EVER tried video recording that early morning European soccer match and ended up with a black and white 1960s Cantonese film? Or cringed when your eight-year-old child teaches you how to programme the VCR? If so, you can now thank two Hongkong-born scientists and the Sunday Morning Post. This month, VCR programming becomes easier as a video revolution hits Hongkong.
New in town is a gadget making television recording as simple as dialling a telephone. It is called the G-Code Instant Video Programmer and came about because of a missed baseball game five years ago.
Los Angeles-based scientist Henry Yuen reached the end of his patience when he turned on his video to watch a World Series baseball game he had taped, only to discover a grey fuzz. Annoyed that a man with high-powered degrees and a job in consumer electronics was unable to programme a VCR, Mr Yuen decided to do some inventing.
He and colleague Daniel Kwoh put their heads together, got a little help from Chinese University of Hongkong professor Wilson Cho, and came up with the G-Code, a hand-held device that lets you set up a recording by punching in a one-to-eight-digit code number.
That number can be found next to each programme in your TV Weekly from June 20 - simply pick a programme, punch its number into your video via the handset and the rest takes care of itself.
The G-Code has been a big success worldwide.
Market research showed although 70 million Americans owned videos, 80 per cent did not know how to programme them. The scientists' company, Gemstar Development Corp, launched G-Code in 1990 and sold 300,000 in the first month. US sales now exceed two million.