCRs.  I may have left some pertinent gripes off
the list, but these are the big sore points with me, and this is why,
even if expense were not a factor, I want to baby and pamper the
machines I have as long as possible by buying a good rewinder rather
than simply buying new VCRs.  To me, the new machines on the market
SUCK.  (The uninterested can hit n now.)  Let me itemize some of the
extremely dubious features:

1) Digital auto tracking.
    Sounds great in theory, especially if you've ever had problems with
the tracking straying while you were dubbing.  However, in practice,
I've never come across a machine with this feature that didn't lock in
the tracking at a less-than-optimal position (complete with visible bad-
tracking lines) and then hold it there for the rest of the tape.  It's
getting harder and harder to find a new mid-priced machine that doesn't
have digital auto tracking.  Maybe in a few years they'll make it more
sensitive and run it in a feedback loop to always stay on top of the
best tracking point even if that should stray, but until then, this a
case of a deliberate design bug being fobbed off as a feature on the
unsuspecting.

2) Two-button Up/Down tracking controls (usually on the remote).
    Even on the new models that aren't cursed with digital auto
tracking, you're forced to adjust the tracking by guessing how long you
should hold down a button so as to optimally place yourself between the
obvious points of bad tracking.  At least with a tracking knob you can
see the physical distance between the points where the tracking goes off
and thus position the knob halfway in between.  But with the two-button
tracking controls, you need an oscilloscope to truly determine the
optimum point.

3) Remote programming or remote operation ONLY.
    I don't mind being able to program remotely, but I do mind not
having the option of programming on the machine itself.  I've had
remotes die on me, I've had a young nephew "tidy up" by throwing the
remote away while no one was looking, and I've temporarily misplaced
remotes just long enough that it was important that I program the timer
now and worry about locating the remote later.  Every time this has
happened at my mother's house or my brother's house, this has meant that
the timer simply did not get programmed, because their machines give you
no alternative to remote programming and without the remote control you
are sh*t out of luck.  In the case of my mother's machine, it also meant
that no recording got done at all, because her machine doesn't even have
a manual RECORD button on the box itself.  Every function except PLAY,
STOP, and POWER is restricted to the remote control.  Now, before
someone points it out to me, I know that there are steps one can take to
safeguard against this, most notably buying a universal remote and using
the original remote as backup, but my point is that remote-operation-
only is a BUG, not a feature.

4) On-screen programming ONLY.
    First, this requires you to have a monitor handy in order to program
the timer, set the clock, etc.  This is seldom a problem in and of
itself, but there have been occasions, when it would have been useful to
just be able to hook the VCR up to a cable in a room without a monitor
and simply program it to record.  A more serious annoyance with this
"feature" is that it forces you to interrupt whoever's currently
watching the room monitor in order to program the machine.  Of course,
some people's solution to this problem would be to buy a second monitor
just for this purpose, but once again, this is a BUG, not a feature.

5) All my current (functioning) machines will allow me to modify the
timer instructions EVEN WHILE THE VCR IS TIMER-RECORDING.  These are JVC
or Zenith (JVC clone) machines from several years ago.  It used to be a
standard feature on JVC and a few other brands (Fisher, I think).  I do
not believe that there is a machine with this feature on the market
currently.  If you discover that you want to modify the timer
instructions (add an event, delete an event, modify an event) on a new
machine while that machine is timer-recording, you must take the machine
off timer first.  For many, perhaps most, new machines, this STOPS the
recording as well as exiting timer mode.  An incredibly stupid design,
and yet now standard.  (If anyone knows of a new machine that will
permit instruction amendment during timer-recording for under $750 U.S.,
PLEASE email me the info.)

I scan the classified ads looking for old JVC and Fisher machines for
sale, but alas, no one seems to want to sell any more than I do.

-Micky

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