October 27, 2003

Technology Gets Ahead of Itself Again

Man, this OutKast CD has been gold as far as coming up with subjects for blog posts goes. So I was playing the OutKast CD on the DVD player, since the stereo was not in the room in which I was reading, but the DVD player was. So this meant I needed to have the TV on to hear any sound.

However -- when the TV is set to receive the DVD signal, but it's only receiving audio and no video, it shows a big static image that says "Sony DVD Player", accompanied by a picture of a big shiny DVD. And it shows that picture for a long, long time, until such time as a blinky screen saver appears.

This is all kind of distracting. Perhaps we've reached the point where TV remotes need to come with a "blind" button as well as a mute button, so one could turn off the picture, but not the sound. I mean, my cable package comes with all these digital radio streams; it's honestly a little distracting to have the accompanying slideshow playing if I want to listen to one of them while doing something else.

I could also go for a button that automatically eliminated laugh tracks from TV shows. Let's get on this shit, science.

Posted by Francis at 01:28 AM