In article ,
Chris Isbell wrote:
Whatever version you choose, your will need to take great care to
avoid whiskers of wire causing a short circuit and possibly damaging
the amplifier.

I'd say there's so much resistance in the plug/socket combination that's
unlikely ;-)

--
*Two many clicks spoil the browse *

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

In article , Dave Plowman
wrote:
In article , Jim Lesurf
wrote:
Since I'm listening to an Armstrong 626 at the moment, I'm not quite
as pessimistic about DIN loudspeaker sockets/plugs as yourself. :-)

And didn't you help design it? ;-)

I admit to having made some alterations (improvements (?) ) to its innards
- but only after it had already been on sale for a few years. Hence the DIN
sockets were not actually my decision. FX: hands being washed However
after a few decades of using them I'd say they can work OK if you take
care, but they would not be my first choice. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

In article , Girth
wrote:


Have you ever seen a Beomaster 8000 Jim? I ask because I have one of
those, and I'm wondering what's it's like from a technical POV.

Sorry, I'm afraid that I can't remember if I have ever seen one, and can't
recall anything about it at the moment. :-/ I may have done, but have
forgotten. If you can give some more details, and/or put a pic on the web
it may jog my memory, but I am not sure.

In general terms, though, my personal view is that B&O tend to get more of
a 'kicking' than they tend to deserve. They have tended to make 'lifestyle'
products where visual styling, ergonomics, etc, are important. And with a
few exceptions, were not exactly 'cutting edge' in terms of performance.
However my impression tended to be that they sounded quite good if used as
part of a suitable system as the makers intended, and I knew various people
who gained much enjoyment from using B&O equipment to listen to music. All
depends upon the item, though.

FWIW I also used a B&O TV for around 20 years and felt it gave an excellent
picture and sound (albeit mono). Only replaced it recently in order to get
a 'widescreen' set with SCART inputs (and NICAM) as a result of buying a
DVD player. Although mono, I felt that the inherent sound and picture
quality of the old B&O was better than the newer TV. The new one sounds OK
via a decent stereo, though.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

In article ,
Don Pearce wrote:
If your old TV had a delta tube rather than a modern in-line gun, then
it used the old phosphors. They weren't as bright as those used now,
but they gave far better colour rendition - particularly skin tones.

Some later shadow mask tubes had rather orange 'reds' to increase the
brightness, though. But you're correct in principle. I stayed with a
(rather modified) Philips 25" G6 for about 20 years because no newer set
came near it in either colour rendition or resolution. Only the advent of
S-VHS forced me to change.

Squint your eyes as you look round any TV showroom today, and all you
will see is purple, particularly in the Sony section. And that is with
UK-sourced material; once you get into NTSC conversions purple and
yellow are all you get.

Surely purple could be tweaked, since it's a mixture of red and blue? I'd
agree the reds still aren't as good as the old NTSC phosphors, but they're
much better than they were.

--
*He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 18:02:17 +0100, Dave Plowman
wrote:

In article ,
Don Pearce wrote:
If your old TV had a delta tube rather than a modern in-line gun, then
it used the old phosphors. They weren't as bright as those used now,
but they gave far better colour rendition - particularly skin tones.

Some later shadow mask tubes had rather orange 'reds' to increase the
brightness, though. But you're correct in principle. I stayed with a
(rather modified) Philips 25" G6 for about 20 years because no newer set
came near it in either colour rendition or resolution. Only the advent of
S-VHS forced me to change.

My old TV was a Phillips as well. In its time I gave it two new tubes
(wasn't the game of snakes and ladders on the convergence board fun?).
But the second tube was pretty certainly a recon, even though I bought
it as new. I had to switch to a new TV then. Sigh!

Squint your eyes as you look round any TV showroom today, and all you
will see is purple, particularly in the Sony section. And that is with
UK-sourced material; once you get into NTSC conversions purple and
yellow are all you get.

Surely purple could be tweaked, since it's a mixture of red and blue? I'd
agree the reds still aren't as good as the old NTSC phosphors, but they're
much better than they were.

You'd have thought the purple could be sorted out - it always looks
particularly bad in the shadow areas. Somehow that colour seems to
have been adopted as a sort of standard. Truly horrible.

Incidentally I was on the design team for the first single standard,
single board TV from Rank Bush Murphy. Not sure I should have admitted
that! - my first job.

d

_____________________________

http://www.pearce.uk.com

In article , Don Pearce
writes
On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:40:09 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

FWIW I also used a B&O TV for around 20 years and felt it gave an excellent
picture and sound (albeit mono). Only replaced it recently in order to get
a 'widescreen' set with SCART inputs (and NICAM) as a result of buying a
DVD player. Although mono, I felt that the inherent sound and picture
quality of the old B&O was better than the newer TV. The new one sounds OK
via a decent stereo, though.

Slainte,

Jim

If your old TV had a delta tube rather than a modern in-line gun, then
it used the old phosphors. They weren't as bright as those used now,
but they gave far better colour rendition - particularly skin tones.

Squint your eyes as you look round any TV showroom today, and all you
will see is purple, particularly in the Sony section. And that is with
UK-sourced material; once you get into NTSC conversions purple and
yellow are all you get.

d

_____________________________

http://www.pearce.uk.com

FWIW I've yet got to see a picture as good as our 7 year old B&O as long
as its got a good analogue PAL signal that is!..
--
Tony Sayer

In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
FWIW I've yet got to see a picture as good as our 7 year old B&O as long
as its got a good analogue PAL signal that is!..

If you can ignore some movement artifacts, digital is better.

--
*Why is the word abbreviation so long?

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:40:09 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

FWIW I also used a B&O TV for around 20 years and felt it gave an
excellent picture and sound (albeit mono).

If your old TV had a delta tube rather than a modern in-line gun, then
it used the old phosphors. They weren't as bright as those used now, but
they gave far better colour rendition - particularly skin tones.

This seems like a diversion into a 'television' group topic, however I'll
risk prolonging it as I may get some useful comments. :-)

The B&O seemed to be to be a good picture in two particular respects. One
was that the colours - especially those relying upon the shade of 'red' -
seemed to me to be more natural than on other sets. From what you and Dave
have been writing, I assume this is what you would have expected. I'd
assumed they used a different phosphor that I just happened to prefer.

The other was that the effective 'gamma' value seemed more comfortable.

With the set I now have it seems impossible to adjust the 'brightness' and
'contrast' levels so as to consistently get a comfortable image. The image
keeps coming out too 'variable' from one program/channel to another. For
any given setting, some programs seem to have excessive contrast with many
low-level details 'lost' in black, whilst other programs (with the set
unchanged) come out washy. My impression is that I'd like to adjust the
gamma so as to lift the darker levels to being brighter, but leaving the
brighter levels almost the same. Alas the new TV has no control that does
this that I can find. (All adjustments are done using the remote.)

Whilst moaning about this, I'll add one other irritation. :-) The new set
shows an 'oversized' picture. i.e. lines at the top and bottom are out of
view in the 4:3 and 16:9 modes, and the image sides are also out of view.
(In 4:3 they are clipped by the brightness being turned off.)

I can confirm this by showing an image from my DVD, freezing the image, and
then zooming down the DVD output. This shows a 5-10% loss of image area
(linear percentage) around the picture when in 'normal' scale.

I had a similar problem with the B&O when it was purchased. However this
came with the circuit diagram, etc, so I was able to open up the back, and
with the aid of a mirror and some trimmer tools, adjusted the image so as
to see the entire picture. Alas, I don't have the details for my current
set, and can't find any controls to adjust this. :-/

It seems to be standard practice to produce sets adjusted like this. I
suspect that the reason is it gives a 'bigger looking picture' so people
may prefer it in a shop to one where the image is sized so as to show the
*entire* image on the same physical screen area.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

In article , Dave Plowman
writes
In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
FWIW I've yet got to see a picture as good as our 7 year old B&O as long
as its got a good analogue PAL signal that is!..

If you can ignore some movement artifacts, digital is better.

Well I've spent many happy hours switching between DTV and analogue and
in every respect the analogue piccy has the edge over the DTV one and
that's via SCART as well as RF modulated, from both freeview and
satellite.

However a lot depends on the source and that isn't always as *right* as
it should be..


--
Tony Sayer

In article ,
Don Pearce wrote:
Oh I don't find that. What I'm remembering is the really good studio
feeds (remember how sharp Frost on Sunday used to be?), particularly
from the last generation of tube cameras.

Early chip cameras were poor in some ways compared to tube, but this isn't
so now.

In comparison, digital has that nasty "painted by numbers" look,

Hmm - you mean less noise? It's almost a CD versus LP argument. ;-)

and those appalling enhanced edges round everything are just horrible.

That's down to camera set up - VAK.

Removing the PAL footprint from a colour picture has many advantages. Of
course the bean counters will seek to minimise these advantages if it
saves money.

--
*I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn