Consumer Tech - Getting Worse w/ Each Generation?

The Rev asks: "I always thought the next generation of a technology was supposed to be easier to use and have more features than the last one. My experiences with TV oriented technologies is as far from that myth as can be! :-( So are Slashdot's experiences with such technologies. Do you feel things are moving backwards with each new generation instead of forwards?" Read on for Rev's take on how digital cable has gone backwards in his opinion. Have any of you experienced the same with similar or other forms of consumer technology?

"Two years ago I had analog cable-TV. I could program the box to change channels at arbitrary times and when I wasn't changing channels, it displayed the time. These programs could also be repeating ones. I was happy. Then digital cable-TV came out. It would only let me set non-repeating programs and they have to be for the beginning of a specific programme. This meant I could not program (for taping on my VCR) the whole of one programme and the end of another (that overlaps with the first). Say a movie overlaps with the first 10 minutes of a football game. If you feel it's much more important to get the whole of the movie and miss the beginning of the game...tough! You now have to miss the end of the movie. *sigh*

Then I moved house into a difference region of the same digital-TV company. Their digital-TV boxes are different yet again. I used to be able to configure how much in advance of a programme beginning that the on-screen dialog reminding me of the impending programme would appear. Now I have to accept the hard-coded interval whatever it is. What's really bad with this box is that if I want to see what's on tomorrow (actually any time after midnight) I have to do so whilst watching adverts for pay-per-view movies rather than the channel I was watching. :-(

Then this new box died and I was given a replacement that's a mark 2 model and this new box doesn't let me tape terrestrial channels whilst watching digital ones (a feature that UK readers will recognize). They're obviously trying to get me to rent a second digital-TV cable box (for £15 per month) by taking away this feature. :-("

Comments

Re:Avoid the whole problem all together...

[handsomepete]

"Don't forget the ultimate solution to a lot of life's problems: avoidance."

Funny, that's exactly why I do watch TV. To avoid working, to avoid listening to the girlfriend, to avoid posting here (whoops).

As a side note, thanks for putting that disclaimer at the end of your post. I personally enjoy watching TV. People who are on the opposite end of the spectrum (read as: don't own a TV) seem to be so insanely proud of this achievement that anyone who does own one instantly becomes the stupidest person they've ever met. I appreciate you leaving it as a suggestion and not a measure of self-worth.

Re:Avoid the whole problem all together...

[zulux]

I have a theory that the human mind needs> 4 hours of diversion every day in-order to maintain sanity. I've tried not to be a hoity-toity bastard just because I choose not to have a TV - realising that I use books, as an escape, in the same way thet others use TV. Hell - 300 years ago, people viewed books in about the same light as some of us view TV - as a mindless diversion.

I'm sure, 100 years from now some turtlenecked twit will preach to others:"Oh... you have a holo-cave... we don't have that at our place..we have wholseome television."