Comments on: Taking Points Off For Not Catering To The Well-Off

By: Dear Smart Phone Makers: How To Make A Good Keyboard | Chic(k)Tech

Dear Smart Phone Makers: How To Make A Good Keyboard | Chic(k)Tech — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:33:33 +0000

[...] Taking Points Off For Not Catering To The Well-Off [...]

By: J. Andrews

J. Andrews — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:14:53 +0000

I don’t know the specifics about captions and HD, but here’s an interesting data point at least.

My friends got a new, swanky Tivo and gave me their old one. You can transfer recorded shows from Tivo to Tivo. But when I get a show from their Tivo, the captions come out as near-gibberish. It _seems_ like their Tivo is recording and/or encoding them differently, and my tivo and/or television can’t quite interpret them.

The captions display fine on their HD television. And I’ve noticed different fonts for different shows, which is an interesting change. (I don’t know if I like it, but it’s interesting.)

By: J. Andrews

J. Andrews — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:07:25 +0000

This bugs me so much! But it’s not just one station or one network. I can’t even see the entire network bug in the corner anymore! Or people’s full names in the credits, on Lost, for example.

If they start cutting off subtitles on anything, I’m going to scream.

By: Stef

Stef — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:45:47 +0000

We play DVDs with closed captions through a Mac Mini attached to the HDMI port. (The Mac Mini has its own caption decoding software.)

Rather expensive solution unfortunately.

I gather that when you watch TV via a cable or satellite box the caption decoding happens there.

By: K T Bradford

K T Bradford — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:33:42 +0000

ugh, accessibility fail. Is there any way around that?

By: K T Bradford

K T Bradford — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:33:05 +0000

If I cared more about TV then I suppose $300 – $400 wouldn’t seem so much. But from my perspective, I’m like: I have a working TV, it is big, and it shows me moving images. What do I need HD for? And again, my monitor is almost that big, did NOT cost me $400, and hooks into my computer. so… yeah.

And hey, i totally understand gadget porn. I roll in it, yay. I’m just saying, don’t hate on devices that aren’t for the well-off, or don’t cater to specific, yet unimportant segments of those well-off people.

then again, I don’t see enough people dinging the iPad for not have HDMI output options when almost every Tegra 2 tablet does. jesus, ipad.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:05:49 +0000

yeah… for that size(32), you have to spend $300-$400. ;)

Most of the gadgets that have do/don’t have HDMI ports cost around…. ??? ($300?)

Gadget Porn is gadget porn. It’s all about what port fits into what slot, etc etc. Don’t hate a scorpian for being a scorpian.

Should one resent Apple for constantly trying to sell you new/better/shinier plastic crap that replaces your current plastic crap? Perhaps. But gadget porn that dings a gadget because it doesn’t have state of the art slots and ports seems like a minor sin, compared to, say… The ipad.

Luv you dear.
:)
-jl

By: Stef

Stef — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:09:18 +0000

After my partner (who is deaf) and I got an HDTV, we discovered that HDMI doesn’t transmit closed caption information. Because of course new technologies are always better in every way, and accommodating disabilities isn’t important.

(I’m not deaf but I have enough trouble sorting speech from noise in most movies that I vastly prefer captions myself.)

By: K T Bradford

K T Bradford — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:43:03 +0000

I like a big TV, and my current one is around 30 or 32-inches. For that size you have to pay a lot more if you’re going for an HD LCD. I think that for people who don’t mind a smaller set, LCDs are a good way to go if their budget is modest. But so many people want a bigger screen, and as you go up in size, the prices get way more ridiculous.

I have a 27″ monitor right now. If my TV is smaller than that, what is the point?

By: Matthew Daly

Matthew Daly — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:36:37 +0000

I’m usually way behind on the tech curve (e.g. never owned a laptop and my recent dabbling in a cell phone didn’t enchant me), and I’m dirt poor and the only live television I’ve watched over the past decade has been presidential debates. Even so, I see Best Buy offering 19″ LCD HDTV for as low as $139, and that strikes me as just about what a television should cost. They haven’t hooked me yet, but I wouldn’t be morose if my current TV died tomorrow. And I have to suspect that it’s even more of a lure for people who are using their televisions for more than PS2 games.

By: veejane

veejane — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:07:53 +0000

OMG, does this mean I can sic you on my local Fox station, which broadcasts in wide-screen (presumably, because that’s what HDTVs are built for)? My dull, ordinary TV can’t fit the whole thing onto the screen, and instead of giving be black stripes at top and bottom, I just get a pan-and-scan version with the sides cut off.

Not even! Pan-and-scan actually scans, and tries to show the most important stuff! Fox-o-vision just crops whatever’s on the sides, and TV shows slowly become incomprehensible.

Dull, ordinary TVs still work! With every channel in my cable lineup except Fox.

By: Mary Dell

Mary Dell — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:56:55 +0000

Cosigned, so much. So many tech reviewers suck at imagining a customer who is someone other than the reviewer or the reviewer’s best friend. Remember the first time PC Magazine reviewed netbooks? They were all like “the important things are having a big hard drive, big keyboard, and running photoshop really well.” And based on that they basically trashed the whole category…there was no sense of trying to figure out who actually wants a netbook and why, and then reviewing based on that.

By: Carla Lee

Carla Lee — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:50:05 +0000

Thank you so much for saying this! These assumptions really get to me after awhile and make me uninterested in reading tech blogs and reviews, even though I really want to know about what’s new.