Despite the title of this post, I actually got things cleaned up a bit over this birthday weekend, in addition to going to a performance of the San Antonio Symphony (wedged into the weekend on Friday because of my friend's working hours) and was treated to a birthday breakfast at Earl Able's (which featured "natural" steak, german chocolate cake, and was greatly enjoyed by all, much more than expected by me).
And I got the new Pioneer DVR LX70 dvd and hard drive video recorder set up and tested. It works great! Though it was clearly not sold to me by a dealer, or sealed in box, it does appear to have been unused. And it is the rarest of the rare, a unit sold in Japan but not for use in Japan, according to markings on the box, as well as possibly being the best consumer dvd recorder ever sold. It's not clear that the DVR LX70 was actually sold new in the US, and my unit wasn't. I copied several recordings over from my Sony recorder (RDR-HX900), edited one of them, and burned two to new dvd's without any issues. Hopefully I can now look forward to another 7 or more carefree years of hard drive viewing and dvd burning. Unlike the Sony, the Pioneer lacks component video inputs. That design choice may have been legally mandated, or to avoid the typical problems when a know-nothing user tries to run 1080i into this unit. As a dvd recorder, it can of course only record standard definition 480i video (or possibly pal as well, since it is apparently a world-coded unit. I will have to change my component video connections to s-video to be used with this unit. I already had one s-video cable but I ordered a new one from Blue Jeans Cable. I had just ordered and received a Lightning to S-Video adapter box but did not get around to hooking it up; I also have a much more expensive BlackMagic unit I should probably use instead. I studied the loss when making dubs of the dubs on the Sony, and decided they were inconsequential, but there may be a slight difference in visual presentation, the Sony looking dark to the point of gloominess and the Pioneer possibly a tad too bright. I adjusted the output settings on the Sony by turing off all the noise reduction features. Those features might make for nicer display but generally mess up 2nd generation copies. I turned up the color saturation for the Sony input, but only by one notch. I was having a hard time, however, telling any difference. Much more noticeable is the difference between my kitchen and bedroom TV's. I'm really coming to appreciate the rich color of my CRT based Sony 34XBR960 in the kitchen compared with the flat but brighter LCD presentation in the bedroom. I also played a couple of Japan-only DVD's which this unit can play (because it is a rare world code unit) and enjoyed the rich color. I can also play those DVD's on any Denon player (because it's easy to switch Denon's into world code mode), but typically when I did that I ran them through the Sony video recorder which dulled the picture a bit. Somehow playing through the Pioneer I discovered additional video chapters in these Japanese DVD's.
To make room for the Pioneer, I needed to clear out the old and currently unused Marantz 2130 tuner in the bottom slot of my kitchen rack. That tuner has a foul smell when being operated because a previous owner must have been a chain smoker. I put it into the Gym, taking the place of a Pioneer 9500 MkII tuner requiring the latter to be moved to Lyndhurst. Saturday was a great day for moving stuff to Lyndhurst and I also moved a bunch of other stuff that had been waiting inside during the recent cold rainy weather. Most importantly, I moved out two boxes of LP records. One of those boxes has a slight smell even after I discarded the only record box that had visible staining. The stinky box was sealed up with tape to prevent it from smelling up Lyndhurst, but the double cardboard of the box itself will permit required moisture movement.
After moving out the Marantz, I used about 8 different cloths to clean to bottom rack space. I used old formula 409 glass plus cleaner (the best ethanol cleaner I've ever come across, no longer available) to first clean and sort-of disinfect the space, then I used pledge.
By Saturday night, I had the kitchen and living rooms much cleaner than they had been during the week. Late on Sunday night I took another stab at the Sony PS-X800 turntable I started investigating last week. I downloaded a copy of the service manual from Vinyl Engine and determined which voltage I needed to check: the system control voltage at TP11. I removed the platter and turned the turntable upside down on the couch. I got out my fluke meter and measured 11V where I should have been measuring 5V. OK, there's something that needs to be fixed. But then I tried to see if there was some AC voltage on the test point, and I accidentally engaged the "current" mode of my Fluke 8060 meter. On the next test, I burned out the meter fuse, so it no longer worked. On Monday morning I ordered a replacement Fluke fuse, which cost $2 plus about $7 shipping.
So one old broken thing (the Sony dvd recorder) being replaced, another broken thing being fixed (the Sony turntable), and a 3rd thing broken in the process of testing (and hopefully eventually fixing) the second.
And if that weren't chaotic enough, just before going to bed on Sunday night I noticed a wind-like sound near the front door. It was chilly on Sunday night but I didn't think it was blowing just then. I noticed that the fan in my Belkin UPS used for the living room audio system was coming on and off. In order to read the LCD screen, I had to move a speaker out of the way. It was clear it wasn't overloading or anything, it was only showing 1.5 amps loading, so I went to bed. On Monday morning I took another look at it, pressed the Test button, and it now shows that the battery needs to be replaced. No online searches that I have done so far reveal a suitable replacement battery, and Belkin doesn't make UPS's any more or support this one. I'll have to shut everything down, remove the battery, and take it down to Altex and see if I can get a suitable replacement based on the size, capacity, and voltage.
When you have enough stuff, old stuff is breaking just about as quickly as you can get new stuff to replace it.
No comments:
Post a Comment