Video Asylum

Posted by Joe Murphy Jr (A) on February 21, 2009 at 12:38:27

In Reply to: RE: Ya got a point there... posted by timothywas1@comcast.net on February 21, 2009 at 07:40:11

Im not happy to see Pioneer fall down. I hate that they have partnered with Sharp (aka the Japanese Samsung), but in order for them to continue they had to do something (though Panasonic would have been a much better choice). Their business model just didn't cut it in these trying times.

As for your other comments, I'm not a vinyl person, but I do feel that the digital age severely hampered creativity and originality. It became too easy to produce and too easy to copy. Why work hard when you can just grab a sample here, patch in a sample there and smooth it over everywhere. My musical tastes tend to be mid-70s through late 80s/very early 90s. By the 90s, it really didn't matter what radio station you listened to -- they all played pretty much the same crap (literally and figuratively).

I was kinda hoping that satellite radio would change that and, for a while, I feel it did. However, XM and Sirius have been a losing proposition financially. The merger didn't help because #1, sound quality took a nose dive (if you didn't think it was worth listening to before the merger, it's worse now -- how Sirius subscribers put up with that shit I don't know and, even worse, the nerve of some of them to say there was either no quality difference between Sirius and XM or that Sirius sounded better takes all of the cake!) and #2, they eliminated many of the XM stations that were better than their Sirius counterparts.

I mention that because there was such a huge audience that satellite radio could cater to. You paid for it, so they didn't rely on advertising as much (which, ironically, contributed to its financial woes) and they could offer numerous genres to select from. No way could or would FM or AM radio ever do that. Alas, post merger, me thinks it sucks donkey dicks now because of the cuts, changes and "Sirius" mentality that has taken over (XM was much better). My subscription has two more months -- and that's definitely it for me. My music collection is getting ripped to a 1TB hard drive and I'm getting one of the iPod-to-car radio products. My 5th Gen 60GB iPod with Video is going in the car (I just got an 8GB 3rd Gen Nano that I'll use at work), so I'll just have to make do with a paltry selection of 800+ discs to choose from. And that's definitely a positive thing about the digital age -- I'm getting a DJ that doesn't talk and plays all of my favorite artists. Can't beat that!