Editor's View: Too Many Remotes and On-Screen Menus?

by Matthew York
Winter 2001

One of the most important features of a truly smart TV is to provide viewers with easy-to-use sets of controls, commonly called "user interfaces."

But there is a state of confusion in today's average living room due to too many remote controls. Even those homes with so-called "universal remotes" must occasionally use other remotes to execute commands (i.e. changing video sources).

Inroads have been made, however, to unify the home entertainment system and greatly simplify its usability. The key is the ability for all of the living room devices to "talk to" each other.

You may have read about IEEE 1394, also known as FireWire and i.LINK. The consumer electronics industry has adopted this high-speed serial bus as a standard for communications between digital media devices. DV camcorders have IEEE 1394 jacks for transferring video in and out. IEEE 1394 makes operating devices in the living room more manageable.

Mitsubishi, for example, has developed NetCommand, a proprietary control system for 1394 connections. Mitsubishi is building NetCommand into its new high definition televisions. Users of these TVs can control the various components of their home theaters through a single remote control by way of graphical displays on the TV screen.

Microsoft is also very interested in this category. One of our reporters recently paid a visit to the Microsoft Home on Microsoft's campus. During one demonstration, a VHS tape was inserted into a VCR and began playing immediately on the TV in the room. Many VCRs can do this, so initially it was no big surprise. Then the demonstrator inserted a DVD into a DVD player and it began to play on that TV, replacing the image and sound from the VHS tape. Microsoft's system automatically sensed which device was in use and then took care of all of the switching or routing.

In a short time, TV viewing has gone from a few channels to hundreds of channels along with several options for hard media, like VHS tapes, camcorder tapes, DVD players and personal video recorders.

Our individual needs cannot possibly be met by the three big broadcast networks that dominated television for several decades.

However, without an easy way to select the TV shows to watch, all of this technology may be of little use. I am looking forward to the various solutions to this challenge in the coming months and years.