The Tech Minimalist Speaks Out: A Home Theater Rant

Like many of you, I consider myself quite the tech minimalist when it comes to electronics and gizmos. And like many of you, I've come to truly hate the current work flow and experience of setting up, watching, and enjoying the modern home theater. Come. Take a break from what you're doing for now and join me on this short little rant on the importance of good user experience (and how the majority of home theater tech companies out there still simply don't "get it").

Personally, I feel the blame shouldn't fall on the consumers' frustrations for having to deal with these unintuitive user interfaces and impossible to follow wiring diagrams from pro-sumer sites. It's the traditional in-the-box thinking of many companies who continue to fail miserably at delivering a truly rewarding movie watching experience without all the hassles and headaches that come with it.

For the most part, there is a large percentage of companies out there who continue to crank out hardware without much thought of the user in mind. It's quite the technology-centered approach. They tend to work with an A -> C formula in mind. A) We got a great idea! B) And look! It's supported by trends! C) Let's build it before everyone else does!

The end result? We get an army of hardware devices plagued by unintuitive menus and the home theater "experience" itself becomes an afterthought.

Let's take the idea of a home theater rack, for example. I, the tech minimalist, find this concept extremely backwards and absurd. Why would I want to switch from box to box, tweak individual settings, and feel inclined to buy a "universal remote" to "make things easier." Can't there be just a single interface for me to deal with. I just want to watch a Blu-Ray film. This is stupid.

This is probably why I don't find new concepts like Boxee's Box very appealing. Don't get me wrong, I like the Boxee software. Really, I do. I've even installed it on my PC and it's probably the slickest interface I've ever dealt with.

However, my desktop PC is located on my desk. My laptop needs to come with me everyday to work. And my home theater is situated over 100 feet away in the living room. Since wireless-HDMI is no where near affordable right now, Boxee remains forever stuck on my PC, unless I buy a Dell Zino HD or the Boxee box and throw it somewhere behind my TV. Again, this idea of purchasing yet another box to do something I need to do is nonsense. It's a waste of plastic. I don't want more hardware.

But rants are generally useless by themselves, so I've gone ahead and proposed a few solutions. How about we remove this whole attachment issue with the set top paradigm and shift it to something more convenient for the consumer? Say, like building a wireless remote controller that does everything and have a single box as a receiver? Let the screen breathe for once. Something like what the Asus EEE Keyboard (to be released later next year). That's some good stuff right there.

Finally, what about the direction of localized home media? Even though we're slowly trending to the centralized media server hub, what about backup? Once everything goes digital, shouldn't we all have a consumer-friendly and affordable backup solution for all of our media? I mean, even though it's just 0's and 1's - it's an essential part of our identity. Losing all of our photos and videos can be a horrifying experience. Why not take it mainstream and create a solution that's reliable (... unlike Time Machine), intuitive (...unlike Windows Home Server), and affordable (... unlike Drobo's NAS)? Can someone please get it right?

All in all, I'm not very happy. But as a designer, I don't believe I ever will be, so I'll end my rant here and open it up to you guys. What are your thoughts on the current scene of home theater entertainment? Share your thoughts below. I really want to hear them!

Note: This post is solely the opinion of the author. It is presented as humorous observation and does not imply any bias or bigotry. That said, feel free to agree or disagree!

[Image: Audiorackandtvstands.com, Myxtender]

Comments (12)

Pretty pathetic rant. Sorry.

Suck it up and get a good universal remote and then your system will be easy to use.

If you can't do it yourself, hire a pro.

I'm not saying that the current system is very easy, but few things in life are. As with most things, you need to either invest your time or invest your money to get results.

Why not just get a computer to run something like XBMC, or Plex with a universal remote.

I have a very simple home theater, including my TV, Cable Box, Receiver, and Mac Mini, with a few gaming stations (PS3 and Wii).

I use a logitech harmony remote to switch between them. And really it's just 1 button to switch from watching TV to playing PS3.

All my movies are stored on my Mac Mini, and using plex media server on my home computer, my Mini (in the Plex app) see's my iPhoto and iTunes - with updates, so I don't need to carry data over my network.

Seems easy enough.

Justin
Virtua Computers

This is why I just experience all media on my iPhone.

I'm with everyone else. The blame for your difficult experience lies solely within your ineptitude, sorry. I have an HTPC system in my bedroom that is beautifully elegant in its simplicity.

I have my main my laptop on my desk in my living room. I also have a 3 TB drive hooked up to my Airport Extreme router out there. I wired ethernet cable from the living room to the bedroom (hidden of course), which is plugged into my Mac Mini. The Mac Mini is plugged into a 42" LCD TV via a DVI to HDMI cable. With this simple setup, I run Plex, which is controlled entirely with a Harmony 550 universal remote.

Long story short, I can stream everything in a beautifully organized manner from my network drive. I press one button when I want to watch TV, I can turn on and off my lights with another button on the remote, and I can watch things on Plex with another button. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Incidentally, Plex has a built in media server which, yes, lets me play all my videos, music, and photos from my laptop on my bedroom TV (like you wanted). On another side note, my laptop is wired via a hidden optical cable to my main two channel stereo setup in my living room, and it can be controlled from anywhere in the house with my iPhone.

If you get just a tiny bit creative, read just a little bit, and expand your own knowledge about technology, you can create an extremely clean setup without breaking the bank and can thus avoid ignorant rants like this in the future.

Hey all,

I appreciate the in-depth feedback from everyone. Just a few points: The article wasn't to bash on people who have figured out a seamless way to integrate their current home theater setup using multiple set-top devices (I'm guilty of having one too many myself) or those who have realized the excellent functionality of a universal remote. It was to stimulate discussion about the topic of seamless minimalism achieved through creative means (and @owlicks has done a great job illustrating this point exactly).

Again, it's not about ineptitude or how tech-savvy you are. It's about creating an excellent user experience at home. A great alternative workaround is what we're here for. So cheers for reading and I would love to read more feedback on the creative solutions you guys have come up with!

I completely agree with Anthony. If you can't reduce the issues to a few elegant terms, it means that you don't understand the problem well enough.

In this case, it's not that they CAN'T do it, but instead, aren't legally allowed. Patents owned by the diaspora of company prevent the kind of consolidation that is required in visual media.

btw, I find it ironic: write an anti-tech rant, and all the gadget guys run to the defense.

P.S. -- Sorry if my rant came off as douchy, perhaps I shouldn't post before I've had my coffee. I appreciate your level-head response @anthonyn.

I stream everything from my nas\desktop PC to an XBMC xbox in my leving room or via a wifi bridge in the bead room. If you want HD pick up one of these

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-Desktop PC-_-Acer America-_-83103228

http://lifehacker.com/5391308/build-a-silent-standalone-xbmc-media-center-on-the-cheap

it will play HD video and is quit but not as cheap as an old $50 xbox.

These all run off of remotes and take some tech expertise to set up but there are some good tutorials out there on how to set them up. But they changed how i video media, I love my set up.

i am thinking erect a wall. all the stuff is behind the wall / server closet.

this is better than a closet because you can get to it. not seen examples but i think it would be cool.

i like rants. we need more of them

Funny you mention that matthew -- my ultimate goal IS to just have a server closet. That way you can combine all the stuff you really need: NAS drives, HTPC, cable boxes, audio devices, etc and control it all with a universal RF remote. My end goal really is to just have TVs with on screen controls and no other visible devices. The whole idea is pretty feasible with off the shelf components right now, would just be a bit of a pain to run wiring.

I think Anthony is on point. Consumer Electronics (CE) companies generally suck at user interface design. They haven't really progressed dramatically since the introduction of the on-screen programming for VCR's.

While there are notable exceptions (TiVo) even the more advanced features of set-top boxes are beyond the grasp of the non tech-savy individuals they most frequently service.

Non traditional CEs such as computer manufacturers are dipping their toe's into the water, but they generally lack the industrial design talent of the classic consumer manufacturers. That is to say, generally the products they produce look like ugly computer boxes.

Nirvana is a highly usable interface such as the AppleTV, TiVo, or Netflix on Xbox 360 merged with a smaller subset of boxes to contend with.

A set top box with a great UX, the ability to stream on-demand content (paid and free) play physical media, and control live TV (broadcast or cable/satellite) would be heaven.

However until someone convinces the content providers, distributors, hardware manufacturers to abandon their current economic models that's not going to happen. Companies cling to old ways of thinking almost as irrationally as people do.

More likely, they will cling to their current business models and simply kill off (consolidation of NBC and Comcast) the parts that don't favor their current thinking (Hulu will become a niche product with little investment).

I sort of agree with unpluggd here. There's to much equipment right now, and far too many wires behind my media cabinet. I think thats just a case of the industry maturing though. Speakers and home cinemas have earlier been just for the tech-knowers, but just the last couple of years it have moved on to the mainstream users and with it we have got all this other "hd-boxes" that promises to do everything.

Problem is, they don't. So we have to have our HTPC, DVD/bluray-player, game console, home-server, active subwoofer with it's own remote, reciever to handle it all, and a big ass TV with lots of connection-options. Point is, that's a lot of cables, and a lot of different interfaces and remotes. And don't get me started on the setup-time for all this. Thank god for banana-plugs, but the HTPC-users still has to cope with codecs and xbmc-setups aswell.

We currently have two recievers and two sets of floor-speakers. One for the HTPC, and one dedicated to music only, no switching needed, and the music-reciever is connected to multiple PC's in the house just needing to change the input channel with a button. XBMC is up and running fine, but we still can't stream movies from our server, as the wireless network can't handle it perfectly. So we use external harddrives to move over movies and stuff :/