I remember now why I wrote the previous entry. I was reading this articleabout how people were disappointed with their HDTV purchases. I saw this one coming a couple of years ago when I bought an HDTV.
See, the setup was just too complicated for it to work on a product sold at WalMart. Aside from plugging the TV in and the now typical RCA audio cables (white and red) instead of the single yellow video cable to a likely socket on the back of the TV, now there are three colored component video cables. And the more modern TVs have usually 3-5 input sets on their back panels. My HDTV has two sets of component inputs. One won’t provide the appropriate high resolution, it’s simply a component video input line for marginally better quality. The other is the HD input. I imagine someone futzing around in the dark behind their TV set trying to figure out where to plug in 5 cables and finding the whole thing very confusing and plugging in the cables into the wrong place.
I think HDMI is meant to solve this (single A/V connector… a nice Apple-like move) but not sure if all new TVs especially the cheap ones have this?
Anyway what spawned the printer rant previously was a comment on the blog linked above by someone who works at a store where they sell these things basically saying consumers are idiots. Well that’s not true. They just have better things to do than worry about how to set up over complicated technology or deal with useless sales staff. They would rather be watching the TV. When you build products, you need to keep in mind the intended function of the device, and focus on that, making sure all of the setup is as simple as possible since that detracts from the experience. People who work at stores like Best Buy etc need to make sure their customers know what’s coming, and adequately prepare them for it, not bitch them out because they don’t know what to make of all the cables. The answer is not white glove delivery and setup. TVs never used to be hard to set up, and the switch to higher res should not mean that they need to be now.
