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Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

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Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#81

Post by yellowapple »

zerocrates wrote: post #63
funwares wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IMDb page for the film [0] does appear to have an Emmy win as trivia, but I can't find anything about this documentary on the 2013 Sports Emmy Awards Wikipedia page [1] or its source [2]. It is not listed as 'Outstanding Sports Documentary' winner or even as nominee. Same for the 2014 Sports Emmy Awards. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2883206/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/34th_Sports_Emmy_Awards [2] https:…

This was aired on MSG Network, a local network for New York sports, so I figured it was probably a local Emmy (like when your local news talks about winning some large number of Emmys). Indeed, that documentary won in the "Sports: Documentary" category in the 2014 New York Emmys ceremony. See this list of the winners (note: PDF): https://www.nyemmys.org/media/files/files/7c2ad17b/57th_NY_E...

Are there local versions of the Grammys, Oscars, and Tonys, too? Maybe an EGOT ain't as out of reach as I once thought.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#82

Post by ghaff »

btilly wrote: post #69
ghaff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't clear to me why it's unreasonable to have different pricing for rental vs. owning. In any case, the general trend seems to be towards not owning digital media in general.

Which occasionally has unexpected consequences. The licensing of the music on certain movies didn't anticipate the internet. And the studios never came to an agreement. As a result you can buy DVDs of movies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullets_Over_Broadway , but you can't rent them off of any streaming service. Given that most of us no longer have DVD players, th…

For that matter, the licensing of the music on certain TV series didn't anticipate DVDs. Northern Exposure and WKRP in Cincinnati were missing a lot of the original music on the DVDs--although this is apparently partly corrected in the newer complete series releases.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#83

Post by delecti »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #78
delecti wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised at how the signals are actually recorded on tapes. For VHS tapes for example, it's actually a series of stacked "diagonal" lines of signal. Imagine a sequence of symbols like \\\\\\\\\\\, except at any given horizontal point along the tape there are about 5 stacked traces of signal. They're also diagonal on audio cassettes, but much less "slanted" relative to the tape's length. I don't remember…

Technology Connections did an excellent video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfuARMCyTvg I'd recommend pretty much all of his video series to anyone in the HN crowd that's at all interested in analog media formats: https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections/playlists

Yeah, that channel is where I learned it as well. I probably should have linked it.

Basically every video he does scratches that itch of learning a new thing about the world. The analog video series is indeed especially fantastic (laserdisc, VHS, B&W vs color TV, blu-ray, etc).

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#84

Post by Animats »

I came across a Cartrivision rewinder in a surplus store once. It was a simple device, with a motor, some limit switches, a key switch, and a counter. The counter tracked how many cartridges had been rewound, for billing purposes.

Other bad ideas of that era: Polaroid once developed a VHS cartridge with a mechanical counter of how many times it had been played. After some number of plays, the tape jammed.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#85

Post by Y_Y »

delecti wrote: post #70
danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

You might be surprised at how the signals are actually recorded on tapes. For VHS tapes for example, it's actually a series of stacked "diagonal" lines of signal. Imagine a sequence of symbols like \\\\\\\\\\\, except at any given horizontal point along the tape there are about 5 stacked traces of signal. They're also diagonal on audio cassettes, but much less "slanted" relative to the tape's length. I don't remember…

hence the name: Vertical Helical Scan

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#86

Post by delecti »

Y_Y wrote: post #85
delecti wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised at how the signals are actually recorded on tapes. For VHS tapes for example, it's actually a series of stacked "diagonal" lines of signal. Imagine a sequence of symbols like \\\\\\\\\\\, except at any given horizontal point along the tape there are about 5 stacked traces of signal. They're also diagonal on audio cassettes, but much less "slanted" relative to the tape's length. I don't remember…

hence the name: Vertical Helical Scan

That's a backronym. VHS originally was an abbreviation for "Video Home System".

Edit: also, the helical scan on a VHS tape can't really be said to be "vertical". A helical scan already implies a direction along the length of the helix, and "vertical helix" doesn't really make sense in the context of scanning down the length of a magnetic tape. Adding "vertical" to the actual term "helical scan" can really only be an attempt to back-fit an acronym to "VHS".

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#87

Post by kmeisthax »

delecti wrote: post #70
danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

You might be surprised at how the signals are actually recorded on tapes. For VHS tapes for example, it's actually a series of stacked "diagonal" lines of signal. Imagine a sequence of symbols like \\\\\\\\\\\, except at any given horizontal point along the tape there are about 5 stacked traces of signal. They're also diagonal on audio cassettes, but much less "slanted" relative to the tape's length. I don't remember…

Audiotape is - or at least, Phillips compact cassettes are - recorded linearly. The recording method you're talking about for videotape is called helical scan, because the heads trace out a helix pattern. You might be confusing that with the head azimuth, which does alternate between fields on VHS to reduce cross-talk or something.

Some other bits of jank in the VHS spec:

- Because the tape is moving while it's being written, it stretches the signal out on the tape. This is perfectly fine for normal playback. But when the tape is not moving, the signal's now too wide for the playback head, and you can only read about half the picture. That's why your VCR had bars of static whenever you paused (unless you sprung for the four-head model)

- Audio is still recorded linearly, and you can't exactly chuck a linear head in an angled, spinning drum. So you have to put the audio head further away from the tape. And that distance is fixed; changing it means your machine is now playing audio out of sync with the video.

Also, there is an extension to VHS that lets you record audio along the video in the helical area, it's called VHS Hi-Fi and it improves the audio dramatically with the trade-off that any minor video glitches will add pops to the audio. Humans are way more sensitive to gaps in audio than video, after all.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#88

Post by dpkirchner »

RangerScience wrote: post #75
antisthenes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather hear about their porn habits than endless virtue signalling that's prevalent in the 21st century USA.

real / not real question but like when does lamenting about virtue signaling itself become virtue signaling?

And when will the people crying about virtue signaling admit the concept goes way, way back. Look at how popular necklaces with crosses are, as a prominent example.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#89

Post by sneak »

patapong wrote: post #73

Fascinating. These red tapes feel like a ridiculous and cumbersome idea. Thinking about it, their concept won in the end though, in terms of media consumption and ownership... Our current streaming services feel much more akin to these tapes, where you rely on a centralized entity to decide what you can watch and how, rather than infinitely repayable and transferable video tapes.

My NAS running Jellyfin would like a word.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#90

Post by jrnichols »

downvoteme1 wrote: post #7

[flagged]

I agree. After reading this article, that was the first thing I thought of. Copy protection mechanisms like these were downright obnoxious and it's no surprise that customers get sick of them and go with the cracked/pirated versions. Things like DiVX were doomed from the start.
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