My mother-in-law called me early the other morning with a new helpdesk request. When you're a computer geek, you get to play IT for your whole family, the neighborhood, your friends, your son's girlfriend, the local elementary school...guess I should take The Oatmeal more seriously. My mother-in-law's latest problem? She pressed "channel up" on her remote and the TV thusly displayed "no signal". No amount of further button pressing would restore her morning news.
Of course, I immediately knew what happened. She has cable and uses the cable box's remote control to do only three things: turn the TV on and off, change channels, and change volume. The cable box is also a DVR, and I set it up to record her favorite shows, but despite numerous training sessions, my mother-in-law has not yet passed the "how to watch recorded shows" lesson. But she's 78, so I'll give her a break -- I'm proud she bought an HDTV, subscribed to cable, and learned how to do the three things above. And the three things work just fine 99% of the time. Until you press the TV button.
The simple three things only work if the remote is in "cable mode", meaning the Cable button is the last device button that was pressed. When this is the case, it is smart enough to turn on and off both the TV and cable box when you press Power, send volume up/down signals to the TV, and send channel up/down signals to the cable box. But if for some reason you press the TV device button, when you press channel up/down, the signals are sent to the TV. But the TV's input is normally set to HDMI 1, for which there are no "channels". So what does the TV do when it gets a channel up/down signal? It changes its input to Antenna and looks for a signal. Which isn't there. Which is why it now displays "no signal". Which is why I was called early in the morning.
Just to make things a little more fun, the cable remote has no button to change inputs on the TV. (And we have no idea where the TV's original remote is. Probably in the same place as all the missing socks.) So our helpdesk phone call next turned into a hunt for the TV's input button. Which involved putting the phone down, finding a flashlight (since the TV sits in a dark corner), pressing some of the wrong buttons, "HID what?", "no, HDMI 1", "it says Component 1", "keeping pressing it", and finally, the morning news is back. Of course, due to erroneous button pushing, the volume is now so loud she can't hear me, so she has to move to another room. I tell her to use the remote to turn the volume down and be sure to press the Cable button, but she left the remote in the other room, so it takes another another minute or two, but we are finally back to "normal". Helpdesk case closed.
In my mental postmortem, I thought: who on earth would design a TV so that, when channel up/down is received while using an HDMI input, it would switch to Antenna input? What was the use case scenario in which that made sense? As a software engineer, I have to believe that someone deliberately added that feature but with no obvious sense of usability. I can just see Steve Jobs screaming at his engineers whenever they attempted to add such a lame, user-unfriendly feature. Though Apple's venture into television are strictly rumors for now, and Jobs won't be around to veto dumb features, I'm sure Apple's TV won't have the same flaw as my mother-in-law's TV. We have a long way to go to make everyday consumer electronics more friendly. Let's hope Apple continues to push the envelope.
Back at home, my wife is trying to print something on her laptop, and she's asking me, "Why won't this print? Does it have something to do with 'Print Spooler Crashed'?" Sigh.
Of course, I immediately knew what happened. She has cable and uses the cable box's remote control to do only three things: turn the TV on and off, change channels, and change volume. The cable box is also a DVR, and I set it up to record her favorite shows, but despite numerous training sessions, my mother-in-law has not yet passed the "how to watch recorded shows" lesson. But she's 78, so I'll give her a break -- I'm proud she bought an HDTV, subscribed to cable, and learned how to do the three things above. And the three things work just fine 99% of the time. Until you press the TV button.
The simple three things only work if the remote is in "cable mode", meaning the Cable button is the last device button that was pressed. When this is the case, it is smart enough to turn on and off both the TV and cable box when you press Power, send volume up/down signals to the TV, and send channel up/down signals to the cable box. But if for some reason you press the TV device button, when you press channel up/down, the signals are sent to the TV. But the TV's input is normally set to HDMI 1, for which there are no "channels". So what does the TV do when it gets a channel up/down signal? It changes its input to Antenna and looks for a signal. Which isn't there. Which is why it now displays "no signal". Which is why I was called early in the morning.
Just to make things a little more fun, the cable remote has no button to change inputs on the TV. (And we have no idea where the TV's original remote is. Probably in the same place as all the missing socks.) So our helpdesk phone call next turned into a hunt for the TV's input button. Which involved putting the phone down, finding a flashlight (since the TV sits in a dark corner), pressing some of the wrong buttons, "HID what?", "no, HDMI 1", "it says Component 1", "keeping pressing it", and finally, the morning news is back. Of course, due to erroneous button pushing, the volume is now so loud she can't hear me, so she has to move to another room. I tell her to use the remote to turn the volume down and be sure to press the Cable button, but she left the remote in the other room, so it takes another another minute or two, but we are finally back to "normal". Helpdesk case closed.
In my mental postmortem, I thought: who on earth would design a TV so that, when channel up/down is received while using an HDMI input, it would switch to Antenna input? What was the use case scenario in which that made sense? As a software engineer, I have to believe that someone deliberately added that feature but with no obvious sense of usability. I can just see Steve Jobs screaming at his engineers whenever they attempted to add such a lame, user-unfriendly feature. Though Apple's venture into television are strictly rumors for now, and Jobs won't be around to veto dumb features, I'm sure Apple's TV won't have the same flaw as my mother-in-law's TV. We have a long way to go to make everyday consumer electronics more friendly. Let's hope Apple continues to push the envelope.
Back at home, my wife is trying to print something on her laptop, and she's asking me, "Why won't this print? Does it have something to do with 'Print Spooler Crashed'?" Sigh.
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