If you're looking for a 4 GHz Windows Vista laptop, 3000 watt amplified speakers, or a fake HD camcorder, you've come to the right place! Images scanned using my 1998 HP Scanjet 5100C parallel port scanner.
By the way, you can still buy that blazing-fast 2 GB Vista machine for the bargain bin price of $169.99 in 2020 with the same marketing blurb. Additional colors are available!
My parents are on the "Publisher Clearing House" list. I love looking through their catalogs to see the stupid Chinese junk they're trying to sell. Many of the catalogs are from like 2008, and still advertise CRT TVs and Windows Vista-based computers. Of course, it has the cheap no-name stuff like the "Yheng Zeng HD Camcorder" for only "$39.99 plus shipping and handling." Of course, I just end up throwing them away after I've had my laughs.
I've dealt with PCH house before, thankfully they've stopped sending me stuff, they were really annoying plus I got a lot of their advertisements on RU-vid.
This catalog kind of reminds me a little bit of the weird and unusual products featured in the Harriet Carter catalogs. Some of which even features some of the weirdest "As seen on TV" infomercial products I've ever seen. I would love to see more of these silly type of catalog videos.
1:57 I think I saw one of those magnifiers at a thrift store. It was just ok. The lens was a fresnel lens, so it didn't have the clearest magnified image.
Heartburn seems more befitting than Heartland. But you can still use a USB to midi interface to connect a midi keyboard or sound module to a computer. That Prodigy keyboard is probably not the worst of it's ilk but still not very good not to mention some of the components used in them are not intended for musical instruments. The lights on them are known to have intermittent flashing so they are effectively a faulty product right out of the box.
We have similar catalogues like that here in the UK. All full of the finest crap-o-rama from China at rip-off prices! AMAZING QUALITY.....I DON'T THINK!
Battery chargers absolutely do work. You wont get the same charge as a brand new Duracell but you'll get about 70-80% for pennies on the dollars. Ive been using the same 10 batteries over and over again for 5-10years now.
Yeah, regular battery chargers work with RECHARGEABLE batteries. That charger is supposed to charge regular alkaline batteries, the non-rechargeable kind, and the charging system is different than the one used by regular charger for rechargeable batteries. It is technically possible to charge non-rechargeable batteries but you don't get the same energy quantity and there's a limited number of charges you can perform if you let the batteries be discharged completely. If you pull them out every time while they still have some energy in them, you may be able to recharge them maybe a hundred times. But why worry and keep track of how charged the batteries are and so on, when rechargeable batteries are so cheap these days? Regular battery chargers are much cheaper than these alkaline chargers so you could pretty much move the extra money you'd pay into buying rechargeable batteries.
Back in the early 1990s, I used to recharge alkaline batteries in a Radio Shack rechargeable battery charger. Amazingly, it really worked, and they didn't leak or explode or anything, and I could get about 20 charges out of them before throwing them out. They didn't last as long as new, but it did work for about 70-80% as long, I saved a fortune on batteries for my cassette Walkman.
8:00 I actually have that VCR/DVD recorder, except mine's Magnavox-branded. I forget who originally made it outside of it being some random Chinese company. Anyways, the VCR part of mine, which actually is a hi-fi/stereo model, broke down after a couple years of semi-regular use, and I haven't bothered fixing it because I have a couple of MUCH higher quality VCRs floating around the house - namely, an early 2000s Zenith and a 1985 Sears-branded one that I think is actually made by Hitachi. Both still work fine and do very well whenever I get the urge to watch on old tape. The DVD recorder part still works fine, and I was regularly using it to make videos for my channel until fairly recently. Didn't do much transferring from VHS to DVD, at least from the VCR half of that Magnavox. Seriously, that thing is the definition of cheap. It's very lightweight, with miniscule amounts of internals. That Dell "I-series" laptop is actually a Latitude E6410, and you can pick one up for a lot cheaper on eBay than what's being advertised here. And yes, they are advertising a 9-year old laptop - a Dell Latitude D630 - at 13:44. re. 100GB HDDs - I actually have a Seagate 100GB 3.5" drive that came out of an eMachines tower, so I can confirm that they do exist.
yeah it's crazy how they still make DVD players that is when you can just go on to any website or download a program called popcorn time and watch a movie for free online. But they make these portable DVD players with TV tuners in them to pick up TV stations. it's crazy how they will stick in digital tuner and anything nowadays and call it a digital TV
LOL based on the claims of the electronics, makes me wonder if the shoes they advertise are pre-worn.. "Get genuine Converse Hi Tops for only $29.99" and in fine print: *Customer returns with slight cosmetic blemishes and mild foot funk*
I bought in 2007 that SkipDR thing (it was slightly different than the one pictured but had the same brand and same rotating wheel) and it did work most of the times, but only once: if you scratched a CD that the SkipDR already fixed it would render it totally unusable.
I bought a skip dr back in the day it does NOT work it is supposed to resurface the disc by buffing a layer off all it does is scuff up the surface you will have better luck with Brasso
MIDI on PCs was common until the early 2000s. Every soundcard had an combined joystick/MIDI port. And USB-to-MIDI or MIDI boxes are still the method of connecting all kinds of music equipment to PCs.
Andrew Cole I have a 4GB computer and it's actually OK for playing not-so-demanding titles (Forget about AAA titles). Just make sure you have a proper graphics card/onboard GPU to go along with it.
Wow, just, wow. They've no idea what they're selling. This catalogue shows clearly what's wrong with the electronics and retail industries today, crappy low quality expensive products and salespeople who have no idea what they're doing or what they're selling. Have Heartland always sold second hand computers?
You'd think that maybe they'd sell what I like to call the 2/32 computers like that little Keyboard PC you've got. Computers that have 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage, like the HP Stream 11 or Lenovo IdeaPad 100S.
I have that large flashlight and it is really that big. it weighs approx 15 pounds. I got mine from Sam's Club however. it can be used to jump-start a car. The battery is a standard battery found in an APC battery backup. The light is incredibly bright, however mine would get incredibly hot and the battery stopped holding a charge after 1 month. I promptly returned for a refund.
Now you can buy a flashlight that's just as heavy as a bowling ball! Get a free workout while running from grizzlies in the forest! Nonstop fun (as long as you stay alive)!
I'm guessing the "Not Available in AK, HI, or P.R." is due to them shipping those electronics with the batteries installed (so land-only shipments) instead of pulling the batteries out so they can be shipped via air.
Dual core at 4.0 ghz... Wat? I mean, you could get an AMD 8350 at 4.3-5.0 ghz and its an octocore, maybe not the best, but... dual core 4.0......... WAT
ProtoMario modern i3s are actually not bad. the single core performance is where they strive. although the 8350 is a very good CPU. it's just old. AMD is great budget CPUs and IMO have the best price to performance ratios. the FX 6300 I think is still on top. although I could be wrong. been awhile since I looked into that. anyways, I don't assume tho that this particular PC had a quality i3. cuz the modern ones I'm thinking of are the 6100 and the 6300. and those are actually really kick ass. its more about the architecture then core count and speed. an i3 may be a duel core but it's 2 cores could be better then all 8 cores on the 8350. kinda how i5s which are quad core can outperform the 8350. but this is also a laptop. so it's an m model. which slows it down even more. so yeah -3- it's shit. but you get what you pay for. and if each core ran at 4ghz that's not bad. that's a respectable stock speed. but if the combined speed is 4ghz that's different.. that's not really good. but it being a laptop most of the time they have slower speeds due to thermals. so they don't heat up as much. and it effects power draw.
That was honestly one of the funniest videos I've ever seen. its sad to think thousands of old people will buy from this thinking they're buying their kids a great 10+ year old Christmas gift
I've had a "Skip Doctor" for nearly 1.5 decades; I originally had the hand-crank one, but eventually sprung for the motorized one that originally cost $100 and came with an adapter for 8cm discs (think GameCube games). The hand-crank one is a PITA to use but the motorized one repaired two special-edition DVDs and a GameCube game and at that point it had paid for itself. I've used it to repair at least 20 discs that had marginal read problems. IT ISN"T PERFECT -- you have to buff the deeper scratches out yourself, which just mangles the surface, but I don't care what the end result looks like as long as I can read the original disc and get the data off of it. So, don't get the hand-crank ones; get the motorized one.
Yeah, I have a motorized one I use on mostly PlayStation discs I get in lots. It works decently, but I wouldn't use it on any rare games though, just to be safe lol.
Jim Leonard Though a real pos, my hand crank one did save many of my ps1 and 2 discs back before I understood the importance of putting discs back in the case.
They also have a version for BluRay discs that is green in color. Works fine in regular DVDs as far as I can tell but since mine is also the hand cranked version you do get tired if you're doing many of them.
There's many people still using MIDI because there's hundreds of devices that have no modern equivalents that need to be interfaced with DAWs. Decent audio interfaces still come with MIDI inputs/outputs for a reason. That keyboard is still shite though.
Why are they selling 8 year old computers wtf do they get their stuff from the recycling depot and my grandpa had that cd player at 15:43 back in 1998.
The only actually quality stuff in that catalog is ancient and used lol. Teac made good equipment but that is still an insane price and nobody really wants to buy a CD changer anymore in the first place
The SkipDr disc repair thing really *does* work. I bought one on closeout years ago (from a bookstore of all places) and most of the time it was able to revive a disc to the point where I could image or copy it. There really were 2.5" 100GB hard drives. Dell sent me one under warranty (a 7200 RPM Hitachi drive) because they said my hard drive was "bad". While it was sitting on my night stand, no doubt hundreds of miles away from the computer.
Oh yes I know about it. My point is that almost all computers made in the past 15 years don't have any way to connect MIDI unless you buy a MIDI to USB adapter.
I've been using MIDI since the 1980s and apart from the Atari STE, I have never owned a computer with built-in MIDI ports and have always had to buy something with this feature. The best I own is an Edirol UM880 which goes for crazy money on Ebay these days, mainly because it is regarded as the best interface ever made. You can even use up to four units in one computer, for a total of 32 discrete MIDI IN and 32 MIDI OUT ports!
Vivitar products were crap even before the Chinese bought them. Even in the 80s you were better off buying used. Most of those electronics look like the crap that scammers sell out of vans. Though for the price that refurb karaoke machine is worth it just for the tube.
Ha Ha Ha my parents get this catalog, On there website you should see what other computers they have , they have various older pentium 4 and pentium m laptops, they also use to have pentium III laptops on there as well with windows 98 with 256mb of ram , I believe they still sell them I'm not sure, they where trying to sell them for around $277
Oh, the "Fartland" catalog. Ordered one $30 item, about 10 years ago, & got hammered w/ catalogs for the next three years. Then they started w/ the, "this may be your last catalog (unless you order something)" messages emblazoned across the front of them; that went on for another two years. Finally, they got the, "he must not be interested" message & stopped sending 'em!
I still have a Vivitar camera somewhere (was new about 12 years ago though), wasn't too bad, but was easily trounced by my first smartphone (the Galaxy S) and ended up in a box or drawer somewhere...
LifeOfAnEnglishman I owned two, one was a ripoff of a Flip camera and the other was trying to be an actual camera. Both sucked ass, as the flip knockoff one recorded in horrible quality and the microphone was shit, and the other was just shit. Mic was quiet and camera quality pretty much doesn't exist.
I used to work for walmart in the photo dept and I remember every year we would get a big shipment of them and I would always be telling people not to buy them, but every once in a while someone would then return it and tell me I was right to tell them not to buy it lol
I was looking at the November 2018 Heartland America catalog online, and in it was a 4 GHz Windows Vista laptop with basically the same specs. What was interesting was that on the previous page, they had an HP Laptop with a correctly rated 1.6 GHz Celeron processor, so they really must not care what they sell as long as they make a quick buck.
The disc restoration thing works about half the time, sometimes the actual foil inside the disc is cracked and no amount of polishing the surface will help
9:20 - It says "120W 12 LED swivel halogen spotlight." Uh? So maybe it's halogen? Maybe it's LED? Maybe I don't give a shite. I've never even heard of these guys before. The work they put into writing those massive over-padded descriptions for each product is impressive.
This looks like one of those mail catalogs that look like it hasn't been updated since, like, 2004. In fact, I actually thought you dug this up from your attic or something like that at first.
That VCR is only really good if you can bypass the HDCP because you can record tapes through HDMI that will even fail on a TBC box (I've had some very weird requests from people who ask me to convert tapes to digital, I'll just leave it at that).
I miss the DAK catalogs. DRew Kaplan would write multi-page descriptions of some quite mediocre products. Not ashamed to admit that I took the bait and purchased a few things from them :)
1:18 MIDI is still very widely used. Especially for DAW controllers, DJ controllers, trigger pads, and electronic keyboards. But most MIDI today uses USB instead of pin connectors.
Genuine MIDI is much more flexible than USB "MIDI" since the USB form needs a host whereas real MIDI is peer to peer. You can connect it to a PC via an interface, or to another instrument, etc. So okay, you need to buy an interface, but they are widely available. I'd much prefer having real MIDI instead of USB.
Where was the false advertising? I am pretty sure they would make sure not to include anything which is "legally" false. To be honest, some of their products didn't seem all that bad, not too great sure, but a fully-functional computer for less than $200 is actually not all that bad.
This catalog is printed for old people to rip them off. And no, there are no consumer protection laws here in this silly country. Its buyer beware or as the Romans used to say, caveat emptor.
ChargedCapacitor wdasddsaf it is false advertising they're selling a 15 year old laptop computer and saying that it has a 4.0 ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and thats a lie no core 2 Duo in existence has 4.0 ghs the only laptop that has a 4.0 ghz Cpu is a Custom laptop with a core I7 7700k
If someone got duped and reported them to the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection they would certainly get into trouble. Heck ignoring both the FTC, if you buy something from them and it was incorrectly labeled, most US credit card companies would refund you the money immediately. But the thing is, these guys know that the type of people they are advertising to doesnt know any better. No one under the age of 50 is picking up these magazines and going "WOW I better buy that laptop and the VHS to DVD converter". This type of magazines/advertisement exist in every country. Saw plenty of it when I did study abroad in the UK. They skirt the line of legality knowing their victims are too old or too stupid to know better.
Just as early as around last year, on their website they were still selling PENTIUM III PCS! I couldn't even believe it, and they were like 200 dollars! Way to screw over old people.
narunetto still selling P3 laptops in 2017! "price so low we can't say the brand name" that's cause if they give the brand name, Dell or whoever made them 15-18 years ago will sue the crap out of Heartland America 😂
Lmao I had the ability to get a ton of P3 PCs for free cuz my school threw them away, I didn't get one though, I just took one of the P3's cause I likee the design xD
Fingerhut ... anybody remember that? Geez, they were the Sears Roebuck/Montgomery Ward cheap variant but much more inferior. Good times spent at the Brockton Arcade during the late 80's till the mid 90's until home consoles became the norm while Montgomery Ward (store closed in 2001) was only a few blocks away at the indoor plaza . Good times, only in memories.
Same here. Mine was a laptop one though. Perhaps it was, at one time, a larger drive, "refurbished" by the manufacturer to bypass the bad spots without wasting the whole disk.
9:37 -- I had one of those back in 2001. It did work surprisingly well, but it made a permanent spiral pattern on the bottom of the disc. (that didn't affect functionality, but still, very crap.) The "jaw" that held the disc in place eventually got stuck and couldn't be opened anymore. I think it was called a Disc Doctor.
HAH! I bought an RCA 5 disc CD changer at the Salvation Army store for $10 just like the one in the catalog. I also found a TEAC brand dual cassette deck for $10 as well. The bad thing is both of these players are of better quality than the stuff I was able to afford as a teenager. Like my Emerson stereo system from Hills Department store. When I was around 18 or 19, I went to K-Mart and bought the cheapest VCR I could afford. It turned out to be a Goldstar. If I remember I paid $180 for it. Given I was earning less than $4.00 an hour at the time, do the math and you will understand why I didn't go after the "big box" name brands like Sony. Funny thing is that VCR lasted for more than 20 years. As of 5 years ago, I was using it as TV tuner on an old CRT analog TV before Charter Spectrum turned off their analog signal for good. It still worked the day I threw it in the trash.
Just saw someone trying to shill those exact Nakamichi headphones at a flea market new in box, for $30 each. also sad to see they're upping the price of a simple latitude E6400 at 9:45 for that much. they only take DDR2 RAM and these days, they're not even worth $100-150 at the most WITH the Nvidia Quadro onboard.
Knock out the felt pad covering the holes in the back of the drivers, and fiberglass the cups from Home Depot, an aquarium store, or a building material scrap pile. They'll be fine!
Skipdoctordoesn't work. You have to crank that handle probably 1000 times and it takes about 10 minutes to do a disk. You put an abrasive goop on the disc and it sprays every where. It gets out really small scratches but scratches that small are not an issue. So no it doesn't make unplayable disks playable; it makes a mess noise and most people won't put in the effort and time to crank out an entire disk. The battery powered ones have a motor too small to work and it goes ridiculously slow and the motor burns out before 25% of the disk is done. Much easier and faster to download and burn a new CD.
My guess is that those HEARTBURN people own a lot of brands and they just choose one to paste on a cheap piece of Chinese crap they probably bought in bulk on alibaba.com. 3:47 I remember seeing a video about a different store that did that "compare at" thing but found that the other stores that didn't do that "compare at" thing had better deals. 9:47 Obviously, the only thing these people know is lying about what they sell. About that bonus media bundle, the games are probably cheap, free and/or trial games. "300 e-books" probably every one of them being old titles downloaded from Project Gutenberg. "100 classic songs" probably very old music and/or cheap knockoff cover or whatever kind of ripoff music like the kind I heard mentioned in some Oddity Archive episodes. "100 movies" probably either old movies, and/or like those B grade movies, or even those "mockbusters". 14:23 Seagate did make 100 GB 2.5 inch IDE hard drives, and I have one in my Compaq Evo N410c. Not sure about SATA though. 17:13 Oh my. It's almost like they never check the movies after they got it all onto 1 disc. Also, there's a reason why I never use the LP and SLP and those kinds of LP modes on my DVD recorder. 17:34 I have seen one of those cheap toy tablets before, but it was black, landscape oriented(in terms of a real tablet), and there was a button with a picture of a chicken but was labelled "cock". No, I'm not joking. 19:05 I don't think I ever seen one of those things in real life, but the closest thing I saw were some "TONGTEL" and "digitor" branded small portable TVs (sold at Dick Smith stores in around the early to mid 2000s) with probably that same kind of CRT. I believe both brands offered the same model but with slightly different colours. Can't really remember the colours, but I believe the former was silver.
Kevin Bhasi oh yeah here in panama the country are lots of companies that are dedicated to doing that with 3 being the biggest: premier and its brand, sankey and its brand, and hometek and its "royal" brand, part of wisa group that was resently added to the clinton list, eventually making the conglomerate(!) bankrupt, with only the largest members surviving either under a new name or the same name.
Regarding the SkipDr, I've two of them, and they work actually quite well for some discs--it basically burnishes the surface of the disk to "sand out"any scratches or shallow gouges, with a polishing cloth to restore the transparency afterward. Sounds pretty extreme, but it's helped to make a disc more readable, I've had good luck with them. I have the hand-cranked version, which works, but gets gets tiring to use after a while. They also made a higher-end motorized version, this is the one to get.
Maybe the "4GHz Dual Core" processor is the Pentium 4 at 4GHz with HyperThreading. It looks like there are 2 physical cores in Windows Task Manager, but they are virtual.
The Pentium 4 4GHz CPU is extremely rare, and I think it was only ever released in desktop form. A normal P4 in a laptop can cook your legs already, I'd hate to try a 4GHz Pentium 4 laptop!
That was the idea behind the comment. They sell you a laptop that will give you 2nd degree burns if you touch it while it's idling and cook itself well after half year of use.
The laptop at 9:45 has a 1st generation Intel Core sticker (probably just i3), and the one at 13:44, with the "Duo Core" processor, I'm pretty sure that's a Core 2 Duo.
I'm listening via a similar pair of Nakimichi headphones now. I bought these at Magicmart for ten bucks. It's not mind blowing, but it's pretty good for the price. They look neat too - kind of a retro "aviator" style. If you keep your expectations realistic, you would be pleased with these.
Loved the review of the catalogue, wish we got it in the UK! I liked your mocking of the Certified Great Deal "logo", I have suddenly become very aware of these words arranged in a circle that's meant to be some sort of accreditation but is actually, err, just some words in a circle!
The i-series dell seems to be the most deceptive...I don't think they have an "i" series...I think the catalog wants you to think it might have an intel i-series processor and the photo with the intel badge seems to support that yet the description says only dual core...I suspect you would get a amd low end or pentium/celeron dual core, sneaky
Can't wait to boot up my speedy windows vista laptop and plug in my new midi keyboard. Wait, where's my midi port‽ why is my laptop have all this trash public domain material‽ why does Windows say "only 5% disk space available"‽
It's sad that these scammy companies like Heartland, Fingerhut, Oriental Trading, Harriet Carter(if that's still a thing), etc., all these lousy catalogs target elderly people who are convinced they are getting great deals, either for themselves or as "great gifts" for kids/grandkids, and end up wasting what money they have for this crap. There should be some kind of regulation.
I have one of those "4.0 GHz" laptops. The one they're advertising with Vista on it. It's a Dell D620. They came with Core Duo processors, not even Core2 Duo. They didn't even support 64-bit. They offered 1.66GHz to 2.16GHz, with the T2500 being 2.0GHz and fairly common, so yeah, they're definitely multiplying the speed. It definitely doesn't have a 7th gen i3 in it!
Interesting, I have the Latitude D630 and mine supports 64-bit, I upgraded one stick of ram where id have one 1GB stuck and one 2GB stick. Does yours have the light up keyboard, press fn and I think the right arrow on keyboard.
***** Yes, Windows ME is the worst Windows OS ever made by Microsoft because of it's endless bugs on older PCs. Although it runs great on PCs made in 2000 and later but it runs like hell on computers from 1998 or earlier due to the system requirements. Even Vista beats Win ME in terms of performance! All Hail Vista!
MIDI on keyboards are still studio standard, with the MIDI sockets for recording now moved onto the dedicated sound interfaces. MIDI is actually more popular than ever.
It is, but what he's pointing out is that computers no longer ship with MIDI ports or even ports that can be converted into MIDI ports. At best, you can get a MIDI box over USB with terrible latency.
@@Longlius MIDI over usb isnt too bad. I use a cheap Yamaha interface and the audio latency from the output device is worse than any midi latency, and that's only a few hundred samples at worst.
I wonder how recording hardware these days work. Pro gear I've seen usually connects to sockets on motberboard, and you get midi that way. Does modern usb get less latecy? What about firewire?
@@jhutt8002 Firewire's dead now but those of us with the gear can get contempo performance anyway. USB's fast and good enough to be default standard with good-as zero latency and Intel's Thunderbolt is another connection standard. Cards seem to be out as well as the breakout boxes contain all the circuitry more and more. You get more choice that way, especially with laptops.
@@MrDustpile You'd say USB 2.0 has latency close enough to be neglible? I'm bit out of loop with modern technology :D My own recording gear still runs on XP with parallel cable from host card to the box
Hello from' France ! We have the same crapy catalogues in Europe too... so funny to read in the toilets ... even in the middle seventies when I was a teenager. For example with the wonderful piece of crap colored plastic screen to stick on your old b&w tv set to have a new color tv : "oh look darling, the lawn is green, the sky is blue !"
