[OT] HDTV recommendations?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 01:00:52PM -0400, Scott Allen wrote:
> Discrete input select codes would generally only benefit activity
> based remotes that can handle multiple devices and configurations
> (such as a Harmony). The designers only needed to meet the
> requirements of the remote that was going to be used to control the
> TV. If they needed to include an individual code for selecting each
> input, then that would mean they intended to have buttons on the
> remote to match.

Such remotes are getting pretty popular, and certainly anyone with a
home theatre is likely to have some remote for doing activity based
stuff (the one that comes with the receiver/amp generally does that to
a large extent).  So unless they think people that buy lots of equipment
for their TV watching are not worth catering to, then they really should
be doing a vastly better job.

> My TV has 9 possible input sources. That would mean that its remote
> would need 9 keys for input selection. Are you going to allow the user
> to somehow label these keys to make it easy to know what attached
> device you're selecting? Are you going to backlight these labels to
> make selection easy in the dark?

Putting in codes does NOT mean putting buttons on the remote.  It just
means you can put buttons on the remote.  All it means is that your
electronics recognize some more IR codes and do things based on them.
This is essentially trivial software in most cases.  Certainly simpler
than implementing an on screen menu was.

> While we're at it, why not add individual keys for each aspect ratio,
> picture mode, audio mode, etc. That would be an awfully big confusing
> remote.

Again, add codes for it, along with a code that cycles through them.
Then put on the remote whatever makes sense on the remote given available
space.

> The "sane" way to select from more than two or three inputs is to use
> an on screen menu. This is easy to see and operate, allows for custom
> labeling, and also allows for removing unused inputs from the menu. On
> the remote, you only need one "input select" key in addition to the
> standard direction arrows and "select/enter" key.

It is only sane from the remote makers point of view, not the user.

> Granted, adding individual codes for input select and other multiple
> choice functions is probably easy to do and nice to have for third
> party remotes, but you can't call the designers "insane" for not
> including them. Not when getting something out in a minimum amount of
> time and minimizing costs are considerations. Especially when it
> doesn't affect most users.

Oh yes I can.  Harmony remotes are doing very well and if people are
willing to shell out that kind of money to get a better smarter remote,
clearly there is demand for such things.  If your equipment isn't designed
to work well with such remotes and in fact makes them nearly impossible
to make work well, then you deserver to loose market share as a result.

My current TV has one input select button.  It cycles.  It is very
annoying.  My parents used to have an RCA.  It had flaws for sure, but
the input selection was channel 91 for input 1, channel 92 for input 2,
and channel 93 for input 3 (yeah they hadn't realized cable would ever
go past channel 80 it seems).  It was a MUCH better interface and in
fact requried no extra buttons on the remote to do.  It did have the
problem that if you didn't know about the channel to input mapping,
then it made no sense at all.

If you want to save buttons, why not get rid of the numbers.  You can
just channel up and down after all.  You will get there eventually.
What's a few more button presses anyhow?

-- 
Len Sorensen
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