On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 12:08 PM, William Brall <dam...@earthlink.net>wrote:
> So you are saying that having a remote that is cheaper and will last > longer than my LCD TV is likely to last, is more important than ease > of use and speed? To you obviously not. And yes to a manufacturer useability and hyper longevity it's far lower in the food chain. Churn happens: To keep up with the competition, supply chain, trends/style, TV manufacturer's (like auto manufacterers) typically have to create new models every year, regardless or not if the there are any significant upgrades. Design is disposable, closed source, created with small design teams and budgets. Unlike the mobile/web industry I'm not sure if things are getting dramatically better, I don't regularly watch TV. Penny's Count. Manufacturer's gamble each time they put a new unit out there, they don't know what is going to sell, what the competition has going for it. When you are dealing with mass manufacturing of millions of units, penny's add up. For each TV they typically design a remote to go with it. So if something costs $1 or $1.50 makes a huge difference as the manufacturer have to pony up this money up front, and may not see a profit on many of them ever, multiple this across dozens to hundreds of models... Consumers Don't Care. Most consumers in the show room most likely do not pick a TV based on the remote, if they even get to see one. The buy based on screen size, appearance and cost first, and will probably live with anything. Jog wheels in VCR's were a trend, but it's not something I see on most DVD remotes, despite both navigating a linear timeline, possibly because VCR's can record *shrugs*. From a manufacterer's position, I doubt there is a huge difference between the good or badness of design of a remote and the sales of a unit, so it makes sense to not gamble. Having worked on some ITV projects, the problem for applying the mouse scrolling paradigm extends deeper when you have the intelligence on the backend of cable box. The bandwidth downstream is high, but upstream is tiny, and only suited for high latency events like infrequent button presses. So you can't play pong. Some set top boxes do have enough intelligence to support mice/trackballs but these are the minority and usually cost at a premium. Anyway if you feel it's that important, aftermarket parts (including remotes) are a large market, go design a remote control and sell it. Get a job in the industry and attempt to change it. Stop using your remote as a lightsaber, get a wii or a real lightsaber instead. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
