Oct 15, 2012

Modern times

When I was a child (not so long ago :) I used to turn on the TV and wait for some time until it warmed up (ok, don't laugh). Exactly, it was a B&W valved tube tv.

Then, at my adolescence, my father bought us a new, shine, top technology color TV; it did not used valves any more and as a result live became better (not only I could turn the TV on and start watching my favorite programs instantaneously - or play video game - but now it had colors!!

Some more time passed (just a few years) and we fast forward to current days.

Now, after a long working day, leaving my office and walking 3 meters, I take a seat in front of my shine new, 51", full hd, 3D plasma TV, turn it on and... it takes 10 ~ 20 seconds to 
start displaying any interesting content (sure the TV maker logo appears in less than 5 secs but it is not that interesting any more)! What? Are we retrogressing ?

I really don't care if these TVs are actually computers... please tv makers, do it right! make it "boot" instantaneously, don't make me wait. I can foresee how the TVs ads will look like in the near future:
you do need to have this flub glob shob TV! It has more features than a computer scientist with a PHD is able to handle and it starts in (put some low number here) seconds!
What will be the next step? getting BSODs (calm down *nix fan boys I did not forget you ;) or Core dumps while watching TV?

You may think I'm kidding about the BSOD stuff, but I am not; for sure my cable TV setupbox already "implemented" this feature (the only deviation from the original BSOD is that you get absolutely no feedback so you are left wondering what happened and the only option is to restart it (hopping it fixes the problem); seriously, it is so crap that sometimes I need to restart it multiple times to get it working again (the cable tv support staff is so used to these issues that the first thing they ask you is to reset the setupbox :m ).

What do you think?

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