consultation?

Hi Steve -

Soccer, no – skiing, yes. Jordan, now coached by Hiram & Hilary, is
now just winding down the cross-country season.

Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I’ve been working on some
projects at home & they’ve been incredibly time-consuming.

I would be happy to take a look at your current audio/theater
configuration & make some recommendations.

To answer your immediate question, I would recommend the following:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/B0016GCI84/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=172282&s=electronics

It’s a Sony RDR-VX560.

Stand-alone VCRs are hard to find these days, and sadly Blu-Ray/VCRs
don’t exist (Blu-Ray is the latest generation of HD Video), but DVD/
VCR units are quite common, as you mentioned.

This model offers all the features you need & has one key feature:
1080p HDMI Upscaling. Basically what this allows is a single high-
definition cable to carry both audio and video for both the DVD and
VCR. This simplifies installation, configuration & cable management.
I think you’ll find this Sony handles damaged DVDs quite well.

I do hope the college updates their library – ultimately all of these
materials will be available online.

If the Sony looks appealing, I would be happy to get it for you & plan
to install it, too – or else free to grab it yourself. The prices at
Amazon are usually very good.

I’m not free this week, but if you want to get together next week (or
whenever is convenient), just let me know.

Best,

hunter greene
Brainspiral Technologies, Inc.
hunter@brainspiral.com

http://brainspiral.com

w: 413-458-5755
c: 413-281-4918

On Feb 14, 2009, at 3:13 PM, > wrote:

> Hi Hunter,
>
> I hope you are well, and finding something to do with your time
> now that your nephew has finally run out of soccer games for the
> time being.
> We are in need of several kinds of techno-consultation, and were
> hoping that you might be up for a bit of work in that direction.
> For one thing, we need to get a new laptop, and thought that you
> might be able to offer some guidance on that. Second, our whole
> entertainment complex is a complete mess — jerry-built in a way
> that’s falling apart, in need of some equipment updating, and
> completely unorganized in terms of how to tie our stereo set-up in
> with our newer HD-viewing equipment. We at once thought of you for
> the former project, and Steve Fix said you were just the guy for the
> latter. Do you think you might be willing and available to spend
> some surveying the set-up and suggesting some possibilities?
> There’s no tremendous rush on this, except for one aspect of the A-V
> situation (hence my finally getting around to e-mailing you):
> namely, a sudden VCR crisis, about which more below.
> Feel free to ignore the following part of this query, if you
> don’t have time for the foregoing anyway.
> I wondered if you might just have some brand-name advice about
> the VCR off the top of your head, which you could let me know so
> that I can address that immediate need on my own, and and that you
> could then coordinate this with the rest of our equipment if and
> when you have a chance for the full overview. The crisis is that
> our VCR has died, I think (it looks to me as if its heads are worn
> out — it can’t hold a picture when I record, and to some extent
> when I play back good recordings). When we first started thinking
> of calling upon your help for the A-V situation (or that of someone
> else), we realized that a DVR may be the way to go for our
> mainstream use, but we also need to retain VCR capabilities because
> of our library of films (which we both teach) on videocassette. So,
> figuring that this would be a minor part of the set-up in the longer
> run, I thought I’d just go buy a mid-range, relatively inexpensive
> VCR; but I seem to have discovered that VCRs are only sold no!
> w in combo with DVD players. Our principal needs for DVD are a bit
> more exacting than for video: I need good slow-mo, freeze-frame, if
> possible reverse slow-mo or step capabilities; and even more
> importantly, we need a DVD player that’s comparatively good at
> handling without problems discs that are dirty, scratched, etc.
> (The Toshiba we currently use is okay, but terrible at this: it
> freezes at the drop of a hat, which is bad, since the DVDs we get
> from the college library have usually been used hard.) Do you have
> any recommendations for such a combo player? Or if you’d rather
> consider all this stuff together, might you be up for a general
> consultation in the near future?
> Any help you can offer us would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Yours,
> Steve