Vanishing technology... (Score 1)

An issue that is completely ignored in the discussion of the 50-button remote control is the fact that a lot of those buttons are really an answer to the horrible complexities of modern technology. I own a DVR (a pioneer) it supports something like 15 different (video) file formats (not counting the numerous varieties of these formats) the manual is full of exceptions and warning of things that work (or not) for a particular file format. the question from an ignorant consumer would no doubt be why we need so many file formats just to play some video at home. next is the programming functionality,which comes with an huge numberer of options. included is an electronic programming guide, which looks very nice and actually works, apart from the fact that the guide only knows about the published program times,not the actual times,This makes the thing completely useless. then there is the fact that the machine supports about 10 different recording media, all possible varieties of CD-R and DVD-R. Same story of warnings and exceptions. then there is support for a number of picture aspect ratios, which may,or may not be automatically recognized based on the transmitted signal. And then there is a complex guide about how to copy a file from one medium to another. Same warnings and exceptions. And copy protection. And you think it will just recognize a DVD formatted on a PC? No of course it will not. So what is the conclusion? What we see is a lot of useful things implemented by the engineers that designed this particular PVR. The problem is that many of the features that they try to get working depend on other infrastructure being there, like a reliable electronic program guide that also works as aprogram is late, like a simple video file format standard, good standardized media etc. And the simple fact is that these things are not there. And as long as these standards are not set and widely implemented, the mess will stay, and people will get confused. Compare for a moment with the situation round the time that electricity was new, and voltages, connectors and system (AC/DC) changed from one city block to the next. i bet people were confused then,like we are now with allthis new technology that surrounds us. And the it makes no sense to perster the engineers with this problem because setting standards is most of the time more of a political than a technical process.