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:Most of you are missing the point

[netringer]

I agree on the user interface insanity.

I bought one of the ultimately hackable Apex DVD players. The remote had 50 buttons that let me change everything - screen resolution, NTSC/PAL format, ... But THERE WAS NO REWIND BUTTON! You could only jump back to the begiing of the chapter, not just back a few seconds. I'm spoiled by the 8-second go-back on TiVos. I took the DVD player back.

I'm amazed that things I could do on a my early mechanical JVC VCR 20 years ago, I can't do now. It would record a signal on the tape atteh beginning of each recording so you could FF or REW to the program start. Only a few modern VCRs can do that.

Things are going backwards.

Re:Cosumer Sucker Alert!

[stienman]

I'm criticizing him (the person who's griping about the cable box) because he appears to not understand how to solve his problem.

He has, in my limited view, several options:

• Return the box and go back to the older style cable - This would solve all his problems, but he wouldn't have digital cable. He doesn't tell us why he cannot or will not go back. If it's a forced upgrade, then go on to the next solution, if not then he needs to realize that he's trading the 'benefits' of digital cable for these few annoying (but not show stopping :-) features.
• If it is a forced upgrade, or if it's a one way trip (semi forced, can't go back once you're in) (which is unlikely as a premium service) then you need to complain to the cable company and find out why these features are not included and when they will be. He didn't tell us what he's already done.

But the bottom line is that he seems willing to trade those features for the unknown value of the digital cable.

-Adam