Now that I’ve had a week to enjoy my Internet-ready TV, I have some additional thoughts.
\n
\nThings I like:<\/p>\n
* The variety of programming. I can watch a lot of stuff. Beyond TV, there are apps for HuluPlus, Netflix, YouTube, and even more. I can rent or buy just about any movie or TV show I want to see.<\/p>\n
* On demand. I like being able to watch movies whenever I like. Pause them. Return back to them later. That’s really convenient.<\/p>\n
Things I don’t like:<\/p>\n
* The Interface<\/p>\n
Way back when, a television was a rather simple gizmo to operate. There were usually two obvious and intuitive knobs: On-volume and Channel. The feedback on each knob was immediate. It worked.<\/p>\n
With all the variety of an Internet HD TV, you’re no longer burdened with two knobs. In fact, My HD TV itself may only have a few basic (and hidden) buttons. The real interface is the remote control. It’s complex.<\/p>\n
First, the TV has multiple sources for input. There’s the TV signal itself, but also HDMI inputs, video inputs, DVI (computer) inputs, the Network, USB thumb drives, and on and on.<\/p>\n
I won’t even go into the various menus and control settings.<\/p>\n
Second, there isn’t just one controller. I have three. One for the TV, one for the Cable box, and another for the Blu-Ray player.<\/p>\n
Three remotes!<\/p>\n
I’m getting off lucky, too. If I had a surround sound system, there would be yet another remote.<\/p>\n
My TV’s remote has 56 buttons. That’s more buttons than my first computer had keys on the keyboard!<\/p>\n
The digital Cable box has a remote with 60 buttons.<\/p>\n
I didn’t bother counting the buttons on the Blu-Ray remote.<\/p>\n
* I bought my TV too soon. I should have waited. That’s because the new 4K TVs are coming out next year. They’ll have even higher resolution that then current 1080p models. Of course, the price will be high and there probably won’t be any 4K videos to watch for a while. So I’m good.<\/p>\n
Bottom Line:<\/p>\n
I like the Internet TV, but I’m really eager to see what Apple comes up with for their Apple TV. Or iTV or whatever they’ll call it.<\/p>\n
Apple is brilliant at technology interfaces. There were MP3 players before the iPod, but Apple figured out how to do it right. Ditto for the iPhone and iPad. Apple has a certain insight about how human beings use products.<\/p>\n
The Internet TV, or the TV of the future, needs — nay demands<\/em> a better interface. We need to chuck the 60-button remotes, which are counter-intuitive, clumsy, non-ergonomic, and obnoxious. I’ll leave it up to Apple, hopefully in the coming months, to show yet another industry how an interface can be done smoothly, elegantly, and in a manner that will shake things up.<\/p>\n Until then, I’m learning where the useful buttons are on my remotes, and cursing myself when I touch some button that screws things up. That happens way too often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now that I’ve had a week to enjoy my Internet-ready TV, I have some additional thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3297,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289\/revisions\/3297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}