General > General Technical Chat
How to get my senior citz. parents TV without cable? 255$ month cable bill!
cdev:
--- Quote from: james_s on April 01, 2021, 08:34:22 pm ---
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on April 01, 2021, 05:36:39 pm ---
I notice in myself, as I get older, I really hate having to re-learn something I think I already know how to do.
Turning on a TV and tuning in a channel just isn't something that should be complicated or require several Houston-level remote controls controlling multiple boxes to do... that is just bad engineering.
Another example: driving a car with too many controls to do a simple job is a real chore - I don't appreciate any of the benefits of a touch screen entertainment center in a car where I can't even find the button to turn the bl**dy thing on without pulling over and investigating the dashboard carefully and learn the "secret codes" just to listen to some music or news... WTF is up with that? - sheer incompetence.
Nobody has tried swapping the brake and gas pedals yet, but you can be sure that if it wasn't because that is such an obviously bad idea that even a complete idiot can see how that is bound to fail, somebody would have tried it! It plays out on only slightly less obvious levels every day.
None of the above means I won't put in the effort if there is something to be gained - like using a fitness tracker, or a cell phone, or a PC, or whatever.
So, the main thing that happens to you as you get older seems to be: you learn not to expend time and energy on poorly conceived and/or badly executed products!
--- End quote ---
This is a huge pet peeve of mine, there are so many new things I want to learn that I hate having to re-learn old stuff just because someone decided to make changes for the sake of changes so that something would be "new" and "fresh". My dad had a late model Tesla and there was hardly a physical switch in that car, absolutely everything was controlled by a giant touchscreen, I hated it. Even regular cars have gone in that direction, "clean" dash layouts that have just a few buttons to navigate multifunction displays. One of the things I love most about my car is that there are rows of physical switches, buttons, knobs and sliders. I know every one of them by feel and can operate everything without taking my eyes off the road. I really hate the obsession with "clean" interfaces, which just means create extra work by hiding everything under layers. It's like the idiotic parametric search on Digikey that makes you click a button EVERY TIME in order to access the parameters you need EVERY TIME. I encounter that same thing more and more elsewhere too. If it's something I use frequently, I want it all laid out logically in front of me, it isn't clutter, it's tools that I use.
--- End quote ---
I get the feeling much of it is feature creep thats intended to reduce the amount of time before you buy another one, without being too obvious about it.
pardo-bsso:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on April 01, 2021, 05:36:39 pm ---
Turning on a TV and tuning in a channel just isn't something that should be complicated or require several Houston-level remote controls controlling multiple boxes to do... that is just bad engineering.
--- End quote ---
Ramen to that.
I remember as a child having to stand up and turn a wheel that made a very satisfying 'clunk' noise to change the channel.
Now the tv takes about three seconds to do that.
james_s:
The thing that really made analog TV superior for me is that you could flip the channel and it was virtually instantaneous. Now digital TVs all take several seconds to lock and start decoding the stream and that just feels like an eternity. Not that it really matters anyway, the logos ("DOG"s) annoy me too much to watch.
SilverSolder:
It is almost like we've gone full circle, having to wait for tubes to warm up before we can use the equipment! :D
rsjsouza:
We did come full circle. Any solid state analog TV at power on shows an image faster than the latest models of a digital one. Shameful, really.
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