Video Features Often Ignore
How We Use Our Equipment
Although the developers of today's high-quality video
products have transformed home entertainment, they have often paid scant attention to the
details of how we enjoy their products from day to day. Here are some minor annoyances
that accompany a major source of pleasure.
In an excess of computer emulation, the designers of most
of today's top TV sets have embraced onscreen menus for controlling just about everything.
Maybe this makes some technical sense, but it's awkward and annoying for ongoing small
adjustments.
By all means, the occasional setup adjustments can remain
in the world of the onscreen menu, but things like color level and brightness should have
their own continuous controls, just as audio volume usually does. The rarely used controls
could establish a basic series of default settings to be sure, and then the continuous
controls would alter those slightly to compensate for variations from program to program
and station to station.
And please, we don't need to have everything
displayed all the time. Slight adjustments of loudness and brightness do not have to be
emblazoned on the screen with every adjustment. It's obtrusive for anyone who is not
making the adjustments, and unnecessary for whoever is. The same is true of channel
numbers: Their display -- for that matter all displays -- should be optional and
defeatable.
There are, of course, times when exotic displays and
functions are useful, so it's sometimes a jolt to find that things you have carefully
programmed into your monitor, like alphanumeric descriptions of channels or even the
built-in clock, have unaccountably developed amnesia. Even my cheap clock radio has a
battery backup for when the power goes off, so why do some TV monitors lack this simple
feature? A no-maintenance capacitance system could be used, but I certainly wouldn't mind
having to put in a new battery every so often. Programming a monitor can be time-consuming
and awkward the first time around; it's a real pain to have to do it over.
Likewise, a number of TVs offer "reset" buttons
on the remote that call up the factory picture settings. Your own adjustments are almost
always better, but too often those are lost when an inadvertent stab with the finger
resets the television. Some sets do let you hold your choices (even several alternative
ones) in memory, and these are definitely preferable.
Transfers of films to disc too often have little regard for
the content. Movies almost always have logical edit points somewhere nearby that could be
used so that the continuity is not broken when a DVD changes layers, but frequently the
changeover comes within a scene. In a couple of instances, I've seen it happen in the
middle of a word!
I suspect it's too late to change things, but whoever
designed the connector for S-VHS should be sent to A/V purgatory. Like the various DIN
connectors that inspired it, the S connector is too small and fragile for the frequent
plugging and unplugging that some of us do. There may be an argument that if you do have
equipment that uses S connections you should set it up once and leave it alone, but that
doesn't hold water for people who are actively involved in video and change the
configuration of their systems frequently.
Worse than the fragility is that the tiny little
directional crimps in the plugs give very little guide as to the correct orientation,
leading to a lot of stabbing around in the dark. In bright light it might be possible --
just -- to figure things out, but trying to insert a black S connector (and they're all
black) into a black socket behind a monitor pushed up against a wall . . . forget it!
That's just a start. I'd like to hear your beefs as well.
Send them to me at the e-mail address below.
...Ian G. Masters
ian@mastersonaudio.com
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