I think we should do a letter writing campaign. It worked for TOS.

You are correct that this is technically in code and would protect against shock hazards in a neutral error situation but you also get the opportunity for the outlet to pop during the day when nobody is home and the battery to die.

We had a situation in our old house where someone who was technically correct but didn't think it through had a gfci outlet upstream of the refrigerator outlet. Thankfully it popped while someone was home and we got everything corrected before we lost everything in the fridge.

AFAIK you should be able to do most of your cleaning with alcohol and compressed air. Its not normally difficult to get to the parts you need to clean if you remove the top cover. (Unplugged of course.) If you're getting a good image already and the video isn't having a bunch of audio dropouts you're probably ok for the time being. Most likely the cleaner tapes would work but I personally am always nervous to put a non-standard item into an old mechanical device that you may or may not ever find parts for again.

If you're wanting to keep this up, looking term its definitely worth seeking out the service manual for your vcr model if you can find it.

The other thing to make sure of is your capture settings. The deinterlacing algorithm can make a pretty significant difference.

After its captured there are a lot of AI "improvements" that can be made that will manufacture detail. Topaz AI for windows is kind of the gold standard at the moment but there's an open source project called video2x that might also work. Both would require a fairly decent gpu.

I think you accidentally put a hex on me. Just this morning I dropped my phone and smashed the front display :(

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a shot.

Well, if they don't want to bother, send the footage to me. I have a Blu Ray burner and will gladly accept $30 each for a burned copy.

Seriously though, it's already been mastered for Apple TV. Make a run of Blu-rays. It's free real estate.

Well if the quality doesn't matter maybe we could at least get a VHS release. Or maybe laserdisc.

But seriously I do understand that angle. And I assume that there's a certain threshold of sales that make it worth doing especially when a lot of stores are reducing or eliminating physical media sections (except records of course).

Speaking of records I think that that is where you could pivot the bluray industry. Make a bigger package with specially tinted discs and lots of behind the scenes photos or interviews on a fold out cover. Maybe even make people get up in the middle of the movie to flip the disc over? (Ok maybe not that last one.)

I think that's the biggest thing standing in the way personally. There are 6 or 7 Spotify-like services and 10 or 11 Netflix-like services. Some people might lump YouTube in with Netflix but it really isn't since all the content on YouTube is user generated. There's nobody else doing the same thing YouTube is doing at that scale. The closest is Facebook and TikTok but the way they deliver ads seems to be a lot different as well.

The stupid thing is that they could change nothing about the laptop including the price and add almost nothing to the BOM cost to add 8gb more of RAM, still make a staggering profit and avoid this criticism altogether.

Just make the base model have 16gb ram. They could probably mark it up $150 too and nobody would bat an eye. It's already too expensive, just don't sell a stupid option.

It's like a base model Cadillac only having 3 seats. Yeah maybe a lot of people can get by with it but it's a Cadillac! Why is something inferior like that even an option?

Basically this situation

I sense a slippery slope into mediocrity in the same way Halo has done since Halo 3. Pop one out ever couple of years like Assassin's Creed or Far Cry, make your money, never innovate again.