Slashdot Mirror
Consumer Tech - Getting Worse w/ Each Generation?
"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. :-("
You are a highly trained consumer. You believe them when they say "Digital cable is better". They eventually offer channels on digital cable you can't get on regular to force upgrades. They cross pollinate commercials so you can realize what you are missing because you don't get the apes on meth channel, which has a new series everybody will talk about at work the next morning while you think about last night's rerun of "Gilligan's Island".
You have been bred in captivity just to upgrade, and when they take a feature away it is only for your own good.
And they know exactly where your breaking point is. They will remove features one by one, forcing you to watch what they want you to watch (why do you think so many channels start their shows at odd times?). Just before the point where you switch to another provider or give it up alltogether they'll blast you with 'new' features you've 'got' to have.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you, Consumer.
It seems obvious to me that those bastards at General Instrument (or whatever they're called these days) that make the majority of set top boxes have absolutely zero knowledge of how to make a decent user interface. It's not just the cable company's boxes, apparently the satellite ones are terrible too. The biggest problem to me is that they are never responsive to the remote control. You can push a button three or four times but the thing is so slow repainting the godawful menus (with unwelcomed banner ads these days) that it seems to have no processor cycles left to pay attention to the remote's signal. The end result: you have to slowly press buttons, watching the screen repaint pixel by pixel before issuing the next command. I find it almost impossible to believe that they cannot put sufficient hardware in these things to repaint the menus within the span of a couple of frames.
And let's not even talk about the total lack of ability to remove channels from the lineup. I'm sure it has to do with the fact that companies want you to see just exactly you're missing by not paying for the $80/month plan, but this functionality has been present in TVs for decades now. Why is it that most of the set top boxes make you flip through channels that you either don't receive, don't pay for, or have zero interest in? Why in the love of christ should you have to slowly wait for 15 different pay-per-view channels scroll past when you use the channel up/down buttons? I could go on, but I don't think it would do any good.
By law, cable companies must pass the analog cable signal over that same digital line. Here's an interesting test, get a coax-splitter, split the cable at the wall, run one end straight to your TV, run the other into your digital cable set-top box. then run the cable from your set top box into a second input on your tv as you normally would. Switching between the two inputs youll see they both work. The difference being, the analog signal looks far better, has no stupid advertisements, no crappy channel guide, and the channels change instantly. No need to wait for them to fill in like with digital cable. The catch is, some channels are only available with the digital decoder box. I hate my digital cable, P.O.S. doesnt even properly pass a dolby digital signal since it has no capable outputs. This way you get the option of both digital or far better analog, all for the price of digital cable. One more thing, if you are feeding the analog signal straight to your set, you dont have to use their crappy decoder box, and you can split it off to other TVs in your house.
It's not just about cable TV - the same applies to almost any "user friendly" modern device of any significant complexity.
I have two video recorders. One was a very cheap own-brand from a large chain here in the UK. The other was a Sony Nicam box costing more than twice the price.
Cheap box:
* has an LCD screen on the remote so I can set the timer without turning the TV on (think "running late for work")
* will let me enter a timer event that begins earlier than the current time (e.g. five minutes ago)
* Has the traditional "zero stop" option on the counter
Sony Box:
* Requires me to use the OSD to set the timer, but only allows cursor keys and enter - I can't punch the time in on the numeric buttons directly
* All timers have to start in the future. So I can't enter a VideoPlus+ number for a programme that's already started. In fact it clears all the data if you put an "incorrect" time in, so you have to set all your timers to start at least two minutes into the future to account for the time it takes to enter the data, and the possibility of a rollover in the meantime
* It has a counter, but no "stop" facility. So I have to watch it counting down, then hit the stop key myself. Sounds simple, but in practice can quickly end up as a game of "Oh damn, too far. Forward. Hmmm.... what's that on TV... Oh damn, too far. Backwards...."
Yes, I sent a letter to Sony - just a request for them to pass some suggestions on to their UI design team. I got a reply which essentially said "We market a range of products with different capabilities, so you should have bought a more expensive one in order to get the things you want in a VCR". Which is fair enough, except that these are not the sort of things that are obvious until you've been using the device for a while.
Conclusion: I still mostly use the cheap VCR for recording, because it's so much easier to set up timers. The Sony gets used for playback of pre-recorded stuff, where stereo is more important.
I could, of course, give plenty of other examples. It's a general trend, and not just restricted to A/V equipment. It's more due to laziness on the part of the UI designers, or cutbacks from the management.
In my perfect world, the TV would have an ethernet port, optional DHCP server, and a web browser. Everything else (video, hi-fi, microwave, fridge...) would have a built in web server. Instant network control. Instant full-screen setup pages. No more need to set the clock on the hi-fi using multi-function buttons in a special mode on a 4 digit 7 seg display.
Plus I could ssh into my network to set the video from work when I forgot in the morning.
Avid TV watchers please bear with me here...People who are insanely proud of not owning/watching a TV have good reason to be proud - even if it is obnoxious. Not watching TV on a regular basis is akin to going to work with angry face-paint on every day. It's really hard. People avoid you like the plague when they start talking about "Everybody Loves Raymond" and 95 out of a 100 other brainless laugh track shows and you don't watch any of them. I've had plenty of people ask me in shocked seriousness, "Well what do you do??", like they can't even imagine life without TV. It IS really sad. And yes they do have less self worth if the only thing they do to increase their self-worth is work and endlessly flip channels. There is so much more to life.
Sure - each to his/her own, but it's really boring and insanely frustrating when you try to have engaging conversations with people at work or at the bar and everything, and I do mean everything digresses into talk about half-hour comedy shows or televised sports. It starts to seem like everyone is sick or brainwashed and I'm all alone in the world. So I compromise and try to talk about something on TV... So far the only shows I have in common with the non-geek type crowd are the Crocodile Hunter and the Simpsons. The sick thing here is that many people end up assuming all I do is sit around watching the Crocodile Hunter and the Simpsons (and geeky Star Trek) because they can't imagine reading, hiking, biking, fishing, computing, gardening, stargazing, you-name-it, etc, as regular everyday activities. (By "they" I mean most of the acquaintances I've ever had and some friends and family.)
So if you're a discriminating television watcher who exercises moderation then that's wonderful, but if you're a totally addicted mindless TV zombie like most folks maybe you should try becoming a non-tv snob for awhile. At least if you can do it for awhile that'll prove you're not unhealthily addicted.
Yeah yeah I know.. Troll, Flamebait, whatever.. change the channel.
Operator, give me the number for 911!