MP3 music/We live in the future

[Stik]

I bought a new car a few months back (well, new to me, anyway. It's a 2014). My last car was a 2000. It had a cassette deck and a CD player, which was advanced for the time, but nowadays, not so much. So I realize that I am somewhat behind the curb when it comes to digital music, but bear with me.

The new car doesn't have a CD player, which means that the 100 or so CDs (all burned copies - the originals stay at home) I normally carry in the car are useless. What it does have is an SD slot in the console (and also a USB port).
I bought a 32GB SD card and began copying all of my music onto it.
I am about 225 CDs into my collection at this point, and the card is only about 2/3 full.

The new car stereo is also voice-activated. I hit a button on the steering wheel and tell the car what album I want to hear, or tell it to browse a band, or whatever. (BTW - Rush fans, be advised: the car does not understand "play album twenty one twelve." You have to say "play album, two thousand one hundred twelve," but I digress.) And if I have more than one version of a particular song, a synthesized voice asks me which one I want to hear.

So, this little piece of plastic, which is about the size of a quarter, can hold my entire music library, and give me pretty much instant access to any song I own.
We truly live in the future.

[Halaster-Blackcloak]

It amazes me to no end that my tiny little key chain-sized flash drive which is smaller than a quarter can fit more info than my old computer did. It freaks me out even more when I realize that same tiny flash drive can hold every one of the hundreds of rulebooks, adventure modules, boxed sets, etc., the combined page count being in the tens of thousands and the weight being damn near 500 lbs.

And still have space left for my music collection!

My only issue with digital music is that it doesn't have the same sound quality. Even using relatively normal-range equipment, I can definitely hear a better sound from vinyl than from CD or digital. On higher-end equipment with vinyl - far, far better!

[Keighn]

Yeah, thats the sad part of mp3s. I usually record mine at 320 (largest i believe possible for mp3). Wav and FLAC is an option for nearly uncompressed but the space... Sheesh.

My concern is for portable players. Many want to stream to have cloud access instead of storage on the device. (At least that's what i hear and some costs for songs - i already have on cd). I don't want to pay for songs i have several times over or have mixed together in an editor or made myself. I also have terrible access to online even via phone (i am in a gray roaming zone so even phone and text gets cut).

Its wireless wireless wireless. I have some yurbuds exercise headphonrs i love but now they are getting harder to find. The sony walkmen are being made cheaper to nonexistent (best buy only offers them online)

Everything is turning into email/online order catalogs.

[Cole]

Yup, this is why I'm a tech junky. So many amazing goodies out there. I have about 40 gigs of mp3s on my PC and all of those are on 1 stick in my car. That is quite amazing when you grew up with only 8-tracks and records

[Halaster-Blackcloak]

Cole, here's a related question...

I have an old tube/CRT tv. I'm trying to upgrade to a nicer, larger HD tv. I really don't care about streaming HD stuff. I just want to play my DVDs on a larger tv. So I bought a nice 49" LG 4K UHD tv. I got it home, hooked up the DVD player with HDMI cables, and...about shit my pants! The picture looked like shit! I tried switching the DVD player to progressive scan instead of interlaced. No dice. Still looked like crap. I tried Colorstream component cables. Nope. No matter how I hooked it up, no matter what settings I tweaked, the best picture I could squeeze out of it looked like a lousy 3rd generation VHS dupe.

The store told me that no DVD will look good on an UHD 4K or even regular HD tv. I returned the tv and tried hooking it up to a similar model that was not 4K UHD, just regular HD. Same problem. I'm being told that there is no way to make DVDs play and look even equal in quality to how they looked on the CRT tv. I don't want to squeeze HD or UHD or 4K out of a DVD. I just want it to look as good as it did on the old tv, only on a bigger screen.

So now I'm looking at buying a used plasma tv on Craiglist in the hopes I can get it to work.

Any ideas?

[Stik]

How new is your DVD player? I had to go buy a new one when I bought my first HDTV.

[Halaster-Blackcloak]

It's maybe a year old? I just keep getting conflicting info and I need to find a solution so my entire DVD collection (nearing 1,000) doesn't become an elaborate set of coasters.

[TigerStripedDog]

Love this post Halaster. You truly are an old fogey (said with the utmost affection, I promise).

First - no DVD will look good blown up to that size. They just don't have the resolution. Anything larger than 40 inches is going to be a stretch. 36" is ideal for DVD's with a viewing distance of about 8-12 feet. With a 40-48' you'll need to move that distance a little further out proportionately.

Truly, if you want a great viewing experience out of a modern TV you'll need to get a Blu-ray player or stream the movies.

If you have the time, and want to take the legal risk you can download every movie in existence from your favorite torrent - in high definition or Ultra High Definition. They will fit on those very same flash drives you were talking about - some of which can be inserted into TV's (or played on a laptop or desktop hooked up to the TV with an HDMI cord. That can get pretty expensive however. Better off getting a used Blu Ray player on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. They are as cheap as $25, and just buying the Blu Rays. They are now almost as cheap as DVD's.

Consider too Halaster - that someday you're going to tell a young child, or even a young adult that you remember an age before the internet and cell phones, and it will blow their mind. Like those fogies you remember telling you they remember a time before airplanes... only even moreso. We use the internet in almost every hour of every day. I only fly on planes once or twice a year

Tiger

[Halaster-Blackcloak]

TigerStripedDog wrote:

Love this post Halaster. You truly are an old fogey (said with the utmost affection, I promise).

I love being an old fogey! Hell, I was one of those guys who walked to school in blizzards. Uphill. Both ways!

So, would a 42" Plasma play DVDs well? It's hard to believe this is happening. What did everyone do with all their DVDs when plasma and LCD/LED came out...throw them out? There was no Blu-ray till much later.

I don't care about broadcast tv much or any of that. I just want a larger tv (42" to 50" is probably the biggest I can fit in my place right now, without lots of hassle rearranging everything) that I can play both DVD and Blu-ray on. I don't feel like having to re-purchase all my 1,000 DVDs on Blu-ray (in fact, many of them aren't even out or ever will be on Blu-Ray), especially since by the time I get them all, Blu-Ray will be defunct. This technology pace is bullshit.

I can forget getting a larger CRT tv - I can't find any, anywhere. But surely there's gotta be a way to make DVDs play well on a plasma or LED. I hear people all the time saying their DVDs look better on their plasmas, not worse.

Yeah, people don't get it when I tell them about not having remote control on a tv, or an answering machine (well, technically we just called her "mom"), or having to go to a library to read books and do research.

[TigerStripedDog]

Yeah - 42" should be okay - again when viewed form a given distance - somewhere from 10-14 feet I'd think. The whole process is very relative that way. And honestly even if you got a larger CRT tv it wouldn't look good at that size. I wouldn't get Plasma btw. Your DVD's are generally going to project movies at 24, 30 or 60 frames per second. Baseline models of LCD TV's are 60 Hz refresh rate. Never seen less than that. Most are 120 now. Plasma's only advantages are deep blacks and "uncapped" refresh rate (its actually around 600 Hz). That 600 Hz doesn't mean much when your input is projecting at 60fps.

Before anyone interjects - I understand the difference between FPS and Refresh Rate. They are NOT the same, but they do have a relationship - and the point above still holds.

Since DVD's are going to come in at 24, 30, or 60 - and are already low enough definition that your deep blacks aren't going to look great anyway (they will blur around the edges) an LCD is likely cheaper, more energy efficient, and will give an equivalent performance.

As for the rate of change of technology - you ain't seen nothing yet. Not only is technology changing quickly, that rate of change is itself getting faster (acceleration). And, wait for it, the rate of acceleration is itself getting faster! We are at the cusp of an inescapable and trans-formative period of technological advancement. I'm 35 - and by the time I'm 80 the world (if it survives) will be nearly completely unrecognizable to the 8 year old kid riding his bike through the neighborhood in 1990.

Tiger

[Halaster-Blackcloak]

So LCD would be better than plasma for what I'm trying to do? Again, the problem is finding someone selling one at a decent price. Not gonna pay $400 for a used plasma or any used tv. I'm mainly seeing older plasma tvs for sale, not much else. Will deep blacks for a DVD played on a plasma tv look black? They look fine on my CRT tv. At least, the better mastered ones do. I have lots of horror films (my favorite genre) so black levels is a big issue. The one movie I used as my "standard" to test is Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural. Even on my tube tv, it looks almost HD, with fantastic black levels.

[TigerStripedDog]

I don't know that its that an LCD will work better so much as that it will work the same, last longer, and be more reliable.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/VIZIO-43-Cla ... 2/48194200

Vizio smart TV. $298. 43'. Brand new. Has the streaming stuff but you can simply ignore it and never use it if you don't want it. But you might find its fun to have going forward. Many of your 1000 DVD's are likely available through Amazon Prime video (free if you're already a Prime member). YouTube is also free, great for movie trailers, podcasts, and sundry videos.

The deepest blacks should be so similar between this TV and your CRT that you're unlikely to notice the different. A night light mounted behind the TV (providing a very minimal, ever so subtle backlight) will make it impossible for your eyes to tell the difference (and reduce eye strain anyway). Sit 8-14 feet from this TV and it should give you a great experience on DVD. Closer than that and it will blur a little bit.

Hope that helps.

Tiger