Stupid Consumer Grade Junk

H

headcrab

Active Member
About a year ago I found a low-quality DVD player and expropriated it for our control booth. But tonight during a show it stalled partway through the video, refused to obey any sort of input, whether local or by remote, and then refused to eject the disc. Nobody was pleased. I had to dismantle the unit to get the disc out.
Sounds like I need to buy a reasonably good device for the future...
Has anyone else experienced this?
 
You get what you pay for.
 
cprted said:
You get what you pay for.
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I didn't want to be trite when I first looked at this thread, but it's true. Most venues will pay more for playback equipment to ensure things don't crap out in the middle of shows. That's why we use $400 Denon rackmount CD players instead of $30 personal CD players that could get the same job done.

If you were in the movie-showing business and this happened, you'd be refunding potentially 500 tickets, and we'll say they were at $10/ea, so as much as $5000 down the drain. That's many movie theatres end up doing when their projectors crap out. Therefore, lots of money goes into making sure those things either don't happen in the first place, or happen on an extremely rare occasion.
 
In my experience, even pro CD players are prone to random failures. We had a nice Denon recorder/player stop accepting CDs.

Playback is definitely something worthy of having a backup.
 
rwhealey said:
Playback is definitely something worthy of having a backup.
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Agreed. I've seen more DVD and CD players crap out at work than any other piece of equipment. We have two that are disassembled right now or being cannibalized for parts. BTW, the CD trays are great for a DIY projector shutter.
 
Anvilx said:
True. However I find it appalling just how poorly some of the consumer stuff is. Our society seems to accept worse and worse products as the years go by.
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We've picked up this culture where when electronics stop functioning at 100%, we throw them away and get more. In the consumer world, it's perfectly acceptable to cheap out on things like DVD players, and rather than have them last a long time, just replace them when they break. It's even cheaper to replace them every year or two than it is it spend more money the first time and have it last.

In an unfortunate turn of events, products have gotten so cheap that it's almost never worth it to pay someone open up a broken device, fix it, and return it to the user. Really the only products people own these days that they will take to someone to get fixed are computers and cars.
 
I suppose that we're lucky; the DVD player we use is a generic consumer one, but it's worked fine for a long time now. However, even some of the theatrical-grade stuff can crap out much earlier than it should. Most of our Colortran 5/50 shutters are completely shot (and very difficult to replace,) and they are only about 6 years old. (A lot of lamp bases, reflectors, and a few fixtures have already bit the dust in that 6 years.)
 
it all depends on the manufacturer we have an old and i mean really old dj setup deck with a 6 slot cartridge and a single cd tray, the only thing that doesn't work on the thing is the single cd tray and its 20 years old. for some reason the colortran lights breaking is not that strange to me as we have several sheets of repair docs for all our colortran stuff including but not limited to shutters, lamp sockets, adjusting screws, lenses, barrels, cords, plugs, and there's about 10 pages of just gobo holders.
 
headcrab said:
About a year ago I found a low-quality DVD player and expropriated it for our control booth. But tonight during a show it stalled partway through the video, refused to obey any sort of input, whether local or by remote, and then refused to eject the disc. Nobody was pleased. I had to dismantle the unit to get the disc out.
Sounds like I need to buy a reasonably good device for the future...
Has anyone else experienced this?
Click to expand...

Something like that many moons ago... in Middle School.

I was sound board op(/stage manager, kinda.../light board operator at times). We had many musical acts and a 5-disc cd player. 1st act using a cd, I hear the cue and hit play... the song plays and the guy on stage looks back at me like i'm crazy. We're back there for like 10 minutes trying to figure out what went wrong before we figured it out...

Despite the fact that the CD player was set to play Disc 1, it was in fact playing Disc 5. I spent the rest of the night really on edge and nervous (hey, I was 14 and everybody was looking at me like I was the idiot...). The rest of the night I only put discs in 2, 3, and 4.

Lesson Learned: No matter how small the production, REHEARSE IT AT LEAST ONCE!... and sign up for light board instead of sound. :p kidding, kidding...
 
DuckJordan said:
it all depends on the manufacturer we have an old and i mean really old dj setup deck with a 6 slot cartridge and a single cd tray, the only thing that doesn't work on the thing is the single cd tray and its 20 years old. for some reason the colortran lights breaking is not that strange to me as we have several sheets of repair docs for all our colortran stuff including but not limited to shutters, lamp sockets, adjusting screws, lenses, barrels, cords, plugs, and there's about 10 pages of just gobo holders.
Click to expand...

I've heard pretty unanimously on this site that Colortran equipment is becoming, with age, a big hassle to deal with, and I certainly agree based on my experiences with the fixtures, boards, dimmers, and accessories. (My school had a lighting renovation in 2003, and ended up choosing the cheapest option, Colortran, instead of others like ETC, Strand, etc. We now have 5/50 fixtures, i90 dimmers, and an Innovator 600.)
 
I share your predicament although the newer I96 racks are a little bit more reliable. I'm trying to convince our director to slowly start switching from colortran to ETC source 4's as his main lighting extravaganza is the 500 lbs. of gel in our booth.

But again you do get what you pay for in this and every other industry. but there are a few freak occurrences.
 
DuckJordan said:
I share your predicament although the newer I96 racks are a little bit more reliable. I'm trying to convince our director to slowly start switching from colortran to ETC source 4's as his main lighting extravaganza is the 500 lbs. of gel in our booth.
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Switch from? Or purchase in addition to? Personally, I try and avoid 'removing' inventory from the space, unless it has SERIOUSLY outlived its usefulness... Hell, I just finished rebuilding a bunch of Altman 360 6x16's... Hopefully I get a chance to use them this season...


As for Colortran... I LOVE the old Berkey 213-065's I have kicking around... Toss an Iris module in the, and they make for an excellent toplight wash @ 20ft, toss some scrollers in them and shabam!
I've never had an issue with these guys melting gel, killing scrollers, or in general doing much other than their job... Sure I have to replace a socket now and then, but that's normal with almost any fixture...
Workhorses I tell you, workhorses.

And who DOESN'T love having 500lbs of gel as his disposal?
I have... Well, far too much stock in colours I don't use, but that's another issue... At some point in history, someone gave a co-op student Sheets of R05 and a few others, and just said 'Cut some gel'... I don't know if I'll ever make it through all the cuts of R05 that I have...

That being said, I'm also not a fan of Colortran dimming or consoles... Used both in College in the studio space... By my second year, the Colortran board was gone, and an ETC in its place... Hopefully the dimming has gone the same way.


On topic, however... It's true, even pro-grade gear dies eventually... We've had issues with (ironically enough) a Denon CD Deck, that just refuses to accept discs burnt on 700Mb media... It'll only take 650Mb... And that's a pain...

But as with anything else, we have a backup... A CD in case the SFX Computer dies... Spare control cards incase the Light Pallete's card goes again... A laptop to hook up if the PC inside the control surface goes... A UPS on the Clear Com line... etc...

The moral here, really should be "Hope for the best, but expect the worst... With any grade of gear."
 
WestlakeTech said:
I was sound board op(/stage manager, kinda.../light board operator at times).
Click to expand...

Reminds me of the time my friend, the sound op, got sick mid show and I ran sound with my hands and lights with my feet. But thats a whole other story.


MNicolai said:
We've picked up this culture where when electronics stop functioning at 100%, we throw them away and get more. In the consumer world, it's perfectly acceptable to cheap out on things like DVD players, and rather than have them last a long time, just replace them when they break. It's even cheaper to replace them every year or two than it is it spend more money the first time and have it last.

In an unfortunate turn of events, products have gotten so cheap that it's almost never worth it to pay someone open up a broken device, fix it, and return it to the user. Really the only products people own these days that they will take to someone to get fixed are computers and cars.
Click to expand...

So much for the push to go green and all this greenwashing ^*$# if we just keep throwing stuff away. (I believe you do what is best regardless of what is the cool or hip thing to do.)

But isn't just cheap stuff! Here are two examples:
A $100 Rowenta iron is dying right now it is ~3 years old.
A $150 pair of Pioneer headphones snapped at the pivot after 6 months of extremely light use.

On the upside one mans trash is another mans treasure.
 
personally i would do both for the just in case, i would suggest a pioneer DVD player just because they seem to last forever for me. also stay away from LG products i have never had good experiences with those devices if your planning on going consumer grade as far as pro i wouldn't know too much about pro equipment as the need for a dvd player really isn't that huge for a HS
 
Cheap is probably not terrible so long as you have two players so that you always have a backup. So maybe buy one really good one, and then another cheapo player as a worst-case scenario backup. For the price of cheap ones, there's little reason not to have a backup. Just make sure you're prepared to rip open a CD tray, because as they say on Mythbusters, "Failure is always an option!"
 
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