New Scaratings

Whatever happened to the statement that the upper left little numeric keys were disappearing on new Playmakers ?

We got some new Playmakers in town at the Sports & Social Club.

Very light, blazing fast, fastest "1st switch" points I've ever seen. If you seriously wanted to score points amd were willing to relocate just for your score, you'd have an advantage playing here over anywhere I've ever played.

But they do have both set of numeric keys.

They're out there. Kaufmann's in Gambrills MD has the new-style boxes with no numbers on the top row.

I've also seen a few of these around. This one is from a site in murfreesboro, tn.

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Rookies in Oceanside, CA has them too. I like them a lot better due to the fast response. Their site is near BT's HQ.

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I've never seen one like in that picture, those look better.
A bar here got newer ones that are the old design, but at least half the weight of the old Playmakers, and it could just be the location signal but they are a ton faster.

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The new ones run in the 2.4 gHz, band and use a different modulation scheme than the 900 mHz ones. They run at higher power and vastly increased data transmission rate. All this makes them more robust, with greater range and fewer transmission errors.

The new ones can be identified by the ID number on the bottom. The ID # on the new ones is M8SNTN2400.

I'm guessing that's what sports and social club in lou has, minus the new colors. Their boxes are crazy snappy.

I'd like to try 'em out, but I'm afraid here in the hinterlands we're doomed forever to the 900mHz ones.

At my erstwhile home, The Office in Phoenix, we got these boxes a couple of years ago. It's the only place in the Phoenix area that I've found them, and that includes sites that have installed the system since The Office opened. The system is decidedly better than previous systems. Now that The Office is closed, I'm back to using the old junk. I don't understand why BT would do a new install of their older, inferior system, but they do all the time.

NTROPY, making a first post, but thinking this site will pretty fully replace the BT Forums. Thanks, Scar.

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They don't have any of the new fancy ones up here in the northwoods. One thing I'm curious about, many boards I run into have battery issues like short battery life and such. With the new boards pumping out even more power, have they corrected the battery problems, so the short battery charge issue doesn't get even worse?

The 900mHz playmakers were designed over ten years ago (circa 1998). The PC board contains 13 discrete ICs and a separate, clunky, RF module. It requires 7.2 volts provided by a battery pack of 6 AA NiMh cells.

The 2.4gHz playmakers by contrast, have a very simple PC board with 2 ICs and and a lightweight RF module mounted on the PC board. It only requires 4.2 volts supplied by 4 AA cells.

With less drain in the newer version, in my opinion the usage time (with good batteries) should be similar to the 900mHz version.

Even NiMh cells can only be charged a finite number of times before they fail. It seems the ones you're running into have reached the end of their useful life. Time to get 'em sent in.

The battery life seems to be better. One can pickup a less-than-fully-charged Playmaker and it will still last for a few hours. A plus to the new ones is the fact that they go into sleep mode when out of the charger and not being used for a short length of time.

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I really like the layout of the buttons on the newest model.




Edit: Hope jeradc doesn't mind my blatently copying and Photoshopping his pic...

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not at all. just make sure BT sends me one of those when they come out.

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Changing correct answers to incorrect answers after the final clue, then mumbling profanities...

FWIW

I went back to the FCC website where I originally pulled the schematics, block diagrams, and operating manuals for the 2.4 gHz playmakers, and found that they are now classified as Buzztime proprietary information, and are no longer in the public domain.

Unfortunately I didn't print them out at the time, so now it's all memory..... and I ain't great at that!

KEWL! so when I visit it should improve my scores greatly ... with the new fast PM's and the answers from you guys

looked a the PM on the previous post and have never seen one of those ... we have some that came in which 'feel' lighter but are the same 'old' style PM?

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I know a few people that only use the top row of number buttons to answer questions. I've tortured them about using the small buttons for years and when these babies come to Indy, my revenge will be complete!

I'm curious about the slow response issues that people have brought up with the current crop of PMs. At 86th St Pub, I can consistently get 1000 points on six PMs (knowing the answer going in obviously helps a little...). Is our system getting along abnormally well with these current PMs? Just wondering.

I use the top row, learned it that way because of Restore Order.

Look on the bottom for the FCC ID tag, Cavman - if it says M8SNTN2400, than the innards are the 2.4 gHz ones.

Not sure how it works over on that site, but have you tried the Wayback Machine, or Google Cache?

I hadn't, but I did. Wayback didn't find anything, and it looks like Google Cache is for sites that return "page not found" errors.

The documents I want show up on the Summary Information on the FCC site, but I can't access the Detail Information because of the proprietary information tag on 'em.

The new style of blue boxes seem to only have numbers 1-6. Okay for playing the games, but some of us would have to change our login info.

So how does ones bar get those new PMs?

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Danged if I know!

I would imagine they'll go to the two-channel sites first, and it'll be a long wait until the one-channel locations get them.