[jhalphen]

Hi Gentlemen,

1) Andy, i also have a vintage plasma, a Fujitsu PDS-4203 42" unit purchased in may 1999 at half price because it was being phased out. Back then it was a real novelty, sort of a year 2000 CT-100.

I went with Fujitsu after seeing them yearly at the NAB displaying Japanese MITI funded research for about 10 years. I figured that since they had been chosen by the government to do all the development groundwork, if anyone knew how to build a plasma, Fujitsu would know.

Well my choice was good, this PDP has been chugging along for 11 years now and has never failed once. It's dim compared to modern units, is VGA resolution, knows nothing about HD or HDMI, but i just don't have the heart to replace it especially when i see the reliability record (3 years?) of today's units.

Pix 1 is an actual unretouched photo, the plasma is surrounded by a bunch of US Trinitrons & other tiny screen TVs.

2) Sony HDVS 1125/60 HD TV
Around 1986, we had an American production/postproduction facility in Paris known as SEE/Captain Video run by a certain David Niles. The guy managed to convince Somy management to loan him 3 HD cameras, 2x 1" HD VTRs, a switcher and a bunch of 300lb HD monitors.

The picture quality straight out of the cameras was stupendous, much better than today's HD. Try seeing the very faint fuzz on a woman's upper lip framed news achor style (not zoomed on the face itself). It was that good!

It was also highly experimental, the cameras "ate" red tubes (1" Saticons) after just a few hundred hours, so all 3 tubes had to changed and imagine the fun of doing registration on something so razor-sharp.

Coming back to today, some of the behemoth HD trinitrons show up from time, it would be nice to decode HDMI to RGB to watch HD content.

C) Andy, is this the HD VCR you were telling about?
I had better pictures but VK won't let me repost and the link to the old post shows no photos - probably deleted as "too old".

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

PS: David Niles went back to the US in the 90s and opened a facility in NYC named Studio 1125, maybe it still exists...