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Technology

Consumer Tech - Getting Worse w/ Each Generation? 60

Posted by Cliff from the they-just-don't-make-'em-like-they-used-to dept.
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. :-("
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Consumer Tech - Getting Worse w/ Each Generation? More

Consumer Tech - Getting Worse w/ Each Generation?

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  • No I don't agree, get a Tivo. It will solve all your problems above, and will show you how far consumer digital technology has come.

    They're pretty cheap now too.
    • Darn! You beat me too it.

      I would like to add that TiVo is one of the most user friendly hi-tech products that has ever been on the market. Usually, advanced, "cutting edge" products really suck as far as usability (Remember when PCs were new? VCRs? They were all a major pain to setup and use), but TiVo is so simple that anyone can use it. It blows VCRs away.

      Or look at computers... they've gotten easier to use as well. Look at Windows XP or Mac OS X and compare them to previous versions. Even linux is getting usable.
      • It's funny, I've always found "Hacker" products are the closest thing to what computers promise, easy of use and lots of functionality. Products made from "Marketing" tend to be a bunch of prety but often slightly less functionality with it.

        Examples (:me puts on flame retardant suit)
        1: Mozilla is clearly more functional than IE, IE is clearly "pretier" than mozilla in its default state.
        2: (Your WM of choice here, to avoid the argument, I personally like KDE) is clearly more functional than XP's interface (at least once it's fully tweaked), XP's interface is clearly pretier (it's becoming less so with each generation of user class WM's).
        3: Winamp/xmms just works, some later versions are getting bloated, but not that much, on the other side we have Real and to a lesser extent WMP (though WMP is fairly decent, Winamp is still cleaner than it for simply playing music).

        The examples continue but those were the most obvious when I was writing this, I'm sure everyone can think of parallels to other industries. Basically it boils down to "Marketing exists to tell the consumer he wants something, Engineering exists to make the consumer want something", thats perhaps the most succulent way to state it.
        • Another example. I'm in the network center at work, and using the "village bicycle" PC that has Sonique on it. What an utter travesty. It's pretty, but absolutely non-obvious by nature. sendmail.cf is easier to edit than this thing is to use. If only had speakers on my server I could just run mpg123. It may run from the command line, but I can figure that thing out.

          Another example of things getting worse. I'm using a MS natural keyboard. The 6 at the top of the keyboard is on the wrong damned side. Why??doesn't anyone at Microsoft know how to touch type? I keep hitting the blank spot next to the 7 when I go for the 6.


        • ...thats perhaps the most succulent way to state it.

          succulent succotash!
          i think he really meant to say - succinct

    • The only reason I haven't considered a Tivo is that as far as I've heard they don't let you record one channel and watch another.

      Simple as that. :-)

      • In the States we solve that problem by getting a DirecTiVo. However, I see your point. The TiVo takes its input from the cable box (the tuner). Now, If you had 2 cable boxes and one ran to the TiVO and then the TV and the other ran just to the TV, THEN you could watch one program while taping another.

        --MIKE
        • Sure that would work.

          However, the cable company I'm with will charge me an extra £15 per month for that second box.

          Since I'm paying for all the other channels even when I'm watching one of them I bitterly resent paying for those other channels again just so I can record one of them.

  • Avoid the whole problem all together... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zulux ( 112259 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @08:42PM (#4101344) Homepage Journal
    Don't forget the ultimate solution to a lot of life's problems: avoidance.

    So in this particular case, sell your TV and get rid of your expensive TV susbscription. With the new found room, get yourself a book-shelf and go to your local library and get some books. With your new found money, save up for a year and go on vacation. Here in the states, a year's worth of satelite TV subscription savings will buy a week long road trip.

    Reading books and going on vacation are a lot more interesting than watching a lot of TV. But maby that's just me - perhaps TV really is that good now days. I just don't care to find out, as TV had become sort of an adiction for me, and inorder to cure myself of it, I quit.

    • "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.
      • 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."

      • Of course I'm proud. Step back a little and look at those who watch TV, their life revolves around it. I was helping a friend plan a remodeling job, and where to put the TV was the first question, once the TV was placed on the paper, then he looked at what the rest of the house did. He ended up with the best place for the TV, but the rest of the house will be much worse.

        I'm left out of nearly half of all coversataions because I didn't watch the show or movie. People are littlerally so uncreative that all they have to talk about is someone else's efforts on TV.

        Don't forget that it influnces all your thinking. I can always tell who the popular people on TV are by looking at the birth section, whenever there are a lot of babies with one name there is a good chance that someone with that name is popular. (of course there are standard names that will always be popular so this isn't a universial indicator).

        Sure you need a diversion, but do you really want TV to be it?

        • "Step back a little and look at those who watch TV, their life revolves around it."

          Good lord, how can you be so thick? I've heard less stereotyping from hate groups. If you want to clean that up and say something like, "People who watch TV mindlessly 10 hours a day, their life revolves around it," then I might accept it. Otherwise that's just absurd. My life doesn't revolve around the TV (in fact, I hadn't even thought about it yet today until I read this tripe) and it certainly isn't the source of all my conversations. If it is in your little world then you're probably hanging around with the wrong people. It seems like you and the above poster are just upset because you're left out of whatever inane conversations your co-workers are having about whatever ABC sitcom is hot. I'm amazed that both of you put this emphasis on being left out when obviously you don't want to fit in, or else you would watch TV. You don't do something that probably over 90% of the rest of the population does, so don't bitch about it and be surprised when it actually happens and you're left out.

          "Don't forget that it influnces all your thinking."

          *sigh* So I quote The Simpsons once in a while in everyday conversation. I'm sure reading doesn't influence your thinking at all. Or talking with people. Or don't you do those things either?

          "Sure you need a diversion, but do you really want TV to be it?"

          Yep. I will continue to mix TV in with reading, geeky electronics fiddling (putting a computer in a 60's Pioneer stereo today), and rock music (now there's a brain rotter) thankyouverymuch.
      • 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.
        • I recommend movies.. They're never repeats, unless they're a sequel. Course, every "blockbuster" in the past 24 to 30 months has been a sequel. I am kind of kicking myself. I signed up for a sattelite dish, and the only thing I ever watch are those Trek reruns on TNN. (which apparently is nothing but season 1 and 2). The service is 40.00 a month, and I flip the tv off when its the inevitable uber-rerun (same episode that they played in the same time slot, same week). So I am paying about 4 dollars an episode a month, when it gets down to it. I was a fool for signing up, as they make you sign a 1 year contract- you can get pirate decoder cards that decode every channel, so they force the one year clause to make some of it back. Oh well. In about 400 dollars from now, I can redecide things. What, what a digression--


          Movies are great cause they're long, but not often, no interruptions, unless you are bitter and calculate the 40+ minutes of CocaCola ads and movie previews... then you're right back to TV adverstising. Anyways... yeah. Go see movies. I dont care if they're MPAA or not, I'm not a zealot. For $4.50 an hour, watching 40 minutes of movie and 20 minutes of commercials is a great deal! w00t!

    • I agree with you 100%. Most stuff on TV is really boring. You can get news online; why watch the O'Reilly Factor when you can read it? And as for the few movies you do like, you can get them on DVD and watch them on your computer.

      This saves you a ton of money.
    • Don't forget the ultimate solution to a lot of life's problems: avoidance.

      To avoidance: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

      (With apologies to Homer Simpson.)
  • We first had normal cable television.. Had enough channels, it was nice, could record everything, etc.. Then we upgraded to digital cable, and what a mistake that was. We had to get a box for each television, and if you wanted to record something, and watch tv at the same time, tough.

    We finally upgraded to satelite tv, which is where we're at now, and it's even worse.. If you wanna record something, you have to set the timer on the satelite, to change the channel.. That's nice and all, but 5 minutes before whatever you're recording starts, a big, ugly clock icon, flashes on the bottom left of the screen, with no way to turn it off..

    The television guide they use, sucks. If you wanna see what's on two hours ahead of time, you get to wait through 3 minutes of downloading, while it updates the guide.. That's when it actually works.

  • Lack of Customer Service (Score:3, Insightful)

    by D.A. Zollinger ( 549301 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @09:35PM (#4101440) Homepage Journal

    This doesn't have so much to do with technology as it does with policy and the lack of customer service in an industry with little or no competition. Since cable companies have monopolies in the areas they service (no one wants to see 10 seperate cable backbones running on the telephone poles) the cable companies get to dictate how their service is used.

    What about Satellite service you say? Well, Satellite is limited in what they can offer, and how they can provide their service. Your cable company is very aware of what Satellite can provide, because they know that Satellite is their only real threat. Your cable company figures that as long as their service is one step above what Satellite can offer, you aren't going to take a 'downgrade'.

    Thus, instead of working to provide a better user experience, they are trying to offer as little as possible, while maximizing their profits. How does it feel to be used?

    • How does it feel to be used?

      Remember... with television, you're the product, not the consumer.

      TV is like alcohol; it's ok when consumed socially in moderation, but best not done too often, and/or alone.

  • Cosumer Sucker Alert! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <adavis&ubasics,com> on Monday August 19, 2002 @10:40PM (#4101653) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • You have been bred in captivity just to upgrade...

      It's become quite fashionable on Slashdot of late to criticize people by calling them "consumers," as if that were a dirty word. Used this way, "consumer" implies mindless obedience. It's meant to be an insult.

      Ironically, I've found that these criticisms usually-- not always, but usually-- come from people who brag about spending their disposable income at the local Fry's buying the newest, fastest motherboard or CPU or RAID card.

      I just find that particular juxtaposition interesting.
      • Fry's? I would rather endure what the execs at AOLTimeWarner want me to watch then step one foot inside that hell hole. I can't believe people actually shop there.
      • 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
        • I'm criticizing him (the person who's griping about the cable box) because he appears to not understand how to solve his problem.

          Let's not mince words. You insulted him, using derogatory language to describe him because you disagree with his decisions even though you are not, as you freely admit, fully informed.

          Flames qua flames don't bother me as such, but at least be a man and stand by them. Don't try to back down and claim that it was just innocent "criticism."
        • Okay, those are fair comments.

          I submitted the story from work & didn't have all day to flesh out the story as much as I could have.

          The upgrade was a one-way trip. My old box died and the replacement came from a newer line and the older boxes are no longer supported.

          I have complained to the cable company. They claim that they didn't know that their new batch of boxes didn't have this feature until they'd taken possession of 10,000 of them and then people started calling the faults centre to complain that the feature had vanished.

          In my heart I'm sure that it was deliberate because they want their customers to rent the second cable box. Not only will I not give in to this blackmail I won't spend the extra money either.

          Their response to my complaint was very interesting to say the least:

          "Okay, if you had a roof-top aerial you'd be able to do what you now obviously cannot. However we understand that you haven't got one (in fact that's part of the reason why you've got cable!) so do this: get a quote for an aerial, fax it to us & we'll consider paying part of the costs."
          Was I shocked or what!

          So I'm just ringing around & we'll see what happens next.

          As a further follow-up there's plenty of other things that are wrong with the box.

          1. Pop-up dialogs have no cancel buttons.
          2. When viewing the Electronic Programme Guide, I'm forced to watch adverts for pay-per-view movies rather than being able to carry on watching the channel I was watching.
          3. The UI is very slow!

          You know what is interesting though? Just about everyone focused their posts to this submission on solutions to my problem and not on their experiences with consumer electronics getting dumbed down with every new generation.

          My current VCR is way worse than my last one (that's no longer available & would have cost more to repair when it died than to buy a new one). I'm sure most consumer electronics devices are losing features because the manufacturers want to save money and the vast majority of consumers don't miss the features.

    • Personally, I like digital cable.

      But it does have it's drawbacks.

      Some channels are compressed quite badly. It may be that an assumption was made they would be nothing more than episodes of Threes Company or something, but whatever, it seems to be highly dependant on the channel. Not just the action in a show.

      Sometimes I notice a frame problem, the picture seems to lag on a frame, then gets the next, etc. I think, but don't know, it is due to the signal quality and it is errors causing the effect.

      On the other hand, the analog signal in my area is significantly degraded and we have to get the cable company out to fix it. The digital channels come out on one of the digital boxes just fine, on the other it sometimes won't decode anything. (Not a big deal at the moment since the other digital box was given to me for free by a friend.)

      A few extra channels, I get a better selection of movies and often watch a movie or two that I would not have rented, but often turns out to be worth watching.

      My girlfriend signed up for digital cable, she wanted a cable modem anyway and due to the rate structure it was oretty much a zero lost/gain to toss in the digital cable. (digital box purchased used). Her mother tapes everything under the sun (ok, any sports & Law & Order), so instead of hooking up the VCR to the digital box we split the signal and hooked it up to the VCR so it gets the analog channels only. Works Fine for her.

      (Easy enough in the future to hook the digital to the VCR as well with some RCA splitters. Signal quality would probably be ok.)

      Course, my gf is never home to use the digital cable, but her mother does. (I'm amused, I tried to talk her out of it, I didn't see the point since I have both at my place and spend more time here. Ah well.)

  • Getting worse...yes, if you're not the target (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blastedtokyo ( 540215 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @10:46PM (#4101683)
    For your example, the economics are quite simple. You were the .0003% of the population that knew how to program your VCR and cared about how you did it.

    The cable companies did their math and tried to make it so that 80% of people could record something. All they'd have to do is oversimply things and cut features

    . End result is that technology gets better for joe blows and plainly blows for the enthusiasts out there. The good news is that companies are finally starting to realize that enthusiasts can make a differnece (i.e. people who love their _____ energize others to buy ______).

    • You are indeed right. It's the "asshole from marketing has plenty of time to argue his case since he doesn't actually do anything" phenomenon.

      Though I think in the particular case of digital cable boxes, the programming is really, really sloppy at times. On once system I've seen, the program guide comes up on the current show. On the system I have now, it comes up on channel 001, two hours in advance. This fact is in the manual, which means they are aware of it, but don't know how completely stupid it is to assume that the reason I am reading the program guide is to leisurely plan an evening of tube watching, instead of just to find out what's on in 10 minutes because program X is on next and I hate that show. Bah.

      It's going to be a serious problem. I see no evidence that we, as a species, will be able to handle our own programming needs in the future.

  • The sad thing is that most of the problems you see with bad user interface are easily fixable, it's just that whoever designed the object your looking at thought that whatever incemental gain you'd gotten was worth the tradeoff.

    Another example from the satellite TV issues. I used to have a Dish system. I liked the programming, but in terms of picture quality digital cable and dish are both way worse than old fashioned VHS or SVHS. The blocky compression they use is terrible for things like action movies or anything with a lot of little motion all over.

    The remote was slow and dodgy. Push a button, and wait to see if the sat receiver saw it or not. You couldn't just hit up three times and go up three channels. And if you held it down, it would jump 20 channels, then stop for a minute at a time on one you did NOT want to watch.

    Another example is this POS Intel server I'm working on. I put in a CDROM drive, forgot to turn off the master setting (on the primary IDE interface) same as the main hard drive it boots from. So the BIOS intelligently changes the boot priority to put the other IDE drives at the top of the list. I fix the problem with the CDROM and the machine won't boot. How am I supposed to know the problem is that my non-booting storage drives are now at the top of the list?

    Freeping Creaturitus...
  • First of all, you can get rid of the digital cable. My girlfriend had it, and it's definitely not for people who like to tape, or switch channels during commercials. :( I can't see paying extra to effectively "degrade" my service. I don't have movie channels or access to pay-per-view without a converter box, but that just keeps my bill down. :)

    Also, if you're in the United States, you may be able to complain to the cable comissioner. I don't know how effective it will be, but as a taxpayer and customer of a regulated monopoly you have the right to complain.

    I don't think that throwing away your TV is the answer. Just be more selective in the bills that you make for yourself. :)

  • User interfaces... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skookum ( 598945 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @11:38PM (#4101950)
    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.
    • I dropped TW digital cable a long time ago (too expensive) but I do recall that it IS possible to remove whatever channels you want from the tuner. If memory serves be correctly, you simply add the channels you want to your favorites, and use the Favorites button on the remote to scroll through them. Want to go back? Use the Previous channel button.

      Of course, I have no idea what cable box you're using.. Mine was an Atlanta Scientific or something like that.
  • All I know is that digital cable sucks crap. That damn menu is so slow I feel like I'm using my TRS-80. I want a big loud noise burst and instant response when I change channels to get away from commercials!
  • 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.
    • I learned this the "hard" way earlier this year when I had to re-wire my "new" (new for me - pre-owned, but no HOA!) house for digital cable.

      To make a long story short (and believe me, it is a long, convoluted story, mostly involving the cable guys trying to get me to shell out $40.00 a piece for three cable drops, of their own cable, after I had already spent $60.00 on new RG6), use digital splitters (ie - 2.4 GHz "sattelite" splitters) with ONLY the number of drops you need - don't try to get a splitter with more drops than you need because that open connector WILL cause signal loss, "ring"-ing in the circuit (think of coax as a capacitor in an LC tank circuit - oscillation becomes an issue). You need the digital splitter because the standard runs at that frequency - some boxes can drop down to an analog mode to get the info, but it is sketchy, and sometimes fails. Also, use RG6, not RG59 (anybody want to buy a 200 foot spool, cheap?) cable. I would also recommend AGAINST crimping your own connectors unless you know absolutely what you are doing, or you have done it before.

      The gist of the matter is digital is very picky when it comes to signals - too much db loss, excess noise, wrong or marginal cable/connectors - it just doesn't work. It also won't work if you have too many splitters (each splitter introduces a drop in db). Also realize there are splitters which pass power from the cable company (something like 12-15 VDC), and some splitters don't take this into account, or have legs of the splitter which pass power, and others that don't! The power is typically provided for inline signal amplifiers, so if you have or think you may need such devices in the future, be sure to get the proper splitter. Also be aware that splitters may be "asymetrical" in their electrical characteristics/ratings (ie, db loss may be less in one direction than the other) when it comes to the inputs and the outputs - this can be important for digital setups, especially cable broadband - so keep it in mind and do some research.

      My advice if you are splitting or installing new for digital cable: 2.4 GHz digital splitters only, 100 foot runs, RG6 cabling (preferably with pre-attached factory molded connectors) - believe me, this will save money and time in the end.

      • Think of coax as the capacitor and the inductor and a series resistance, and then get yourself some 75 ohm terminators for those unused taps. Even the ones from Radio Shack work.
        • You know, I wondered if such a thing was available, and was almost certain it was (just like 10Base2 thin coax ethernet) - but I was in a hurry and needed the solution "now", and couldn't afford the time to do it any other way. I might look into finding the terminators, though - for when I go back up into my attic when it cools down here (Phoenix, AZ - don't want to go up into the attic when it is 95+ at night, let alone 100+ during the day).
          • They're basically the same thing as the terminators for 10Base2 except that they're "F" connectors instead of BNC and 75 Ohm instead of 50. Don't pay more than $1 apiece. Radio Shack or anyplace that sells do it yourself cable stuff (splitters, coax, etc) should have them. You can install them when you go up there to adjust the thermostat on your attic fan to make it come on at a lower temp. (I'm in Eastern NC, I'll see your heat and raise you humidity :-) )
    • I've done the same thing with no problems so I can watch the basic service channels 2 - 70 on my computer's TV card and have a tv in the kitchen. Also I has had problem with dobly on my digital cable and I don't like the lack of SVHS and opical dobly audio connetors on the box. Other minor problems most universal remotes don't support this box and it's remote does not support my TV so I'm stuck with two remotes.

  • They don't make'm like they used to (Score:4, Insightful)

    by smoondog ( 85133 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @02:18AM (#4102586)
    This is the They-don't-make'm-like-they-used-to syndrome. Probably the best example of this is camera's. Cameras of 20 years ago sell today for nearly as much as they cost when they were sold! They depreciate slower than inflation! The cameras of today are fancy microchip powered wonders that are cheap, easy to break, plastic boxes. Funny thing is, these cameras generally only add auto-focus over the nikon,olympus and canon cameras of the 70's & 80's.

    -Sean
  • This is a Five Minute Theory (ie, the result of no more than five minutes of thought), so it probably won't hold up to rigourous inspection. However, consider:

    Ease of use for a given consumer technology follows a Bell-like curve, which is (obviously) the inverse of the amount of understanding required to make use of the tech. Take two ubiquitious examples, the car and the television; each began as a quite arcane invention that required dedication and money to use, and a fair amount of knowledge to maintain. As they progressed, each became much easier to use to the point of total simplicity for the most basic consumer models, requiring very little knowledge to operate.
    At this point, featurization set in, and stuff that was previously only available in high-end, specialist models began to be included in the lower priced bracket. The most basic models continued to be usable with minimal knowledge, but increasingly included (often uneccessary) features that required some knowledge and study to use. As these features became more mainstream, knowledge of them was assumed, and became necessary for operation of the technology.
    Maintainence of the technology also radically increased in difficulty as it progressed.

    Heck, that's enough for a start. Feel free to take this and run with it, or ignore it completely, but it seems to work for most C20 tech...
  • I'm lucky, because the company I was subscribing to for my pay TV went bust. (ITV Digital, for you UK people who'd know)

    The reason I'm lucky is that not having it made me realise just what a waste of money it had been. There was only one channel that I watched regularly (or maybe two), and everything worth watching on it is shown six months later on a free channel anyway.

    So now I'm back to just the free channels... and I couldn't be happier.

  • Most of you are missing the point (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xav12 ( 602450 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @05:02AM (#4102973)
    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.
    • 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.

      • As an aside, because of the way that MPEG files work (take a frame, record the entirety, then record only the changes for a few frames, then record another full 'new' frame, to explain it very very VERY basically) it's easy as hell to go forwards, but actually surprisingly processor intensive to try to 'rewind.'

        In other words, the Apex player might not implement that because it would bump the price up by twenty bucks for a faster processor.

    • A few things that I have learned about Sony while on this earth:

      1. They are expensive.
      2. Their quality does not follow their price on consumer goods any more. Maybe once upon a day, but those days are gone.
      3. They make pretty good TVs and monitors, with some exceptions.
      4. Their UI's SUCK. Almost without exception.

      As for connecting consumer electronics (TV's VCRs stereos ), if only someone would come out with a way to hook it all up with one type of cable. I'd buy that.
  • This same thing has happened with home phones.

    What was once as simple as "mem -> 3" has become "menu -> phonelist -> down -> down -> on". And forget it if you want to use something like a calling-card with pre-programmed numbers. I can't seem to find a phone that will let you dial a number from memory once you've already done so or even if it's already on the line.

    When I was at school I had my calling card # programmed into mem-1, my long-distance # home in mem-2 and my best friend long-distance # into mem-3. When I called home, mem-1, wait 2 seconds, mem-2.

    Now the best I've seen is the ability to program 20 numbers (WHY NOT 25 DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!) with the ability to add pauses. Great - 10-digit dialing in my area so I'm screwed...not to mention that if I wanted to setup something like that I'd have to program all those numbers for each person I was calling. That just sucks.

    It seems that in their whiz-bang attempt to wow us with technology, they've lost sight of what was once functionally sound. For crissakes - the phones still have a 12-key keypad, a speaker, a microphone and a long history of efficient design. Why throw all of that away?

    sedawkgrep
  • Anytime you add features, you make the usability more complex. Hence, cheap and old things are easier to use.

    Think of some of your household items: the broom does one thing, does it well, and any idiot can run it (smart people may have difficulty, after all it's too simple). Or the toilet: a well-developed user interface, with one-click technology (does Amazon.com know about this?).

    Now you consider the modern cell phone/pager/web browser/remote control. It's got so many blasted features that when you try to call your Grandmother, there's a high likelihood you'll download dirty pictures to her TV instead. Cripes! Where will it all end?

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