The Japanese Consumer Electronics Giants Are In Trouble

[jyl]

I just finished a frustrating 1/2 hour figuring out how to record a program from my TiVo to my DVD-Recorder. It wasn't working.

In the back of my DVD-R there were three sets of inputs marked DVDR1 DVDR2 DVDR3, on my A/V receiver also three sets of input/output pairs marked VCR1 VCR2 and VCR3, and I couldn't figure out which jacks to connect to what to route the signal from the TiVo through the receiver to the DVD-R. I could hardly read the tiny labels, or even see them with all the cables and plug ends in the way. My back started to hurt and my eyes to water. Finally I bypassed the receiver and connected the TiVo's Output2 directly to the DVD-R, still having to try the different input sets until one worked. Used up a perfectly good DVD-R disc in the process.

Admittedly, I've long since lost the owners' manuals for all this audio/video gear. But, dammit, I shouldn't NEED an owners' manual. Hasn't anyone heard of intuitive controls and onscreen help?

No, they haven't. Not in the halls of Sony, Pioneer, Kenwood, Toshiba, and other Japanese consumer electronics ("CE") giants. They still think we're supposed to know our way around 30 or 40 jacks in the rear and 50 buttons on the remote, with crytic little labels in barely readable gray-on-silver.

I think we're in the computer age now, and we're used to SOFTWARE, not tiny fiddly buttons. Drop-down menus, Wizards, mouse-over help ballons, contextual controls, and all the aids. Any software company worth its salt has hundreds more people working on user interface than Pioneer had when it developed my DVD-R, I'm sure of it.

If Apple made my home A/V gear, it would be one simple box with a handful of buttons and a minimum of cables. To record from my TiVo would be a matter of one or two mouse clicks, whether I'd done it before or not.

The PC industry needs new worlds to conquer, now that global PC units are growing only 10-12% and gross margins on most PCs are in the teens %s. We balk at spending over $1,000 on a computer, but almost all of us are willing to spend 5X or 10X that on our TV, DVD player/recorder, VCR, PVR/DVR, receiver, amplifier, speakers, etc etc. What a tempting market.

Conveniently, our media is moving from physical discs and tapes, that the CE guys know how to handle, to computer files, that the PC industry knows well.

And the increasing power of PC components means that they will soon be able to handle multiple HD video streams, audio streams, user interface and everything else, without a bobble. INTC's quad core CPU is coming out later this year, an 8-core is around the corner, and the current GPUs from NVDA are very powerful indeed.

Please, will the PC industry hurry up and take over our living rooms? If MSFT can't figure it out (Windows Media Center being a big flopsy) then come on AAPL. My back and eyes aren't getting any younger.

Just ranting.

[M.D. Holloway]

Some news from a giant...

Nokia Siemens Networks announced Friday that it plans to strengthen its position in the communications industry by reducing its workforce.

The company is beginning its cuts in Finland and Germany, with 700 cuts planned for Finland. The company expects 1,500-1,700 jobs to be affected in Finland by 2010. Approximately 2,800-2,900 jobs are expected to be cut in Germany by 2010.

The same process will be implemented in other countries within the next few months.

“This is a necessary step to build a Nokia Siemens Networks able to compete now and in the future,” said Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO, Nokia Siemens Networks. “I know that the planned actions announced today will be difficult for some, but it is our responsibility to create a winning company that can provide strong future opportunities for employees, adequate returns for our shareholders, and cost-competitive products, services and solutions for our customers. While we are a global company, with more than sixty percent of our employees already outside of Finland and Germany, both Finland and Germany will continue to be major centers of employment for Nokia Siemens Networks.”

On June 19, 2006, Nokia and Siemens announced that a workforce reduction of 10 to 15 percent was planned over a four year period from the initial workforce of 60,000.

The company said reductions are in response to market conditions, including proposed changes to the product portfolio, site optimization and streamlining of various functions, among other factors.

[djmcmath]

I'll second that. My fiance's father finally upgraded his home television to a new flat screen. Now, you can say whatever you want about the tech-savvy of "old" people, but this guy's a retired Navy pilot with an engineering degree from the USNA, and generally the sort of guy that people respect for his intelligence. It took him two weeks to figure out which connections he needed to make to persuade the DVD player to work correctly. It's absurd.

Meanwhile, I've been running home audio off my computer for a few years now. Suse 10.0 with what is now an older processor (just an Intel 1Ghz, with a lowly 512MB memory -- practically nothing for today's standards). M-Audio makes a high end sound card with RCA jacks (or, I'm sure, if you spend more, you can get digital-optical-fiber-whatever) that send the sound to my amp -- Swedish made, with the minimum number of connections for my needs.

When I eventually buy a TV, I'll do the same thing: the multimedia machine is capable of storing DVDs and streaming them to an arbitrary output. I'll just get a decent video card with an output of my choice.


CD Player? DVD Player? Swapping physical media? How quaint! How "Early 21st Century!"

[john70t]

Analog, on the other hand, doesn't have a "format" which changes every two years to remain non-compatible.

[CurtEgerer]

>>>But, dammit, I shouldn't NEED an owners' manual. Hasn't anyone heard of intuitive controls and onscreen help? <<<

Try a Hertz Rent a Car GPS sometime for real fun. Ironically, it's called the "NeverLost". And maybe it is, IF you can figure out how to use it! It's the most counter-intuitive POS electronic device I've ever seen. Great sales tool for the paper map industry though.