Digital Journal — Bob the cable installer peered intently at the remote control’s manual. His finger glided along until he found “Samsung,” where he saw a list of a dozen four-digit numbers. One of them, apparently, would program the remote control that comes with the converter box supplied by the cable company. Programmed correctly, the remote control could talk to the TV set as well as to the converter.
Bob tried the codes in order, checking each time if the TV set responded. Each code took several button sequences to enter, then another bunch to see whether it worked.
He reached the end, frowned, and said, “Hunh.” Then he started at the first code again.
The entire process took a half-hour before Bob found the correct code and the TV responded. He handed me the remote and bid me goodbye.
It’s Bob’s job to get the cable, set-top converter box, video recorder and TV to work together. And after watching him operate, I realized this isn’t easy. At least not as easy as TV used to be — plug it in and turn it on. We have reached the point where we need to understand hardware like never before. If it took a pro like Bob half an hour to program a remote, we’re no longer talking about technologies so simple we can call them “appliances.”
No, it’s nothing new — programmable remotes have been around for years, but they weren’t always necessary. They are now: There’s one for the converter and the TV, of course, one for the old VCR (still necessary for all those tapes we bought over the past 20 years), another for the DVD player and yet another for the multimedia functions of the computer.
One either programs a multifunction remote, or invests in a piece of furniture with slots for many remotes.
But the remote-control programming party was not entirely successful. Yes, the TV and the set-top box turn on simultaneously now, and the volume control works — but only by a tick at a time, not continuously as I hold down the button. That’s a lot of needless clicking.
Am I being curmudgeonly? Okay, yes, but only a little. Consider two factors that are important to me:
First, the several hundred channels available on digital cable or satellite have not set a standard for volume or even colour. Each station comes in at a different level, meaning that channel surfing can offer startling changes in volume, which means a lot more clicking. And a peaches-and-cream complexion can become lobster-red a few hundred channels down.
I also happen to suffer from repetitive strain injury, the result of all the mouse-clicking required to operate the computer at my day job. I don’t want to inflame the condition just to find something worth watching.
Someday, technology will have to progress to the point that different components can talk to each other with minimal human intervention. With the exception of a few gadget freaks, people generally buy toys to be entertained, not to juggle remote controls.
It was similar in the early 1950s, when TV first appeared. Merely turning it on involved a lot of fussy hocus-pocus: adjusting the rabbit-ear antennas, fine-tuning the channel itself, tweaking the contrast and brightness. The technology stayed stable until a decade later, when colour TV brought with it a whole new series of controls, such as colour and tint adjustment.
The industry managed to stabilize colour TV without having the owner worry much about brightness, volume and picture quality. We enjoyed about 20 years of unchanging technology.
Now, we’re starting over again with the arrival of two competing network systems (cable and satellite), two broadcast systems (standard and digital) and two screen technologies (gas plasma and liquid crystal display). No matter how we choose, we end up with uneven results.
And all this confusion doesn’t come cheap. Plasma and LCD may have dropped dramatically in price over the past few years, but for many people, there’s not much difference between a TV set that costs $15,000 or $25,000 — one price is as outrageous as the other. Many others cannot find the extra room to properly display their expensive new toy.
With unresolved standards and fluctuating prices, it all looks like transitional technology — guaranteed that whatever you buy today will be obsolete within a year or two. Today’s home theatre enthusiasts are still considered “early adopters,” and should be prepared to upgrade their systems regularly.
Pick Your Toy, Son
It’s reminiscent of the choice we had to make between VHS and Betamax in the ‘70s, or between DOS and Macintosh a few years later. Choosing one over the other required a major commitment, since one standard would inevitably emerge victorious in this high-stakes, high-tech race. But everyone hates betting on the losing horse. That’s why Mac and Beta people developed defense mechanisms of almost cultic proportions, arming themselves with an aggressive sense of superiority over what they considered inferior technologies.
So what does this mean for the advances in TV?
Old-fashioned TVs are still selling well, as are their immediate descendents, the flat-screen cathode-ray tube sets. They’re being challenged by LCD and plasma, as well as rear-projection sets and digital projectors. There are digital and non-digital sets and some have a traditional aspect ratio, others the new letterbox wide-screen display.
But when it comes to home theatres, the industry is asking us to buy a TV that costs as much as a used car, but won’t be enjoyed as long.
I recently put this to the manager of a Best Buy as he showed off a home theatre display including a 50-inch rear-projection LCD TV, a multimedia computer, DVD player, tuner, CD player and surround-sound speakers. The whole package cost about $15,000.
“I wouldn’t call it transitional technology,” he said. “Perhaps it’s nascent technology.”
Of course it will change over the next few years, he said, but people still want it and they’re willing to pay for it. “And look at the quality,” he added, pointing to a screen that was simultaneously running a TV channel, an Internet browser and an email program. Even without high-definition, it was indeed impressive. But that’s the nature of LCDs.
I wish I’d had that kind of screen before the Samsung came into my life. Back then I was playing with a small, sleek computer called the Shuttle XPC, loaded with Windows Multimedia Centre Edition. Windows MCE is meant to converge computers and home entertainment, based on the notion that one can surf or fetch email during commercials.
But my Shuttle XPC offered an analogue signal only, and it made no sense to get a high-definition screen for it. So I hooked it up to my old Sony Wega TV just for its screen, bypassing the Sony’s tuner and amplifier.
It was a wonderful improvement over the old Sony. The Shuttle’s ATI TV tuner comes with software that downloads a sophisticated TV schedule and allows you to use the computer as a personal video recorder. If you want to keep something, store it on your 80GB hard disk or burn it onto DVD. Nice.
But some weeks after installing it, a strange error message popped up. Because it was in a type size meant for high-res monitors and not TV sets, it was unreadable. I ignored it, but soon afterward the computer started rebooting itself every hour or so. It drove me nuts for weeks.
So I moved the Shuttle to the computer room and hooked it up to an old monitor. Soon enough, I saw the distinctive error message again. I could finally read it: “You have reached the end of the trial period of your evaluation copy of Windows XP Media Centre Edition. The system will reboot within the hour,” or words to that effect.
I called up ATI, which had sent me the unit in the first place, requesting a full copy of Windows MCE. No can do, ATI said. Microsoft will only ship MCE to original equipment manufacturers. Great, I said, where is Shuttle’s OEM located?
Um, Los Angeles.
But, assured that the process would take only five days, I handed it back to ATI.
It came back to me five weeks later.
This article is part of Digital Journal’s national magazine edition. Pick up your copy of Digital Journal in bookstores across Canada. Or subscribe to Digital Journal now, and receive 8 issues for $19.95 + GST ($39.95 USD).
The Shuttle experience created a dilemma: Do I invest in an expensive high-definition screen for the Shuttle so I could use it as a computer, or do I ignore the computing part and use it only as a tuner and personal video recorder?
The Shuttle retails for $1,149 (US) and a 17-inch HD monitor costs several hundred dollars, a lot to pay for what is ultimately a very small analogue TV with Web capabilities.
So I tried a hybrid system: I would use the Shuttle mostly as a TV and partly as a computer — you need an Internet connection to download TV listings, and I could also tie the Shuttle into the family network that stored our pictures, videos and MP3s.
I equipped the Shuttle with an 802.11b wireless connection. And within five minutes of hooking it up — bam! — it caught the Sasser virus.
This shouldn’t have happened because it was behind a firewall. Extensive checking revealed something faulty with the Shuttle’s Wi-Fi system; it had dropped the connection with my network and dutifully went in search of another, in this case unprotected one.
Okay, so if I go on the Net I’ll have an antivirus program (I installed McAfee), and I’ll have to allow automatic security updates from Microsoft. I also noticed that in the bit of surfing I had done, I managed to become host to two spyware programs, so I needed an anti-spyware application too.
My experience reminded me that MCE had turned the process of watching TV into one of running a computer program. I can’t simply turn it on and watch a show, as I had done with my dedicated Wega; I have to nurse it along, periodically reassure McAfee that I appreciated being told about its automatic updates, approve various patch installs and scan the system for adware.
That’s an awful lot of interactivity for an essentially passive process. I realized that working with a computer and watching TV are more distinct activities than I had previously imagined. When I want to do one, I don’t want to do the other, no matter how naturally the technologies can be integrated.
This issue is larger than it seems; how we apportion our activities is critical to understanding these markets. I suspect a lot of people are like me — we separate surfing and TV, most likely because the Internet is no longer so novel that simply surfing is a source of entertainment. And when I’m not convinced that TV and the Net are as compatible as today’s technology tries to make them, I am less likely to shell out the kind of money needed to leap into this brave new world.
Selling the Future… Today!
A current TV Future Shop ad has two hip-looking young men considering two almost identical TV screens, an LCD and a plasma. They glowingly recite the coveted features of each screen in a kind of one-upmanship contest done in tech-speak.
I’ve seen the ad dozens of times, yet I can’t remember any of the features they mention except the last one, whispered by a helpful sales assistant to the LCD advocate. “Active matrix display,” he repeats exultantly, trumping the litany of wonders from the plasma supporter, who scowls in defeat.
And what is active matrix display? The ad doesn’t say, and I doubt most people watching it will know it is an LCD technology that makes the picture brighter and viewable at a wider angle than a passive matrix display. To further confuse the issue, active matrix is sometimes called thin-film transistor, or TFT, used more frequently in reference to laptop screens.
The ad offers stunning proof that the fickle jargon of high-tech can be sexy enough to sell something as pricey as a home-theatre, without ever explaining what it means.
Most people can’t explain the technologies behind LCD and plasma in the first place. Consumers don’t really care about the technology inside their TVs, as long as it works. But with transitional technologies, knowing the difference becomes important, especially with the amount of money at stake.
It’s good to know, for example, that plasma screens burn out faster, and if they display a certain image for too long a time, it will burn itself into the screen. But when technology is transitional, this information might well become irrelevant next year. Just as it might become useless next year to know that currently, at elevations higher than 6,000 feet (think Whistler in British Columbia), plasma screens will start gasping for air just like tourists. Because plasma TVs use pressurized gas, they react to thin atmosphere with a loud buzzing noise.
But if more of us than we care to admit have no idea what we are buying, there are enough people interested in the convergence between computers and entertainment to make further development of the technology inevitable. A U.S. study by market research firm Parks Associates, released in July, acknowledged that while sales of PCs designed for multimedia have been slower than expected, “a growing number of consumers are using the home computer for media personalization, creativity, storage and sharing.”
Change is Inevitable
High-tech is a new phenomenon, in which many standards haven’t been settled and more are being created each day. People are finding that their machines no longer read the stuff they so lovingly stored on 5.25-inch floppies in the past, and few new computers will even have 3.25-inch drives. CDs are giving way to DVDs and will probably prove unreadable five years from now. And DVDs are already feeling the breath of Blu-ray discs, which use blue-violet lasers to store even more data.
On some deep, reptilian level, our swiftly changing technology reminds us of just how transitional we all are. That’s not something we like to think about.
This not only makes the technology transitional, but also our very identities — the precious email from relatives and our thousands of digital photos will all become transitory unless we’re constantly investing in new technologies to transfer an ever-increasing trove of memories onto new media.
If family albums are stored on obsolete media and printing technology gives us ink that fades after 20 years, we may end up with nothing to leave our grandchildren but a stack of quaint discs and a scrapbook full of ghostly images.
This article is part of Digital Journal’s national magazine edition. Pick up your copy of Digital Journal in bookstores across Canada. Or subscribe to Digital Journal now, and receive 8 issues for $19.95 + GST ($39.95 USD).
