In Car Camera / Dashboard Camera from China - Helps with accidents

Hi guys,

Another item I totally forgot about I ordered from China last year was my in car camera which I take everywhere with me when driving. The reason I bought it was because me and my brother where coming home from work one day and stopped at a set of traffic lights. There were two lanes, we were on the inside lane and on the right there was a large canvas lorry towing another canvas trailer behind it. As the lights turned from red to green, the lorry driver took off fairly quickly and as I began to move the lorry's trailer swayed to the left as he turned the slight bend in front of us to continue going down the road.

The trailer slammed onto the front driver side door and front panel of my car and tore the front bumper as well off. All in all it cost £800 to fix and luckily for us the guy fixed the car out of his own pocket because he owned his own company and fleet of lorries. However some people I have talked to haven't been so lucky. Especially when theres an accident, you take peoples details down etc and make sure they aren't hurt, get them to sign a piece of paper saying they are not injured and what happened etc. However as one of my friends found out, this does not stand up in court the piece of paper. This is because when for instance someone suffers from whiplash for example, signing the paper there and then at the scene and time of the accident means nothing, becaused the onset of whiplash usually takes a few hours up to 24 hours to kick in.

These cameras which nearly every car should have as well as taxis, delivery men, lorries, diggers, buses, motorbikes....even cyclists or any vehicle on the road should be equipped with what i like to call a "Black Box". This means in a court of law it would help to show exactly what happened or give at least some indication of who done what or what went wrong in an accident.

It should also help sort out insurance claims much much faster, as the insurer can do their own investigation with the police into the crash and confirm your statements and the other victims statements, comparing them to video evidence you can send them in the post or email to the claims handler.

Of course not all crashes can be caught on camera if you only have a forward looking one and someone rams into the back of you, but it does record sound as well and the time, date etc of when it happened to witnesses statements can be backed up by what happened. I have included a video I uploaded from my camera to show you the quality you can get from such cameras from China. One mistake I made in this video is that I did put the camera very close to the air vents coming from the dashboard and had them open. This is what makes the annoying noise in the video as the camera microphone is like a pinhole and when the air flows directly into it it can produce a lot of static.

Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think. The camera I used does have night vision as well but I didn't test it out as I don't drive much at night.

Here is a small selection of cameras available on Amazon that are the same model or very near to the specs of the one I tested out and are very cheap:

                                 

Thanks

Henry

Beatles Box Set from China - Copies or ....just printed in China?

Beatles Box Sets from China - Copies or ....just printed in China?

Hey guys,

Long time no type. I was wondering about why people bad mouth the Beatles box sets of the stereo 16 cd box sets and the mono 10 cd box sets? I looked on Amazon at the many reviews for these products and see complaints about the original and authentic ones being priced way too high, which is all fine and good right? However then you come to the printed in China box sets which are apparantly "illegal copies" as everything it seems to people that comes from China is an illegal copy, is of bad quality and the sticker on the CD of a copy has the inner circle cut out while the original shows a whole label stuck on with no inner circle etc. It started to get on my nerves a bit people both rhyming abou authentic products and copied which kinda confused me so I thought I would vent my opinion here.

The differences between the two are so minor and it all really comes down to just the packaging is different, rather than the audio quality thats contained on the CD. People are comparing things like the original box sets have the albums in order they were released in the set, the smell of the Chinese copied ones stinks of that "ink just printed smell", the cd's inner circle intersects the label when it should be one whole label not split by any other circle, the Chinese copied ones have flaps now and again that aren't glued down etc etc.

The thing that annoys me about these kind of people is that they never seem ot be happy. They have two choices when buying these Beatles box sets. Buy them or just keep quiet is the way I see it. The real one for the 16 cd stereo version about £153 and the mono box set is about £179. The Beatles fans will complain this is too high which they are correct in doing. Most Beatles fans already have these on CD and LP so why buy them again?

Obviously if you see the box sets for about £70 or so brand new, you can probably tell these are from China by the price, so the people order them and then read all the guides to spot fakes and then return them. So whether its an authentic item or so called copy, people are never happy. Some people obviously cannot afford the over £100 for some CD Box Sets that can be bought seperately for way less even on Amazon or Ebay. Basically what you are paying for is the presentation of the box which is very attractive I have to say.

I borrowed out of work an authentic beatles box set a stereo one and a mono before it was sent out to one of our customers and then played my so called copied sets together on the same PC comparing the sound quality and I could not tell which one was which by sound alone. People forget to check the quality of the merchandise first before pointing the finger too quick saying its fake itx crap, you have been ripped off by some scammer. I believe its the record company that rips the person off in the end when you really think about it. People should be able to make their own choices if they want to buy a Chinese version or not, as they can tell simply by the price alone, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to work it out.

In the case of authentic Beatles box sets, EMI Records is the only winner here.

Thanks for reading my ramble :D

Henry

DVD's from China - Copies or simply region 1 versions?

DVD's from Chinese Suppliers - Copies or simply region 1 versions?

I have ordered a few titles from China over the years, some more well known as others, and a lot of them are of such high quality, I cannot tell from the packaging or the actual image on the TV screen, whether or not they are fakes or illegal copies.

Most DVD's or when VHS was about, you could tell it was a copy because the picture was either crap or the sound was like the whole film was made underwater and you couldn't make out what people were saying. I done some research with legitimate manufacturers in the UK by sending them a DVD ordered from China, along with the packaging etc, and they told me its simply a Region 1 NTSC version of the product.

This got me thinking that if a manufacturer of DVD's or CD's in the UK couldn't tell the difference, then I think the terms "Its a fake DVD", "Its not a real copy at that price" "Chinese Rip Off" etc shouldn't really be used. It should be more like "Its an illegal unauthorised copy" as I think DVD's that are made in factories in China have been authorised and paid by large movie companies to make so many copies of a DVD, and then cease production. What the Chinese do I believe is continue running the presses of whatever movie or programme they have been asked to create, however when the deadline comes, they just ignore it and continue making them.

Most of them are either Region 0 (FREE) or are Region 1. The thing about Region protection on DVD's nowadays is that it doesn't really mean anything anymore, as most peoples DVD players are multi-region DVD players, which means they can read any DVD from any country. When the multi region DVD player came out, it pretty much made obsolete all the region encoding for different countries all over the world to help stamp out piracy.

Fair enough some shoddy Chinese copies of DVD's you can spot easily especially if you read the descriptions on the back. Some have some very bad spelling mistakes which a company would never put into print production until it was fixed, as quality control would definitely pickup on it. I bought a box set of True Blood Season 1, brilliant price, amazing picture and sound, great detail on packaging along with all insert art etc...but on the back soon as took it out of box noticed a review snippet on the back says it was "Terrfig.....sexy....witty.....wildly imaginative". Of course it means to say its "Terrific" but they may have been eating a fig roll biscuit at the time and got distracted when typing it in for printing the covers.

Also a lot of the "Unauthrosied Copies" copy the region 1 packaging or NTSC versions because there is usually no classfication of an age range you need to be i norder to watch the DVD. Compare each of the DVD cases with one in the UK and you will see the BBFC rating on them as well as (with newer printed DVD's and reissues) the Irish Classification which is a blue hexagon symbol beside the BBFC ones.

Just thought I would give it a mention incase you thought all the pictures of Chinese DVD's were crap. The ones to watch out for a which are a con when buying online is the Blu-ray DVD's from China. They are not truely blu-ray discs, but are just very high quality DVD discs and so is the file that has been burned onto them containign the film. No reduction in quality will be done for these discs. Not all display so well however on HDTV's as one my freind bought had lots of pixelated black blocks appear now and again at certain points which no one could explain.

Thanks for reading.

Henry