"Chris Hornbeck" <chrishornbeckremovethis@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:gku4245vi5uvfve77ujr7jsl8cd0hccbea@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Wed, 7 May 2008 21:48:57 -0400, "Soundhaspriority"
> <nowhere@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>>You've gotten me to take a good look at their product line, and I've
>>identified a candidate: the TX-1000. I understand your dislike of
>>touchscreens, but my audio components are older, relying more on
dedicated
>>buttons than menus, so I think I'd have trouble with a hard button
>>solution.
>
> The "hard" buttons are intended for universally used functions,
> mostly... and the device-specific stuff is put into the
> on-screen buttons. This is difficult to describe in a Newsgroup
> but easy to imagine if you were to be designing the machine
> yourself. You'd have common functions on fixed "hard"
> buttons and device-specific functions on varying, associated-
> with-the-screen buttons.
>
> Ferzample, volume controls, mute, channnel up/down are major
> fixed, dedicated hard buttons. Of course the volume controls
> work the same with all sources, but the channel up/down
> will operate different devices when watching cable/sat
> or when listening to the radio.
>
> But when you're watching a DVD the associated-with-the-screen
> buttons have specific DVD-only functions like subtitles, audio
> track choice, etc.
>
> Or, when watching cable/sat the screen has specific cable/sat-
> only buttons like on-demand, live, record, music channels,
> or whatever.
>
I have some exposure to this. The Sony MX-3000 has 28 active squares. Each
square contains, I think, four potential symbols, in an assortment that
was
intended to provide a decent compromise in possible use. For common
devices,
such as TV and DVD, the available symbols map almost perfectly, though
even
common devices have idiosyncratic functions. For example, the Philips (and
I
know you're familiar with this, I'm just exhibiting my own reasoning) has
three colored buttons, red, green, and blue, that correspond to certain
on-screen menu choices. These obviously have no parallel in a monochrome
touchscreen. But for the most part, it works well. On the other hand, a
Yamaha RX-V1, although it has an on-screen interface, was designed before
the the current trend toward button minimization. The number of discrete
labels is horrendous. For example, there are twelve sound fields, each
with
a text label, and two variants of these selected by a mode key. I ended up
mapping most of this with the numeric keypad of the Sony, but using these
without the onscreen reference is a memory job, which I would like to do
because the onscreen interface is available only through analog video,
while
my video sources are all HDMI.
So having six buttons adjacent to a small text screen isn't ideal. It
would
require breaking the soundfields into two menus. Ditto for my ancient Sony
TA-E1000 processor, the sound fields of which I am inordinatley fond of.
>Haven't tried, but for half a KiloBuck, I'd insist fairly
>purposefully, ....and it might happen, on being provided the code.
>Of course, I'd be glad to help, via the Internet, to contribute
>whatever I could to the programming process. I have complete
>"devices" for most common hardware, and these are just plugged into
>the framework. I'd also be very interested in your philosophy
>of design in case ours would differ significantly - I don't
>get any interesting feedback locally.
I expected no less. You are a very nice person.
[snip]
Sometime in the future, we'll have an interesting back-and-forth on this.
Perhaps prices will come down. I don't understand how a nice remote can
cost
10X that of a twelve channel satellite receiver you can clip on your belt,
or a bluetooth frequency hopping transceiver dongle ;)
You're not verbose, you're interesting. There is a difference.
Bob Morein
(310) 237-6511
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