Slow Motion

As a viewer of erotic films, slow motion is one of my favorite features.  When it comes to anything erotic or fantastic, the ability to slow down and examine or savor each frame instant feels godlike…and that's the feeling you want.

As time has gone on, the technology to deliver slow motion video has improved immensely; now it is no longer to design complex video tape head geometries or motions to achieve it.  (An aside: the beta video recording system seems particularly superior to vhs in being able to be changed in direction and run in reverse at any speed even normal speed.  I thought this derived from the head design.  I always hoped beta would triumph for that reason alone.)

But as it has become technically rather trivial to have slow motion, almost equally it has become clumsy, hard to find, limited, or unavailable.  I wonder if design of video viewing programs isn't being directed by uncompromising antiporns or some other kind of spoil sports.

I have long felt that the ultimate super beta machine, the Sony 900, had the best remote control for slow motion, with direction buttons flanking the pause button.  At the time it seemed so amazing to have slow motion forwards and backwards, and the 1/5 speed was quite a nice compromise single speed.  (One of the Pioneer Laserdisk machines may have done it one better with a bunch of speeds conveniently selectable on the remote).  Then came the cool looking jog shuttle wheel systems…but guess what.  You now had to hold the control just so to shuttle at a slower speed.  Believe me this becomes very inconvenient for one-handed operation.  Those antiporns were just beginning to exert their will.

Now we have picture viewers on computer screens where similarly you can get slow motion at any conceivable speed, so long as you are willing to hold your hand just so (or sometimes two).  So now I'd have to hire somebody to keep the slow motion going.

Slow motion is one of the reasons that stand alone video devices like vcrs and the later hard drive (sometimes with dvd recorder) devices are superior to computer systems.  And it's ironic, because hard drive recorders, like my new wonderful Pioneer DVR-LX70, is really just a computer with a dvd drive.

But it seems that the czars who design computer operating systems, and especially Steve Jobs, had a strong anti-hedonic streak.  None of the Mac facilities are nice for being a lazy godlike viewer of it all.  They all seem to be tailored into making you into a nerd, a curator, or gasp a creator of new work.  Passive one-handed (or half-handed) browsing, viewing, scanning, and slowing?  Forget it!  And tablets further this direction.  A laptop is superior for viewing erotic pictures precisely because it holds up it's own screen at an adjustable angle.  Normally you hold a tablet, that's using up a whole hand, which could be useful for doing something else.  Now I would have realized this immediately, and never bothered to make as useless a machine as a tablet.  (I also hate that tablets lack real keyboards, and seem them as inherently closed systems, intended to make you a slave, dependent on the masters to do the real programming.  But that's another matter.)

Now the Pioneer does my old Sony RDR-HX900 (passable in the UI department, I had nothing but complaints about it's clunky user interface until I realized I had the end of the line in such devices…Sony no longer imports an untethered consumer video recording device to the USA, selling a whole household of Blu Ray recorders in other countries only) a bit better.  The slow motion keys the Pioneer can be engaged immediately from play (instead of pausing first) and don't have to be held down for an uncertain amount of time to engage the slow motion (because otherwise you could simply be using the same keys to signify frame advance).  Plus, the Pioneer has 4 slow motion speeds and even does regular speed--in reverse.  (WHY was that so impossible to do, even with DVD drives turning many times as fast as necessary?  I smell antihedonic conspiracy again.)

The disappearing DVR

One of the most popular categories of electronic equipment has been recording devices, audio and video.  As time has gone on, these recording devices have been disappearing.  I believe that most of this disappearance is driven by content aggregators (record companies, movie companies) and not actually consumer disinterest.  Much of this is out in the open, for example, the Digitial Millennium Copyright Act and the people who lobbied for it.  But once there are laws like DMCA, electronics companies that used to push the letter of the law in selling copying devices, now shrank back into selling only in non-US markets, professional devices, etc.  And given that many of the "standards" used in AV are proprietary, no manufacturer wants to offend the standards-owners.  Etc.  There is more than just fear of law enforcement here.  There is fear of and cooperation among different companies.

The great example of this is Sony, the electronics AND media mogul.  They were among the first to push video recording with Beta (and Super Beta and ED Beta) video recorders, starting in the 1970's.  Now they don't sell any consumer video recorders in US markets.  They do make a reportedly excellent line of  Blu Ray recorders, such as the BDZ-EX200, but none of them are sold in the USA.  Sony wants the movie studios (and they own lots of movie studios too) to use Blu Ray, so they want to make movie companies feel their properties aren't going to get copied.  Of course it's not only illegal to copy a Blu Ray movie on a Blu Ray recorder, it's technically impossible.  You are locked out of copying protected data by all digital copying devices.  But that doesn't seem to be enough for the studios and the standards owners who cater to them.  They seem to want you not to think about copying anything.

You won't find many Blu Ray recorders in the USA actually.  The least expensive one I know of is the JVC SR-HD1250, which now sells for about $1000.  This is, of course, a "professional" model.  JVC makes two other models which sell for $2500 and $3500.  Panasonic makes a line of consumer recorders, but as with Sony they are not available in the USA or compatible with US standards.

Funny because it wasn't that long ago that many companies made DVD recorders.  Of course DVD is not a standard owned by a single giant media company.  It's not exactly an open standard, but it's far more open that a strictly proprietary standard like Blu Ray.  Sony quit selling DVD recorders in the USA first, ending with their great RDR-HX900 in the USA.  I bought one of those in 2005, and when it started to have problems in 2010 I first looked to Sony for a replacement.  Then I looked to anyone for a replacement.  Finally I decided I had a limited edition classic and I should just keep fixing it forever.  It wasn't long after Sony stopped selling these units that they stopped selling the unique DVD drive it uses, which seems to go bad in a few years.  And if you've been inside one of these units trying to fix it, you strongly get the feeling the whole thing was specifically engineered to be difficult to repair.

Of course, Sony wants you to believe that DVD is old shit, and you should move on to Blu Ray, so perhaps it was understandable that Sony would stop selling DVD recorders first.  But other manufacturers gradually followed, and now there is only one company (Funai) selling a standalone DVD recorder in the USA (under the Magnavox brand name, which they now own).  That unit is available in three hard drive capacities, with the largest being the MDR537H/F7.  It is an 8th generation DVD recorder from Magnavox and people fear it may be the last.  It is very reasonably priced and I'm buying one right now.