REMOTES OUT OF CONTROL (6 march 2005)
You probably know the problem ...
You buy an electronic device that looks as if it was designed by someone who hates buttons.
But how to operate modern audio or video equipment without any buttons?
The answer is quite simple: incorporate all the buttons into a separate device called a remote control.
I don't know if I'm the only one with this problem, but the remote controls in our home tend to have shorter lives than the sets they belong to.
Of course, you can buy replacements, which you generally find in two flavours:
- universal remotes, mostly rather cheap, but I still have to find the first that functions satisfactorily.
- pre-set controls, usually more expensive - but I've never seen them cheaper than 10 euros.
I keep buying remotes, in the vain hope that one will have all the functions that I need. So after some time it looks as if they've bred like rabbits:
In a way, it makes one think of the situation we had with prehistoric computers. Before 1980, there were dozens of makes of computers, each with its own hardware and software.
But IBM's Personal Computer changed all this because computers were standardized.
Now you can, for instance, buy the same video card for every pc, and not -- as was the case before 1980 -- different hardware and software for Ataris, Commodores, ZX Spectrums, TRS80s or whatever these machines were called.
What I don't understand is this: why can't the audio and video industries find a similar solution? Will they finally agree on some form of standardization? Or do they just go on saddling their customers with sets that become crippled as soon as the remote gets lost?
