mypipeline

Time to rant

From now on, I’m jotting down more of the things that bug me.

Starting with my Nokia phone’s tiny clockface. Granted, it’s cheap - I am on my fourth this year, the other three suffering watery toilet and bath demises (a long story, which I do not have time to scribble at the moment). But it is, after making phone calls, the next most important thing on anyone’s phone feature list, but Nokia almost always has a default setting of around 3pt Font, stuck in the right corner, with no ability to raise the font size or move the time to the centre of the display, as would be my preferred location. Nokia, get with the program: people need the time in BIG BOLD LETTERS. And of course, all of the sales packaging doesn’t have the time-face printed on the display so you assume that with this new phone, Nokia will have fixed this glaring idiocy. Not this time…

Humax-ed out

Gripe two for the day: the interaction design on my new Humax PVR. Now, I bought this wonder-toy on the recommendations of my fellow shoppers at Amazon. And yes, it’s fast, has plenty of space for content, a zippy loading interface, and one of the most pain-free set-ups that I’ve ever experienced with an ‘AV device’. But though the software is clearly well-coded, the interface design has been clearly hacked together by the programmers, most of which clearly didn’t excel at their ESL courses. When I want to record a programme, I want to press the nice red record button and have it record. Nope. I need to go into the Guide, then press OK instead (obviously). This I discovered after a thumb-numbing marathon with my remote, trying every colour-coded button first and only then stumbling on the least obvious, and most correct option.

Then, when I have recorded a programme, what do you reckon I need to do to watch it? Well, in a blue-skies sort of world, the one button that a PVR should have (next to a working Record button) is one that says ‘My Recorded Programmes’. Nope. Here’s the interaction I have to use (which I still have trouble remembering): press Menu > Record (yes, you read it right) > Recorded Programmes, then select a Programme with OK. But that’s the easy bit. Then, instead of simply exiting the menu area and treating you to your recorded programme, your selection begins playing in the tiny 1/16th screen in the menu area! It took me another three minutes to realise that I had to press Menu again to play the selection full-screen.

Dear Christ Humax, get thee to a IxD firm immediately…

In: Digital Life, The Bug List | tags: phones, pvr, settop boxes. | #