The anime thread sequel (it's still not as good as the Manga though),

Has anyone watched Shiki?

It's really strange, but I can't seem to get used to the way the episodes flow. The episodes just 'feel' jumbled and rushed, and the audio effects don't seem to fit.

Anyone else understand what I mean, haha?
 
Werewolf said:
:(
Do you know if it's repairable or is it likely to be terminal?
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Not sure yet. I need to speak to Yamaha later once I've had a chance to check any obvious internal fuses with my dad (I'm the computer guy around the house and he's the electronics guy).

The problem is I think it's the PSU, as sometimes the amp powers on after you've left it unplugged for some time. Switch it off though, and once it's been off for a minute or two, you need to unplug it and do it all again and it might work again til the next time its switched off. Either way it's not looking good.

No idea whether tis going to be economical to repair or I'll need to dig into my Japan fund and by a new one. Dissapointing for an amp that RRP'd at £1200 although I got it for much less; I've only had it ~3.5 years.

@Yosiah;
Yeah I've seen Shiki. It's a bit wierd, but it is rather good, stick with it. It's a series with a few uncomfortable scenes and a LOT of grey morality. By the end it's hard to tell who're the better off, the humans or the 'monsters'.
 
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That's pretty sucky for such an expensive amp :(

Although if it is the power supply, hopefully it'll be a board that can be repaired/replaced on it's own without having to remove the main board.
From the sounds of it, my gut reaction would be either something overheating, or a couple of dodgy capacitors (I have had a pair of fairly expensive Dell monitors, and a motherboard die due to caps going bad and they had similar symptoms from memory - about £2 worth of caps saved the monitors).
 
Re: Inu Yasha, it started off cute and endearing but it got repetitive after a while in the typical way this anime gets (hero gets new superpowered attack upgrade, sort-of defeats villain, villain comes back with new power/underling/weapon, heroes in despair, yet another attack upgrade, villain defeated again - it was like watching a really grindy RPG after awhile). But the whole East Asian folklore and mythology it draws from is so imaginative and different from our own Western fantasy conventions that it kept me watching for a good long while longer than I would have done otherwise. The series might be basically a soap opera for little girls, but there's a little bit in there that anyone can enjoy, even if you wouldn't want to stick out to the end.

Alexrose1uk said:
The problem is I think it's the PSU, as sometimes the amp powers on after you've left it unplugged for some time. Switch it off though, and once it's been off for a minute or two, you need to unplug it and do it all again and it might work again til the next time its switched off. Either way it's not looking good.

No idea whether tis going to be economical to repair or I'll need to dig into my Japan fund and by a new one. Dissapointing for an amp that RRP'd at £1200 although I got it for much less; I've only had it ~3.5 years.
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Damn, that sucks dude, hope you manage to fix it! :( Sounds really weird what's been happening to it - did I misunderstand or was it switching itself back on after you'd switched it off? Was this maybe some kind of feature? Maybe it was detecting a signal from one of the various things plugged into it and it was switching itself on? Anyway, I'm surprised you even bothered switching it off. The manual in mine (and the folks at the hifi store I bought it from) empatically said to leave it switched on all the time unless you're going to be away for several weeks, as switching it on and off daily wears out its components. Of course mine is a really cheap Cambridge Audio hi fi amp so probably not even the same species as your thing, so I'm not sure whatever advice they gave me applies to you. When I told a friend who's a bit of an electronics hobbyist why I kept it on all the time he mocked me for it and said it was "audiophile superstition". But for the price of a few pennies of electricity a month, it's worth your while keeping it on when you get it repaired/replaced, cause it might sound like superstition but it doesn't sound completely implausible that there was some damage to the PSU because of it...
 
Usually I put it into standby via the 'main zone' standby button [not main power...it has both on the front] button on the front rather than via the plug. The only reason I've done it via the plug these last couple of days is to get it to power on at all!

It wasn't switching itself back on, but basically it was refusing to power back on. If you switch it off at the power plug and leave it for a while, and then power back up, you could switch the amp on via the standby (if it didnt come on automatically), if you didn't it wouldn't power up at all.

As I live in MK and the Yammy service centre is here, I've dropped it in with them for them hopefully to look at on Monday. It's not going to be cheap (at £40+VAT per hour + parts quoted) but I'm also hoping it is just a few caps or similar (that was also my suspicion...if it was completely gone I wouldn't have been able to get ANY life out of it, whereas it seems more likely that its a CAP or similar...and some of the CAPs in this thing are huge...bigger than a few fingers sort of size!), and will be a quick fix from them. If they quote me something silly for the fix, then I'll have to look elsewhere or consider a new amp.

I always switch it into standby rather than leaving it permanently on because it generates quite a bit of heat even when doing nothing (ergo it must draw a fair bit of power when not in standby, it's a fairly hefty 5/600W unit actually capable of that level of output)

The manual doesn't actually say anything about it being a bad thing to put it into standby, in fact it actually recommended doing it this way:
"Basically, we recommend that you use the standby mode to turn off this unit"
Which is what I'd been doing, rather than turning the entire unit off.
 
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Watching FMP all I think is;

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Finished watching A Channel on the Sentai DVD release. A nice little slice of life series about a group of female high school students doing random things ... in some ways it reminded me of Azumanga Daioh (although this is slightly less surreal). Each episode tends to have a nice little insert song too.

What is good is that Sentai have included a separate DVD of extras include the 11 animated shorts and the A Channel TV live action episodes which are live action with the voice actresses.
 
Just as a small headsup, PlanetAxel are dropping thier reward points scheme, but are offering everyone with point the chance to convert them to a voucher in the near future at the rate of 1000 points for $0.5 discount off anything.

Whilst this isn't as good a trade as some of the items, it does mean they're not getting wasted. Additionally they're reducing thier customs/delivery charges at the same time:

PlanetAxel site said:
Axel Rewards is no more!
We know this will not be amongst our most popular changes, so please believe us when we say: the decision did not come easy and it is with huge regret that we announce the end of the Axel Rewards Program.

After nearly 2 years of Axel Rewards we have come to inevitable conclusion that our Rewards program and its expenses simply cannot be sustained based on its current promotional value. We've tried everything; cutting down cost, moved numbers around and everything we could come up with to be able to continue offering the points to our customers, but it's just not possible.
DON'T WORRY - YOUR POINTS ARE NOT LOST!
Within a few weeks we will be offering a chance to have all your collected points converted to a gift voucher instead. This means that you will be able to spend it on ANY item in the store - without exception! We will be giving 50 cent USD for every 1000 points you have on your account. The voucher that will be issued will NOT expire. You will need to fill out the simple form below to have your points converted (please allow for up up to 48 hours for the points to be issued). All additional points earning have ended effective immediately.
IT'S NOT ALL BAD NEWS! We have received your feedback and listened:
Effective immediately we have lowered the handling, routing and customs fee by 50% to just $1.99 per checkout (previously is was $4.99, then $3.99 and now just $1.99)! Within a months time this will be completely replaced by a "1st item, each additional item" cost that most online retailers also use. Simple and easy to understand, with no hidden cost or surprises.

We must acknowledge when mistakes are made and changes have to be put in place. It is important to stay humble and listen to our customers feedback and suggestions!

We feel most of our customers would like a no-nonsense, no bells and whistles, effective customer service, cheapest price possible approach to their shopping experience. This is what we will be working towards over the next few months. Removing the Axel Rewards and instead offer better overall pricing and postage rates are two of those steps.

I sincerely hope you will continue to stay on as a customer with PlanetAxel.com and I can truly say that your business is very much appreciated by everyone here!

With kindest regards,
Rasmus Christiansen
CEO, PlanetAxel.com
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I already have a few dollars of vouchers so I'll just add this to the extra money off my Clannad BD order when I get round to it (or EF) :)


Also as an additional note, MVM have announced they'll be releasing Broken Blade in the UK, and it'll be thier first BD release. Providing it sells reasonably they'll also consider some re-releases of other series in BD, and more BDs going forwards :)
Nice move as I know a lot of older fans will prefer decent BDs to DVDs these days :)
 
MVM have also said that they have Mayo Chiki as well which is interesting as I don't recall it being licensed yet in the US (or at least being announced as such).

I like the rewards points with CDJapan ... you earn about 3% of the price (for BDs) as points and when you redeem them it's 1 point = 1 yen ... simples ... but you can also get bonuses if you are buying things >5000Yen using Paypal, at the moment that seems to be 500Yen (~£4) although for a period at the end of last year it was actually at 1000Yen, and that's on top of the item points.

So, whilst I spent all my points the other day towards the Usagi Drop movie I got points for that and something else(*) so now I'm back at ~900 points already ...

(*) new ToHeart2 Dungeon Travellers OVA BD LE release :)
 
Watched a few things this weekend ...

Gundam 00 Season 2 ... clearing a bit of Bandai Gundam backlog so I can be sure the disks work (:rolleyes:) so watched this yesterday and part of today.

It was ok, I'm not the biggest fan of Gundam, it seems to be to much of "we're so powerful and there are lots of weak enemies we can dispatch in a cloud of purple smoke" and "the enemy is overwhelming ... but wait, here's an add-on we prepared earlier which makes our machine(s) super-duper", and it's been quite a long time since I watched the first series but it was generally ok ... at least this time I remembered who the characters were and it wasn't quite as far fetched. It's not going to make me a Gundam fan but it was a reasonable watch.

And Yet the Town Moves ... on the Sentai DVD release. Ok this had promise, it's basically about a maid cafe in a small town and the characters who work there ... but unfortunately it's not very good. The characters are, for the most part, completely unlikeable, the animation style slightly off and the stories just ... well dull. It even makes the beach episode dull. The last episode is the worst of the lot and strikes as they thought "we don't know what to do here ... quick what can we think of ...". I try to avoid giving marks out of 10 as I think they are very subjective to the tastes of the person watching but this barely scraped a 2/10 for me ...

ToHeart2 Dungeon Travellers OVA 1 ... w. t. f. Well it comes in a nice box with a nice big poster and CD and the BD looks nice but I don't know what they were smoking when they decided to take the franchise in this direction with the game and the new OVAs but ... hmmmm ... It does have a massive fail that Tama-nee's transformed costume is less revealing than her normal one :(

Other than that it would be keeping up with things ....

Waiting for Summer - Drunk neko-maid for the win.
Bodacious Space Pirates - and a Princess appears ...
Amagami SS+ - monkeys and bras do not mix (oh yes they do) ...
High School DxD - too many demon oppai :)
 
memyselfandi said:
Other than that it would be keeping up with things ....

Waiting for Summer - Drunk neko-maid for the win.
Bodacious Space Pirates - and a Princess appears ...
Amagami SS+ - monkeys and bras do not mix (oh yes they do) ...
High School DxD - too many demon oppai :)
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I must agree on all of those except for High School DxD as I don't watch it. :p I can see Bodacious Space Pirates being a good series if it carries on like this though, I really am enjoying it. Nisemonogatari is also just as confusing as it is amusing, just as good as Bakemonogatari.
 
I'm actually finding High School DxD quite good, despite the high level of fanservice. There always seems to be one show per season with quite a high level of fanservice and not much else but this seems to have quite good characters and a reasonable story as well. I wouldn't say it's as good as Waiting for Summer and Bodacious Space Pirates but it's surprisingly close behind for me ...
 
When will I persuade you to start Daily Lives of Highschool Boys (Danshi koukousei no nichijou). :p It is by far the best anime this season. Might give High School DxD a go, I really don't get bothered by fan service, so I won't find that annoying.
 
Sweet, my amp repair quote came back a little earlier and it's much lower than I expected. Cost should be just shy of £50, as suspected it was some capacitors and dry joints, the engineer who gave me a phone said the unit was actually pretty well kept and in good condition compared to most they see...so thats one worry down :)
 
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