Fred Rogers, 1984: "I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the 'Neighborhood' off-the-air ... they then become much more active in the programming of their family’s television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been ‘You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions’ ... I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important."
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive....
There's definitely non-crazy ways of doing this ... but it requires what at first blush, would appear to be a complicated interface.
Ha, reading that link now one feels a delicious sense of irony. Imagine how Sony would react today seeing that it has become one of the biggest purveyors of video/movie content. ;-)
Honestly I don’t know why VCRs are so hard to program but all of the buttons can’t help. I might be getting old but the Roku remote seems about right as far as complexity in the device goes and I can see how a nice interface with relative timekeeping could do what you need without a clock per se. Inertial guidance for timekeeping? A self winding DVR?
Two things off the top of my head that I can think of: 1) knowing that a blinking number is indicating some kind of selection and more generally 2) seeing the UI as a glimpse into a larger abstract space that can be navigated. Or in other words, having used computers for many years, what my parents sawzl as just a blinking word, I would see as a menu where up/down/left/right had meaning.
There's also some more abstract thinking involved there - for me it's very spatial so I think of it as being able to keep track of your place in this 'abstract map'. You had to learn some non-obvious things like "if the down button stops working, it probably means I'm at the 'bottom' of my available choices" or "if I start seeing the same choices again, it means I have 'wrapped around' and in a logical sense I'm back to where I've been before".
I actually remember thinking something like this as a child when we got a VCR. I think I remember that realization that "this is a menu I can explore". The exploratory skills you pick up when you have to figure out how to use something technical generalize really well to other technical things.
TL;DR: I think VCRs were hard to program because the limited UI of buttons and a tiny screen meant that you actually needed a fairly built-up mental model of the process to keep track of what you were doing.
The biggest “what were they thinking” part for me is why they cram a whole GUI with config options and menus into a clock when almost every use case for a VCR is already connected to a perfectly workable display which is much better suited to a GUI in the form of the TV. Later VCRs had onscreen rather than on-device GUIs but by then institutional momentum was too far along to redesign the remote when they moved the GUI out of the device and onscreen. Truly a missed opportunity.
I don’t know anyone involved in any VCR product. If I did I’d be asking them a lot of questions. But I have a hard time thinking they meant to make it so hard. They probably were clapping each other on the back and congratulating each other. They were inventing future ways of using content and for that they deserve praise. They just sucked at understanding how hard it is for non experts to put themselves in the mind of experts, someone whose inner mental world has jarringly different contours and whose mental model of reality may have little to no correspondence whatsoever with their own.
Many people would keep the manuals near the TV, so they could remind themselves how to use the rarely used features.
The Panasonic VCR we had included a barcode reader in the remote. The printed TV guide has barcodes for each program. This interface was very easy to use -- scan, and press "transmit".
Edit to add a link to an advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSGUbE1v5RA -- the sheet of timecodes was necessary if you didn't have a TV guide with them printed, as shown here: http://www.champagnecomedy.com/panasonic-barcodes-saving-you...
That's the outrageous point. You shouldn't need manuals for operation of ordinary domestic appliances! If you do then you automatically know its design is substandard!
(The only reason you should need a manual is for some info or maintenance function that's not normally associated with its user-operated functions.)
So now my wristwatch is sitting on the desk.
*The hard part of programming the Beta(and early VHS) for me was getting the family to leave the tuner on the channel I/we wanted to record.
I hate that ovens and microwaves have clocks on them. I don't need two devices in my kitchen to tell time. It's ridiculous since they usually next to each other, and most of the time have different displays. Just because there is an LCD/whatever, doesn't mean it always has to display something!
At least on the latest power outage, my microwave stopped showing the time. The oven still flashed, so I set that time and only have one clock in my kitchen now.
Even my vehicle has two clocks in it, one on the instrument cluster and one on the infotainment system. So stupid!!!
What's even more crazy, increasingly often I've started to encounter ovens that don't work until you set the clock. I.e. if the clock was reset and is blinking, the heater won't turn on. Took me a while to figure it out the first time I saw it.
It's too bad time sync over power lines didn't catch on widely (or broadcast over the radio). It would still be saving everyone from changing their digital clocks during DST.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_code
They're common in Europe, on a midrange bedside clock for example, and typical office/school clocks.
I remember we were foiled by one at school, when someone set the clock 15 minutes forward when the teacher wasn't looking. The hands could only move forward, so a few minutes later they started spinning 11½ hours further forward to set the correct time.
In the 1990s I encountered a hotel TV with that feature. It had a built-in clock with hands (not on screen), which was also the alarm clock for the room. No one had set it up, and I spent about ten minutes with the remote getting it to find a station with time info and set the clock. Then the "alarm set" function on the remote would work and I could set my wake-up time.
Given that nobody did it, it would appear that even though legally people like Mr. Rogers were making the case for time-shift programming, the industry must have assumed it was a minor use case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Data_Services (NTSC) looks like a 2008 standard and most PBS stations provide "autoclock" time data
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Data_System (FM radio) I figured this had an implementation considering text has been around for years. Amazingly, I don't think I've ever seen a car stereo use it to set the time!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_over_power_lines I know this has been around but has had a lot of hurdles. I figured the current time might be a simpler thing.
The only reliably time-setting tech I've seen integrated is GPS--I'm not 100% sure how time zones work with it, but it does know your location.
Autoclock setting was done for VCRs. It just happened much later than the case in question.
You mean the same industry that was trying to make time-shifting (and VCRs in general) illegal?
If they'd included a backup battery to retain the clock, I suspect it'd been less of a thing.
On the contrary, the clock needs to be super obvious precisely because it's a pain to set. Otherwise you wouldn't notice until your recordings were messed up.