My Toshiba HDD DVR died completely after about 3 years, so in the autopsy right after bench testing it for an hour or so to try and fix it I was removing the blazing hot hard drive and discovered that the main cpu was located directly underneath it, with no heat sink or fan.

This wasn't like a computer cpu mind you, but it was very hot nonetheless and they had made the design decision to place the hard drive on top of it. There was lots of room in the case for other scenarios, but in their decision-making they had made a choice that led up to this.

To me it was bad industrial design.

PVRs that don't have a easy swap hard drive so that a customer can customize the thing to their needs.

If Moto and SA (and the rest) built their units so that they were sold with no drive or a very small "standard" drive, it would allow everyone easier access to the hardware as they could either forego the drive/live with what it has. Later, or right away, people could buy a universally swappable drive that more appropriately fit their needs.

With SATA in existance, this is more than doable.


I could also rant about the seemingly total lack of focus in regards to a whole home PVR solution... :mad:

Most equipment these days allows the use of multiple units in the same room, by simply setting up different remote codes for the various units. But Motorola DCT's still don't let you do that. If you want to control more than one, forget it. That is so 1970's....

We recently got a new front loader washer/dryer along with pedestal stands (the higher of two heights that were available). The pedestal stand has a drawer which would make for a good spot to put the soap in. However, the high effeciency soap container is a bit too high to fit in the drawer. I've seen three brands of soap and the containers are all too high to fit in the drawer.

The various types of av connections - RF, composite, s-video, component, HDMI (with versions now - some do some types of audio, others don't, etc) plus audio inputs - RCA, coax digital, optical (did I miss any?).

In the past I've used DIN connecters as well.

I realize they're trying to integrate all both audio and video into one connector but I wish they'd done it sooner - how hard would it be to come up with a single av connector to do component plus 5.1-ch audio and get rid of all the other inputs.

No wonder only a small minority of geeks have their equipment optimally connected - I have seen HDTV's connected to the coax out from the STB. In fact, that's how the installer connected mine - most people probably leave it like that because it works and it was done by the 'experts'.

Well, one of my pet peeves is the fact that Motorola made a different power/charger adapter for my Motorola cell phone than for the Motorola bluetooth headset I bought with the phone. Wouldn't it be nice if all of the manufacturers could agree on a standard so that everyone in the family could use the same charger for their various phones, PDAs, music players, gaming equipment and other rechargable devices? USB is a standard, why can't chargers be?

And a second peeve is small print and tiny buttons on remote controls and A/V equipment. I hate having to get my reading glasses and turn on a light just to find the darn "input select" or "mode" or "pause" or "zoom" or some other such button. (or maybe my peeve is just with getting old!)

john a

well maybe not for all remotes but DVD player, front projection and AV receiver remotes should all be visible in the dark. I am sure there are others but I know I bought an HD-DVD player to watch movies and 90% of people got this type of equipment to watch movies in the dark.

How am I supposed to change inputs, volume, play, pause, menu etc if I can't see all the little buttoms.

I can understand not everyone watches TV or listens to CDs in the dark but a high end projector, AV receiver and HD-DVD player I am sure are geared towards this.

Any equipment that has a remote control with a numeric keypad, but only allows you to enter numbers into settings (such as setting the clock or scheduling a recording) by using the up/down arrows to scroll through the numbers for each digit. The same goes for equipment that has the numeric keypad attached, such as a phone.

Over the Xmas holidays, my wife and I were shopping for a new coffee maker.

A certain model labelled with a popular brand (I won't mention which one) was designed as a "coffee to go" kind of machine. In other words, it had two spouts from which coffee was dripping. You could either use one or two of the cups which shipped with the coffe maker.

Only problem is when I went in the next aisle of the store to pick up a couple different mugs (standard thermos coffee mugs one buys for a vehicle), they were all too tall to fit under the spouts. In other words, you were stuck using the same two, rather cheap mugs that come in the box.

Well, one of my pet peeves is the fact that Motorola made a different power/charger adapter for my Motorola cell phone than for the Motorola bluetooth headset I bought with the phone. Wouldn't it be nice if all of the manufacturers could agree on a standard so that everyone in the family could use the same charger for their various phones, PDAs, music players, gaming equipment and other rechargable devices? USB is a standard, why can't chargers be?That's actually one of the things that totally sold me on my Motorola Q: The Q and my H605 BT headset and my Oakley Rokr shades all use a mini-USB charger (meaning that all can be charged off the USB port on my computer as well).
But you're right: why all cell manufacturers can't just settle on mini-USB for data and charging is a tough one to figure.

Setting up a HT recently:

SA8300HD, AVR and Plasma TV. Client wanted to be able to hear audio from TV or AVR.

Connected - Optical from STB to AVR and HDMI from STB to TV. Simple right? No!

Had to set STB to DD to get DD5.1 from STB to AVR. Sound then disappears from TV since sound to TV was via HDMI.

OK, easy, add analogue audio cables from STB to TV, making sure that the analogue cables go to the analogue inputs associated with the HDMI input - still no sound on TV. Bad analogue cables? Wrong input? Wrong STB setting? Nope. Had to go into the TV setup (drilling down a few layers) to select "analogue" for the audio option on that HDMI input.

How many people would have been able to figure all that out? Stuff should get along better than this. I'll bet most people would either:

- sacrifice audio on the TV, or
- set the STB to HDMI and end up listening to incoming two channel audio on the AVR.

My pet peeve...

Remote control designers that make the remote pretty but impossible to use .

The remote that came with my Grand Wega XBR800 is a beautiful piece of art... Art that is completely non-sensical and non functional with tiny keys and printing, key layout that was designed by playing "pin the key on the remote" no backlighting and an in hand feel that's only slightly less cumbersome than holding a piece of wood of the same length :o

NefCanuck

why all cell manufacturers can't just settle on mini-USB for data and charging is a tough one to figure.
Watch out. The Micro-USB connector spec. is on its way. Apparently, mini-USB is just too big for some of the tiny phones, MP3 players and other USB gadgets that manufacturers want to produce.

However, I agree with you. And since it's still USB, with micro to mini converters things would still be simple.

HDMI handshake. funny how this never happens via component, in the manuals they write something to the effect : "HDMI is an onging technology blah blah" making it ok for you to spend 3 to 5 grand on something that will fail every so often. Nothing beats spending around $1800.00 on a DLP TV just to be told by the company representative "Sorry that TV was not designed for gaming" after having serious issues attempting to use your slick xbox 360 with your nice new TV. Then again that is nothing compared to people who spent around 16 grand on plasma displays a few years back only to wind up with burnt in screens!