Home Theater: The User Interface Conundrum
A product flexible enough to satisfy the A/V cognoscenti will often—as a matter of course—be too complex for normal mortals to use or enjoy.
None of this, sadly, has much to do with how components actually perform—that is, how they look and sound when playing movies or multichannel music. The problems I’m talking about all have to do with the hurdles people have to jump before they ever get to the fun part of home theater.
A note about our illustration photographs: We include photos of the remote controls and setup menus of three very good products: NAD’s M55 Masters Series universal player, Sony’s BDP-S550 Blu-ray player, and Yamaha’s RX-V3900 A/V receiver. Even where the components provide controls that address similar issues, the button layouts on the remotes and onscreen menu layouts are very, very different. Now imagine how confusing (and daunting) all that “diversity” might seem to a newcomer trying to get his/her components to play well together—or to play at all…
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A possible solution: why not standardize set-up and basic playback controls across the industry?
Right now, home theater component manufacturers are is in roughly the same position that makers of CD players (and before that, makers of cassette decks) were in back in the bad old days before we had standardized markings for Play, Pause, Track Forward, Track Backward controls, etc. If you can remember back that far (and man am I ever dating myself in mentioning the distant past), then you may remember how frustrating the situation could be; you knew what you wanted a component to do, but not how to get the component to do it. The same situation occurs with certain AVRs and disc players today, only multiplied by layers of complexity. What’s the answer? Industry standards, that’s what.
Realistically, all AVRs require set-up procedures, so why not standardize set-up and basic playback menus to look something like this:
SET UP
- Speakers System (setting up your speakers)
- Playback Functions (setting up your receiver/controller to play the various types of material you want to listen to or to watch. Note that this is a function-centric way to tackle the age-old problem of configuring “inputs.”)
- Customize (use this as a catch-all for various manufacturer-specific custom set-up options)
PLAYBACK
- Choose Material (instead of choosing inputs as is now the norm, let’s focus on what really matters—the material we want to play. Note that this approach let’s us take into account the fact that certain components—universal disc players, for example—behave very differently depending on the type of material being played).
- Choose Sound Options (choose from among basic sound options)
- Stereo
- Industry Standard Surround Sound Options (Dolby, DTS, THX, perhaps Circle Surround)
- Proprietary Sound Options (use this as a catch all for various manufacturer-specific customization options).
- Make On-The-Fly Adjustments
- Volume/Mute
- Adjust Channel Levels
- Adjust Tonal Balance (tone controls)
These are just some very rough ideas that could, no doubt, be improved upon if an industry-wide consortium put its collective brainpower to the task. But my point is that we would all benefit if certain basic, everybody’s-got-to-do-‘em tasks were handled the same way across all brands of gear. After a time, then, home theater experts and newcomers alike would have a comfortable, shared, working knowledge of how to operate home theater gear—at least at a level sufficient to get high-quality movie and music playback going, which is what this sport is all about.
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Comments
The big AV companies have the idea that by offering closed systems it encourages more purchase of the brand. Actually, it encourages people to hate the brand. I detest Denon, dislike Sony and Panasonic, and am ambivalent about Onkyo. Wow, that's a marketers dream!
The high end guys don't have enough money to create a consortium to address the issue.
My solution: pray that Apple gets into the game. It will scare the big boys enough to create change or death.
The best solution in the interim would be to hire some user interface designers from the same cloth that Windows and Apple designers come from. That way, at least the component menu logic would make sense until everyone could come to an agreement. Right now, it's like a monkey is put in charge of creating the user interfaces of the modern day receivers.
We use a certain brand of receiver in our condos and we also mate them with a high end remote control so that everything is preset for our homeowners and guests. Who want's to figure out a million different options hidden away in dark deep sub menus, especially when your on vacation.
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Well, maybe better not ask the Windows UI guys to "help" here...
;-)
End Users Unite - The Path to Standards
Great blog! Unfortunately, I do not think a manufacturers' consortium to develop UI standards will ever happen. Why? The standards wars are the best evidence (most recently, Sony v. Toshiba in the HD disc standard war). They simply have too much invested in proprietary technology to play nice in the standards sandbox.
So, how about if AVGuide, TAS, and HiFi+, as the premier publications for end-user devotees of home theater and hi-fi, puts together a consumer consortium to promulgate such a standard? I'd participate. Let's tell them what we want, and then you can use the standard as part of your reviews, e.g., how close does the manufacturer come to meeting the end-user standard.
While there is not a standard for UI, there is an industry standard for interconnectivity between consumer electronics devices, DLNA. The UPnP and DLNA guidelines define a standard architecture and control interfaces that would allow interconnected devices to automatically be discovered and controlled.
Nearly all the major vendors of CE equipment have introduced DLNA-certified devices, but, to my knowledge, nobody has created a UI that ties it all together. I believe the reason this key component is missing is that the vendors fear creating truly open systems where each component could be chosen for its own independent virtues rather than being constrained to buy components from the same vendor simply to insure interoperability.
Having recently jumped to Blue-Ray and 7.1 via HDMI, etc. I can sympathise with the interfaces / connections / remotes frustrations. I'm pretty comfortable with technologies and can read users' manuals, but getting my system set up to finally work right took me about 9 months. Getting the output of the Blue Ray correct (PCM vs Bitstream) and then realizing that the receiver would self-select the effects (True Dolby, and HD) was never made clear to me. The end result was that I could not get the "select" the effect I wanted to hear / compare, though there were some that would indicate and others that would not. When the right kind of audio (on a BD) went into the machine, then the selection showed up just as advertised (not?). Since I could never select it myself, I was wondering if it worked at all. Frustrating in the near term (9 months??), but somewhat sayisfying now that it works right.
Anyway, I'm happy.... and just as important, the wife likes it, too (having No clue about how it got set up, or how many nights I spent digging through screens and manuals, etc.). Routing all controls through a Harmony, which takes care of 95% of what I need most of the time. There are still 8 remotes in the drawer in front of my seat for the other 5%.
I have been in the stereo/ home theater/ custom installation business for over 25 years and it stuns me just how difficult the products are to operate. I am in the 99th percentile of home electronics end users but hand me the remote for an AV receiver which I do not sell and I will have great difficulty operating even the basic functions. I named my new home theater/custom business Simply Sight & Sound for that reason. Once I say "simple" to customers their eyes light up.
I recently spoke to a top exec (a friend) at one of the biggest Japanese manufacturers. He uses a Harmony One remote with his company's products and his wife said "why don't your products work like this (the Harmony)?"
I am not saying that all CE products should be dumbed down but could not just one manufacturer focus their line on ease of use and set-up? They might find a niche there instead of the largely similar product offerings we now have.
I totally agree with Chris Martens points and await his postings on Complexity and Cost. When I speak to prospective customers and tell them that their system will be easy to use (I often use Harmony remotes) they always breathe a huge sigh of relief. I think much of the reason that people with plenty of money end up with large HDTV's but no separate home theater gear is the Complexity and Confusion issues that Chris Martens points out. Some day the industry will wake up to the obvious.
I agree about the complication, I came home one day and my wife and her friends were watching a movie, with only sound coming out of the sub ( as other speakers go through a seperate power amp)
I asked her whatup? She was pissed off, I cannot print what she said, all she had to do was turn on the amp,
But, I think you get my point
I really appreciate your article. I would call myself an average consumer, albeit one who reads a little more about the equipment before I make the purchase. Recently, I made the decision to move to HDMI receivers. I first upgraded the Harmon Kardon system in my den to essentially the same unit with 7.1 and HDMI; it was easy to set up with the on-screen menu's. Then I read an article about a particular Denon 7.1 receiver and decided on that model for my home theater. I purchased the unit and brought it home. A couple of days later I tried to set up the system. I could not get it to work and did not understand the manual, so after a couple of hours of messing around I packed it up and returned it to the store. I then, during the same visit, purchased yet another Harmon Kardon 7.1 HDMI receiver since my experience had been so positive during the set-up process. Since it only offered 75 watts per, I have since added a Rotel 5 X 100 amplifier to beef it up a bit. Since then I regret moving so quickly on the second Harmon Kardon since I now find myself interested in separates, although on a limited budget basis.
It's the same analogy (the hui) that compelled me to move to an Apple macbook pro. I still use a pc at the office, but have no interest in anything other than the two apple computers we have at home.
You may have just written what I've been feeling for ages!!!
I'm a product designer working within the pro audio business, we go to long lengths to do user interaction studies, sensible industrial design; pro audio involves a lot of unique applications, so the users have to learn something new with each new product. Home theatre receivers are (conversely) in the dark ages. I need a receiver that has about 5 buttons on it (and it's remote). The industrial design of these things is hurrendous (buttons and controls all the same size and colour) RIDICULOUS.
Thank you.
JB
Great post!
Thanks for this informative post"....
Hey, Chris, great article. You do a great job of explaining the problem and suggesting a solution, but are there NO MANUFACTURERS who are doing things right? What about Bose? I don't know. I'm shopping for a system right now (just getting started), and I am terrified that I am going to purchase something like I got the last time around: A Sony unit that confounds me every time I go near it! So I Googled something like "home theater user interface" and came up with your article, hoping it would point me in the right direction. Unfortunately, it doesn't, and I feel even more concerned that I'm going to end up frustrated.