Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Sony WM-EX190 Walkman Stereo Cassette Player with Anti-Rolling Mechanism

Sony WM-EX190 Walkman Stereo Cassette Player with Anti-Rolling Mechanism
  • Stereo cassette Walkman with Mega Bass enhancement
  • Anti-rolling mechanism minimizes distortion when the Walkman is in motion due to active use
  • Automatic volume limiter system (AVLS) conserves batteries and guards your hearing
  • Includes dynamic, over-ear headphones and a belt clip
  • Up to 24 hours extended battery life on 2 AA batteries

If you are just looking for a basic no-frills cassette Walkman and you are not a perfectionist sound aficionado -walk right on by, and buy something else. This Walkman has a nice price, but is a lot less than it sounds.

I had thought I could stand anything, since all I was looking for was a basic Walkman to listen to music and audiobooks. But I actually returned mine (And if I eat the shipping to return an item, that really says something!) What made it impossible for me was that the sound was extremely tinny and hissy, so much so that it hurt my ears. Using the bass-boost actually boosted the tinniness as much as the bass, so that was no help. Using the volume limiter did reduce the tinniness somewhat, but it still sounded terrible. I have bought inexpensive Sony Walkmans for years and loved them, and I bought a cheap Sony microcassette recorder a few weeks ago which is terrific, so I had felt confident enough to buy the EX-190. But the basic sound was unbearable.

To mention the good points, I really like the way it looks. The plastic is cheap, but light-weight. The buttons go on and off easily, unlike some which are too hard to press or which don't engage every time you press them. There is no auto-reverse, so you insomniacs will have to get up, flip the tape, and try to get drowsy again! Overall, I feel it *would* be a decent little machine, except that the sound is just too awful.

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I use this Cassette Player while working out for 45 minutes on the ski exercise machine and believe me it helps pass a boring exercise time while using this device. I purchased this unit last August and use it religiously five days a week. Since that time, the batteries were renewed only once when the sound lost its quality. The sound is superb. Actually, I'm picking up more new sounds on this little unit than my boombox with its large speakers. Having over 500 audio tapes, I need a unit such as this and it fits the bill. I'm thoroughly satisfied with it.

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This cassette player is well designed and well built. We have been using them for over four years in our elementary school and have had only one cassette player out of 25 stop working. Children (ages 7 11) use them to listen to recorded books as they read along silently. We power them with rechargeable batteries. I also use one to listen to music when I am walking, and it sounds fine to me.

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I've been using the cassette player while doing cardio at the gym. In less than a month of use, the sound goes from non-existent to static to fine. It's still covered by the warranty, but Sony has informed me that they usually replace the faulty players with refurbished players and at this time, there have no refurbished players of this model.

I had some trouble fitting the batteries in the compartment, but I won't now that I learned the trick. Otherwise, it's easy to operate, lightweight, and has good sound quality for the price.

Aqua 5500 ( Blue ) 18 MP Dual Screen Waterproof Digital Camera

Aqua 5500 18 MP Dual Screen Waterproof Digital CameraShipping was fast & secure within days of ordering camera. The camera is easy to use takes clear crisp pictures that have great detail even under low lighting. Have not used it underwater but have used it in the pouring rain(more like a deluge). The camera wiped clean and worked like a charm the next time I went to use it. The camera is durable can handle being dropped I would not recommend it. But it has happened to me to my surprise it worked like nothing happened.

I would highly recommend this camera. I am a fan of SVP because my ir camera is that brand. So I knew the clarity of the pictures was a given. With what I do clarity definition matters. This is by far the best personal digital camera I have had to date. Its my first SVP camera that has not been tweaked.

I bought this camera to give as Christmas presents, they love it! It's a nice portable and small camera with fine quality. Great price for gifts.

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Bought this camera for a small trip, I didn't want to spend too much on cameras. It turned out it's a pretty decent camera for the price I paid. The image quality isn't the best, but it's a cheap camera anyway.

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I purchased this camera on cyber monday for a pretty reasonable price and we were blown away by the pictures it took considering it's a pretty inexpensive point and shoot camera. We were able to go snorkeling in Mexico and the clarity of some of the pictures were great but it did at times have troubles focusing and it couldn't take the best pictures in the distance but for taking pictures of the pretty fish underwater.. that's all I needed it for.

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I am a professional photographer so I never expected too much from these camera's but that being said They are really not worth the 55$ each I paid for them.

The camera does as it says, it seems to be waterproof and does take pictures from both screens but there is a HORRIBLE DELAY from the time that you press the shutter button to when the picture is actually taken. There is almost 3 seconds in the delay. I purchased 3 of these cameras for Christmas Presents this year, 2 for the kids and 1 for my husband who is an avid hunter.

For the kids the camera would be ok. As long as their friends have a little paitents and hold the smile for 3-5 seconds after the shutter button is pressed.

My husband took it out hunting early in the morning when it was raining. The water didn't damage the camera at all, but the delay in the shutter was too much to catch wildlife in action.

PICTURE QUALITY is NOT AT ALL what other 18MP camera's generally produce. The shots are blury, grainy, too dark, or over exposed. No light meter I have in my collection seemed to help the problem. Used in my studio by the kids to "test the camera's out" we found it extremely hard to get even a few quality photos.

Escient FireBall ZP-1 Network Music Player

Escient FireBall ZP-1 Network Music Player
  • Use your TV to access and play all your digital music on your home theater system or in different rooms
  • Supports streaming PCM, MP3, FLAC (CD Quality), WMA, AAC
  • Built-in 10/100BaseT Ethernet networking; Wired IR, RS232 and Ethernet port for 3rd party external control interfaces
  • Web interface for remote control via web browser; PDA interface for controlling from any pocket-sized web device
  • Wireless network compatible via optional WiFi 802.11 network adapters

I have had two of these for about a year now. In that time, I've discovered these issues:

1. The Fireball PC software used to manage your music from a PC or Mac is kludgy, slow, and unreliable. I have never been able to get it to run without crashing on my iMac running Leopard. Escient claims it works on an iMac, but it doesn't, in my experience. (And I am running a brand new iMac purchased in December of 2007). As a result, I have to run the Escient PC software on a Windows PC rather than a Mac.

2. If you are used to music player software like iTunes, Escient's PC software will drive you nuts because it is so slow and crude. It feels like it was designed in 1996 and has never been usability tested or updated since. For example, there is no way to simply play all songs by an artist--which you can easily do in iTunes or Windows Media Player. With Escient's software, to queue up all the songs in your collection by an artist, you must first add all the artist's songs to a playlist, and then play that. For guests at your house who want to simply hear music by one artist, it's a perplexing, counter intuitive process. Also, the PC user interface is often very slow to load and refresh. (I am running it in a house that is wired throughout with gigabit switches and cabling.)

3. Escient playlists will not hold more than 500 songs.

4. When playing songs in a playlist, I found that the playlists often stop playing for no apparent reason.

5. With the PC software used to manage and play music from your computer, there is no way to scroll through albums and songs. Instead, you have to use a page down button, which only moves you through about six albums or songs. Because there is no way to scroll through your music library, it's a huge pain navigating extensive music collections using the PC software. I have contacted Escient about this, and they said they do not have an update to the PC software planned. Oddly, you can scroll through music when using the TV version of Escient's software. It's just that the scroll functionality is missing on the PC.

6. On the upside, Escient is extremely quick to get back to you when you contact them with support questions. I've contacted them about all the problems above. Unfortunately, the responses I have gotten to most of these issues is either that's just the way it is, or it's a bug in the software that Escient has not fixed. That or they involve complicated workarounds that defeat the purpose of installing a user-friendly system for managing and playing your music collection.

Sony CCD-TRV138 Hi8 Handycam Camcorder w/ 20x Optical Zoom

Sony CCD-TRV138 Hi8 Handycam Camcorder w/ 20x Optical ZoomI bought this camcorder 4 months after the sound on my other one stopped working and I was impressed. The optical zoom is good at 20x and the digital zoom (which is completely pointless) is 990x. The second thing I noticed is that the LCD screen moved to more places and that there was 2 record buttons. One was on the LCD screen, the other was next to the off button. The viewfinder can also move to different places but is still in Black and white. Another feature that this camcorder has is Nightshot Plus. This feature allows you to record at night with a brighter picture than with a flashlight or lamp. There are also many DSEs or Digital Special Effects that you can play with in recording or editing. They are:

Sepia: adds a brown old tone to the screen

Black and White: the way films used to be

Negative Art: reverses the colors in the picture

Pastel: makes the picture look colored in with a pastel crayon

Solarize: makes the picture out of basic colors

Mosaic: the picture made out of squares

Slim: stretches the picture vertically

Stretch: a lot like widescreen

When filming out or indoors there are different Program AEs you can use when the light in the picture changes. If you dont like switching them, you can set them to AUTO. The PAEs are:

Sports

Spotlight

Portrait

Beach/Ski

SunsetMoon

Landscape

If you want to buy this camcorder because it has great battery life, don't. It doesn't have a great battery life but it is still a great camcorder.

I bought this to play back old Hi8 tapes so I could transfer them to DVD. However, there is no S-Video out and no stereo out. Video quality was bad: output was noisey and reds were over saturated. I imagine this is because there is no S-Video out. I returned it and have ordered a Sony GV-D200. Hopefully it will give me better quality since it was more than twice as much. There are some cheaper used options available, e.g. Sony EVO-250.

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This is your basic video camera. I'd say it's good for those who just need a video camera for occassional video recording. It has the basic features, with NightShot as an additional bonus. The picture quality isn't as great as I thought it would be (it's a bit grainy on my 36" WEGA), it doesn't record in stereo, and I wish it could hook up on my computer, but there's no USB port. I guess for the price you pay, it's expected. I'd recommend it if you're not really looking for something too hi-tech. I wish I could've gone with something better, maybe the next model up, but hey, it gets the job done.

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Like other reviewers, I bought this SONY after my old machine refused to play back my antique but loved tapes. I was shocked at all the DVD complaints I read here.

Although I like to edit tapes on my computer, its a job or two sometimes. I burn DVD easily in real time with a free-standing Sansung DVD burner that cost me 100 dollars. Its got a list of about 125 or so. At the time I bought it at Fry's, and loved it so much I got another a few weeks later. ALl you do next is get Audio and video out from the itty bitty combo plug, and then use the round rca plugs to go to the burner. Yes, a totally free standing burner. Plug it in, and go to the bathroom or what-ever. Automatic performance once started!!!! Now I also use this burner to record TV shows and such. Its like a VCR for DVD media.

I use this for several formats of video. Now I am sure there is a loss of quality, but it does an excellent job of video transfer. FAR superior to recording to VHS tape.

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I purchased this camcorder knowing it was not digital "state of the Art". I have a Sony Hi8 camcorder vintage 1993 which no longer functions reliably in the playback mode, and I saw the TRV 138 as means to play my existing tapes and transfer them to DVD's. I found the TRV 138 to be half the size of my old unit and the batteries seem to last 3 times as long. Thus it functions well and is much handier to use. It has the fold out color viewer, my old one did not, plus some additional features such as a variety of fade modes. The only negative is my old unit recorded sound in stereo, the TRV 138 does monaural. This is not really a factor in my recording needs. I have recorded music performances and found the sound to be satisfactory

Nokia 6300 Unlocked Triband Camera Business Phone (Black)

Nokia 6300 Unlocked Triband Camera Business PhoneI had to wait for 1 month to get it! They never mentioned that it would be shipped from China, there were no 3 or 4 days delivery options. So I waited. I received it in 30 days. I used it for 3 days only. It kept on turning off by itself, specially in the middle of conversation. My friends complained that they couldn't reach me. I decided to send it back (note that time for returning the item without being charged is 30 days and I had been using it for 3 days after 30 days delivery). I wrote Amazon and they said it was too late. I contacted the seller, and the seller started to bargain with me saying that they would send me an extra battery and a charger. I refused because the problem was with a phone itself. They bargained again to send me a replacement phone. What??? To wait for replacement for another month??? Thank you!In the end I sent them the phone back and they supposed to refund my money. It has been 2 months now! I NEVER GOT MY MONEY BACK! INSTEAD I LOST MY TIME, MY NERVES AND MY MONEY AGAIN TO SEND THE ITEM BACK TO CHINA!!! FANTASTIC!

I've use this phone for 5 years. Now just changing battery. It's true that you can use it for 3-4 hours. But it's not a problem for me.

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Good phone and received on time. It is durable, looks prety, I recommend to any one who needs the basic phone.

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Pros: nice style/shape, small & handy, easy use

Cons: metal casing got warm/hot after 5-10 min on the phone from the battery (original nokia battery)

short battery life (3-4 hours talk time)

After about 1.5 years the charger plug (hole) did not work properly and the program kept freezing. was not able to use anymore

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I`m very satisfied with the phone.

For a long time i`ve been wanted to buy it, and finnaly I did.

I recieved it in a box unpacked, all new...:)

Once again great phone.

Mini Gadgets Inc Smile-DVR DVR Pin

Mini Gadgets Inc Smile-DVR DVR Pinthis is to big and obvious of what it is, totally not what was expected, I was really dissapointed and will never order anything like this again

I ordered 3 of these cameras and they all look different. One of them looks way to fake like it's a toy and I didn't get the right USB cable in the box. Instructions are NOT self explanatory. DO NOT BUY THIS. Buy something else with better reviews. it's better to buy something that's a bit more money and be satisfy with it.

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the product was just as seen and worked perfectly the only thing it was missing the disk. The rest of the product worked great and fullfilled my needs

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My ex was being mentally abusive to my kids, got it all on tape! He is crazy! And now I can prove it. Even used it as a practice set-up on my unsuspecting students LOL

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Blue Microphones Spark Digital Studio-Grade Condenser Microphone for Apple iPad and USB 2.0

Blue Microphones Spark Digital Studio-Grade Condenser Microphone for Apple iPad and USB 2.0
  • Features Blue's legendary studio condenser capsule and electronic components
  • iOS compatible with iPod touch (4th Gen), iPhone 4/4S, iPad/iPad2/iPad (3rd Gen)
  • Use the Apple Lightning Adapter (sold separately) for compatibility with iPhone 5, iPad (4th Gen), and iPad Mini
  • Work with Garage Band and other recording applications
  • Focus Control switch offers two sonic signatures in one mic, plus onboard control for volume, gain and instant mute
  • Headphone jack for zero-latency real-time monitoring

This is the best mic. on the market for the money. It is truly a studio quality product that produces studio quality results. If I worked for a competitor, I would give it a bad review. It is a plug and play that is so easy to use. The results are far beyond what any other mic. under $500.00 will achieve. You will not regret this purchase.

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The sound quality I get from this mic is the best I've had so far in a usb mic. The best mic you can get at this price. For people who are having trouble with the low input levels, you need to hold down the microphone button for three seconds to switch over to the mic input level. I was surprised at the average of three stars this mic got in reviews and reading over them, I must shake my head at these silly people. It does come with an adapter to use with an iPad, but the sound quality you get with an actual computer doesn't compare and the high quality mic just goes to waste.

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I love Apogee and I love my MiC but when I saw that Amazon had this Blue Spark for a mere $155 I jumped all over it (even added the mere $3.99 for next day shipping cuz gear lust has a way with me).

I am in my third decade of project studio singer/songwriting and God only knows how much has been siphoned off the family budget for "tools". Along the way I have sang through expensive microphones and also through telephone receivers. One lesson learned is that it takes a good tune to grab an audience. Another lesson is that we live in an incredible time period.

What used to cost hundreds, thousands to record and produce can now be (somewhat clunk-illy) recorded on the go with a "smart phone". I realize it's not for everyone, but if you wish a fairly portable, nearly high-dollar sound...then order the Blue Spark Digital.

Combined with a USB OTG cable, this puppy makes me SO glad I returned my iPhone and got the Galaxy Note 2. That said, it comes with the 30-pin if you still am an iPerson. I have also connected to an i7 Windoze laptop via USB and it works great with Mountain Lion as well.

Now, for brass tacks...the Apogee MiC isn't a Neuman. I know. I'm not stupid. Neither are you, though. So, if you like Apogee and want portability--buy both! You'll find good use for them. I am sure of it. The "focus" button you will either love or loathe. I personally am afraid of how much I love it. It is best for voice podcasting but I've recorded vocals on a song just to see which camp I am in.

All serious musicians are bleeding cash. Bleed some toward Blue this time around. You'll never miss it!

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I enjoy working with this microphone, but it took some time for me to learn how to use it. I often get better results when I use the focus feature and keep the gain low to get a cleaner sound. It is definitely a step above the previous usb microphones by Blue. Would not recommend for professional use if you are making music. This is good for demo making. If you are singing you MUST get the pop filter.

I bought the Blue Spark Digital as a way to quickly lay down rough tracks & demo quality recordings for an upcoming record I wanted to have professionally done. The Blue Spark met and exceeded my expectations so much, that I'm considering making my album using this microphone and my iPad!

Sounds great for acoustic guitar and vocals (no other instruments attempted).

For less than $200 and $10 purchase of Garageband or another premium multi-track recording app on your iPad, it's tough to recommend a product other than this one for on-the-go or quick recording.

(Used with iPad Mini and the 30-pin to lightening adapter worked just fine.)