Thursday, September 28, 2006
Buttons
When I was a kid - many years hence - I'd move a switch on the TV and rotate a knob to select a channel and that was it. Occasionally, we'd have to add a pair of pliers with a rubber band when the tuner started acting up, but that was it.
Tonight I watched a movie on TV and had three remotes in front of me. The DVD player remote has 46 buttons - most with dual functions and four that call up various menus for me to wander through. The TV remote only has 36 buttons (it's pretty old) and only a couple of those bring up menus.
I didn't use the stereo remote which uses a touch sensitive lighted pad to control the stereo. (I had to perform internal surgery on this remote to disconnect the auto on sensor which was so sensitive it would turn the remote on when you walked into the room (or breathed hard) - and run down the batteries in a couple of days) Naturally they all have the supposed ability to control other products, but I have yet to manage to find a remote that actually does that. They all come with 300 page manuals printed with about 24,392 teensy-tiny unique number combinations that you're supposed to program so it will work with whatever item you have - and have you noticed that the model you have is never one of those 24,392 numbers?
