A huge pet-peeve of mine (rant)

Hush

Hush

CAGiversary!
Something I've noticed and have been thinking about recently is really bothering me. It is the phenomena of people who don't know how (or don't put forth the effort) to properly utilize (and get the most out of) the technology that is available to them.

I have a friend who is a prime example of this:

He owns a 57" Hitachi widescreen rear-projection HDTV (older model but still a pretty good TV), a PS3, and one of those 5.1 surround sound in-a-box systems. I am not here to criticize his choice of equipment, but rather, how it is hooked up.

To start, when his house was being built a few years ago, him and his dad went in before the drywall was hung and wired his living room for surround sound (surprising considering the rest of what I'm going to tell you) and installed speaker outlets for the rear channels. The drywall guys ended up covering up one the outlets so now he can only plug in one rear channel. His "surround sound" (I use that term loosely) setup consists of both rear channel speakers plugged into the left rear channel outlet with one propped up on the top of a couch that is on the SIDE of the room in relation to the TV and one on an end table which is not really BEHIND any viewers. The center channel and left and right front channels are all on the TV but too close together for any proper stereo seperation. It gets worse...

Recently I was over there and somehow the subject of Blu-Ray and HDTVs comes up. He made a comment that when he watches a Blu-Ray disc on his PS3 he isn't really that impressed with the picture quality. Rewind to a few weeks before. One day I was at his house hanging out and he had to be somewhere at a certain time so he asks me to hang out for an hour or so and wait for the UPS guy because he doesn't want to miss a package. I agree and start playing the MGS4 demo on his PS3. I noticed the image quality isn't that great so I check the settings. It was set to standard definition 4:3 ratio so the whole time he was playing games/ watching movies in standard definition and the image was being stretched to fit his widescreen TV! I changed the settings to the best available for his set.

I guess it just blows my mind that people go out and buy expensive items but in turn are clueless on how to use them to their maximum potential.

Any similar experiences/stories?
 
Lots of similar experiences with my uncles who cant even remember their email's screen name. lol
i'm going to recommend a guy who needs help with the structure of sentences to read this. this rant is well written. thanks.
 
[quote name='Tavohl']Lots of similar experiences with my uncles who cant even remember their email's screen name. lol
i'm going to recommend a guy who needs help with the structure of sentences to read this. this rant is well written. thanks.[/QUOTE]

I appreciate the compliment!
 
[quote name='klwillis45']At least he has some HD equipment to feed his HDTV unlike some people.[/quote]

No comment. I know too many.
 
[quote name='DarkSageRK']Not everyone knows as much about this stuff as you. No need to be a dick about it.[/QUOTE]

Whether or not I sound like a dick, I just think it says a lot about the intelligence of the average consumer. I'm not talking about old people. They come from a different era. I'm talking about people 30 and under who don't know how to do a basic A/V setup. Even if you don't know, fine, but it never occurs to these people to ask someone more knowledgable to help them before complaining about how unimpressive Blu-Ray is, the letter boxes on their movies, etc.
 
My dad falls into the "Idiots who don't know wtf they're doing" category with hdtv setups. I remember a few years ago when he bought a nice 60 something inch DLP tv. I remember about a month later he went out and blew something like $300 or $400 on some kind of Monster brand power surge / regulator thing. I still don't know wtf it is, but supposedly it cleans the power and reduces the static that appears on the screen. Well, we never did have any static to begin with, and I never noticed any difference after he bought that. Now you would think after being able to spend that kind of money on something that doesn't do anything, he wouldn't have a problem putting up the extra $5 to $10 for digital cable with HDTV channels. Well, apparently he did have a problem with doing that, so he's been talking about how sharp and clear his SD channels are on his HDTV, thinking it's due to the tv.

Thanks to him buying that Monster Voltage Regulator thingy, we know how much energy the TV setup uses since everything is plugged into it. The voltage is always gonna be 120v here. It's the amps that change. Anyways when the tv is off and everything else is off, it still draws 0.6 amps.

(Amps)(Volts)=Watts. So the tv setup draws 72watts when it's not on. I tried explaining to him that it's the same as leaving a light on in a room with nobody in it. He's always anal about turning off lights when you're not in the room and that's understandable. But the way I figure, the tv only got used at most for 4 hours a day. So that's 20 hours pulling 72 watts where nobodys using it. Thats 1.44kWh per day, and at the average price of 10 cents per kwh, that's only 14.4 cents per day being wasted, but over a whole month of 30 days that's $4.32 that could be saved off the electric bill, ~$50 per year.
 
It might not be a tv related technology issue, but my boss at work manages to lose her url bar all the time. I have no idea how she does it. Then I come in and show her how easy it so fix. The last time she did this, she thought her google toolbar search section was her url bar. I don't know how she managed to install the google toolbar (probably was a popup that she just clicked ok on).

And today she wants to watch/ listen to some stuff on Youtube. She gets all upset/ flustered because her computer suddenly no longer has sound. I know this is impossible unless her onboard sound magically went out (it was more likely she unplugged her speakers). I go in to check and she just didn't have her sound on her computer turned up.

My bosses do stupid shit like this all of the time and it really pisses me off. Like when we moved offices my boss (main guy, not the one who loses the url bar) told me that he didn't want to spend any money installing the new phone system so I need to do it myself. Like I've ever installed a multi-line phone system before. I got it done but wanted to rip my hair out.

Oh and the same boss as above a couple of weeks ago called me into his office and asked me how to save a word document to a floppy disk (he thinks these are the greatest thing ever and totally ingores that I have the office networked together so I can access anything he saves on his computer and vice versa). I get in there and he manually highlights all of the text from the word document and goes up to edit copy as if he was going to literally copy the text to the disk. I proceed to tell him how to do save to the floppy drive and he messes it up, instead saving to my documents. I allowed him to hand me the blank floppy disk because I was so irritated and because I knew I could just get to the document anyhow.

Some of the stuff they have me do has me and others convinced that they seriously think I am magical.
 
[quote name='Hush']Whether or not I sound like a dick, I just think it says a lot about the intelligence of the average consumer. I'm not talking about old people. They come from a different era. I'm talking about people 30 and under who don't know how to do a basic A/V setup. Even if you don't know, fine, but it never occurs to these people to ask someone more knowledgable to help them before complaining about how unimpressive Blu-Ray is, the letter boxes on their movies, etc.[/quote]

You give people far too much credit. People are ignorant towards things. That is a given. It's not everyone's hobby to understand how to do a basic A/V setup. A large number of people are "just fine" with their TV displaying a picture, let alone having it in the right "mode" or setup correctly.

The same can be said of someone who uses a computer and doesn't know how every detail of how to use it. Some people just don't care and only want the device to do one specific thing, etc.
 
[quote name='Hush']I noticed the image quality isn't that great so I check the settings. It was set to standard definition 4:3 ratio so the whole time he was playing games/ watching movies in standard definition and the image was being stretched to fit his widescreen TV! I changed the settings to the best available for his set.[/quote]


I HATE this.

I briefly knew someone who went out and bought a 42" Plasma and an HD-DVD player. Did they buy widescreen HD-DVDs? No. They bought fullscreen regular DVDs and stretched them to fit the screen. I tried telling them that they had it all wrong, and I asked them why they don't buy widescreen HD-DVDs for the widescreen HD-TV. Their answer: We don't like the black bars on the screen.

I tried explaining to them that their TV is widescreen, so they won't have to see the black bars. They were UTTERLY INCAPABLE OF COMPREHENDING THIS. I can't believe people can be SO STUPID when they're spening that kind of money. Honestly, what the fuck? THEY DON'T DESERVE THAT TV.
 
I have so many stories from work, they aren't really about A/V stuff, just general stupidity. Like people who can't open a program in Windows wihtout having a file to double click.

Me: Open Powerpoint.
Them: .....how? It won't let me double click.
Me:#-o
 
you guys need to relax, seriously

life's too short to facepalm, ever.. seriously.. you're already like 30% dead and youth is prime, don't waste a good thing sweating the small stuff.. nothing in this thread is worth being bothered by
 
[quote name='Sofa King Kool']I tried explaining to them that their TV is widescreen, so they won't have to see the black bars. They were UTTERLY INCAPABLE OF COMPREHENDING THIS. [/quote]

If the movie is 2.39:1 (Most big budget hollywood movies) etc it will have black bars on a widescreen tv. Only stuff thats 16:9 or 1.85:1 (usually) will fill the tv properly. So they were kind of right, yet wrong because the black bars are your friends.

My dad bought a 5.1 receiver and hookd up 9 speakers to it. I dont know how to this day, but it was really loud. (Im assuming he put multiple wires into one port)
 
See, the problem is most people are not videophiles. They LIKE the picture to look like shit run over twice. That's why TVs have "shop mode." Studies were done that showed regular goobers that shopped at Circuit City and Best Buy would buy whatever TV was the brightest and sharpest. Even if the image was blown out and obscenely oversharpened. So TV makers started making shop modes so it would be easier for store clerks to intentionally fuck up the picture so some yokel buys it.

But the major problem is baby boomers are used to the kind of stereos and TVs where you just plugged them in and turned them on. Dostoevsky novels don't have as many pages as the average HDTV manual.
 
But my friend is not a baby boomer, he's 30. He's the kind of guy that buys an iPod because "you can shuffle the music by shaking it", and then proceed to tell everyone about all the useless features his electronics have.
 
Ugh. I don't remember how many times my parents have to ask me things when I come over. Like how to turn on the computer or how to send an email. #-o
 
It's incomprehensible to me how some people get completely left behind by even the easiest to use technology. I know people in their 60s who use blackberry devices, yet my parents, who are younger mind you, can't even turn on their TV correctly half the time.
 
Oh, I almost forgot. He also owns a Logitech Harmony remote, which he set up himself. But he can't be bothered with silly things like setting his PS3 to the proper screen ratio and non-ghetto placement of his surround sound speakers.

FACEPALM ALL DAY!!!!
 
Obviously the real intent of this thread is to vent about my friend who annoys the crap out of me!
 
[quote name='Lice']If the movie is 2.39:1 (Most big budget hollywood movies) etc it will have black bars on a widescreen tv. Only stuff thats 16:9 or 1.85:1 (usually) will fill the tv properly. So they were kind of right, yet wrong because the black bars are your friends. [/quote]


I was actually going to bring that up, but that's a whole 'nother argument. I don't know why NO ONE understands that fullscreen cuts half of the picture off. It drives me insane :bomb:
 
my mother called me telling me the TV was broken. i came over and asked how was it broken. "the remote stopped working" she replies. i replace the batteries and voila the tv was fixed.

fast forward a few months later. again the tv is broken. i went over to see what was wrong now. this time she was holding the remote backwards. what's funny is that she would turn it around to read the buttons and then flip it again to press the buttons.

she later threw the tv that was in my old room away b/c it was "broken". it was frustrating at the time but in hindsight my brother and i have a good laugh.
 
[quote name='Sofa King Kool']I was actually going to bring that up, but that's a whole 'nother argument. I don't know why NO ONE understands that fullscreen cuts half of the picture off. It drives me insane :bomb:[/quote]Yup, "pan and scan" butchers the picture. I'd much rather see "black bars."
 
Now that my dad has to start using a computer for work I got tons of silly questions. He also got a surround sound system that he got for 5 years and used it 3 or 4 times.
 
Lol, my mom works in a law firm in the IT department, me being pretty tech savy for my age, knows most and other information, to start conversations she trys to act like i'am dumb

Mom: I setup my bosses computer today just clicked a few executable files, you know what a .exe is, right?
Me:No, only .msi
 
[quote name='DarkSageRK']Not everyone knows as much about this stuff as you. No need to be a dick about it.[/quote]

Pretty much.
 
[quote name='jarvis307']my mother called me telling me the TV was broken. i came over and asked how was it broken. "the remote stopped working" she replies. i replace the batteries and voila the tv was fixed.

fast forward a few months later. again the tv is broken. i went over to see what was wrong now. this time she was holding the remote backwards. what's funny is that she would turn it around to read the buttons and then flip it again to press the buttons.

she later threw the tv that was in my old room away b/c it was "broken". it was frustrating at the time but in hindsight my brother and i have a good laugh.[/quote]

I don't mind most of the penny-ante stuff in this thread, but throwing away working electronics because their batteries need changing is just plain wasteful.
 
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I hate going to restaurants where they have widescreen plasma/lcds and they're showing ESPN in SD stretched.

Even worse is going to a store where they sell TVs and they're set up the same way, or even worse with faulty cables, bad color settings, and a poor quality video source. It's like, do you guys want to sell those or not? I've even seen this at big places like Sears.
 
What I hate the most is seeing "window-boxed" programming on a friend's otherwise swank-ass HDTV. That makes even less sense then a stretched SD image, because it should OBVIOUS (especially to the type who would complain about "black bars") that something isn't right.

It's also funny when you're at said friend's house and you check your email or something on their computer... the browser will always have like fifteen different toolbars installed on the top.
 
[quote name='pitfallharry219']My biggest pet-peeve? Houses that have more bathrooms than bedrooms. What's the point?![/quote]


I love that too!

There was a house for sale somewhere, it had 26 bedrooms and 38 bathrooms! Are we to believe that a house with 26 bedrooms have people sharing rooms, but that they can't share a bathroom?

Also A lot is two words, that one pisses me off... a lot...
 
Ive seen it too many times to even get peeved about that anymore. Plus I know some people think its being a dick to get miffed by this thing but one thing to remember is this, I know a lot of people like this spend the money to flaunt their technical prowess by throwing money at it instead of learning something. Example my friend loves to front how he spends cash and gets the best stuff, which would be fine but after listening to him talk about how great his stuff is and what it can do for hours in front of everyone, he pulls me to the side and asks me how to use it or what some of its for or to help hook it up. Thats when it gets irritating because these people wont just admit that they dont know to others. Shit, i dont know lots of crap and ill openly admit it.

Otherwise, if they are like the guy in the original post, all I would say is "meh". Cause thats all you can do.
 
[quote name='BustaUppa']
It's also funny when you're at said friend's house and you check your email or something on their computer... the browser will always have like fifteen different toolbars installed on the top.[/quote]THIS! Oh man, is this a pet peeve of mine!
 
^ This doesnt bother me as much as when a friend asks to use mine and ADDs a toolbar. Then smiling like an idiot when they show me what they did like they did me a favor.
 
I'm the family tech guy because i know how to plug the red/yellow/white av plugs into the matching colors on the tv.

It amazes me how almost every video device we've bought since i was little used red/yellow/white av plugs, and they've been plugged in the exact same way every time on every tv yet i'm the only one in my family who has realized this.
 
HDTV's have been a disaster in the wrong hands. People need to be educated on resolution and aspect ratio. Other than that things usually take care of themselves.
 
[quote name='pitfallharry219']My biggest pet-peeve? Houses that have more bathrooms than bedrooms. What's the point?![/QUOTE]

Try living with a bunch of women...
 
It's alarming the number of people I've seen who buy a 5.1 system (cheap or otherwise) and place the surround speakers on top of the main speakers.
 
A buddy of mine used to work at Circuit City and he said you wouldn't believe how many HDTVs were brought back because people thought that if you buy the TV and just plug in a standard cable cord to it, that it's going to show up crystal clear.
 
No offense, but you've got an ego problem. Just because they don't know about their technology, doesn't make them stupid really, you really shouldn't get mad at it. People would laugh at me, based on my car buying decisions, because I really don't know anything about them (though I put effort into researching it). Nobody really cares to read the manuals of anything. Know anybody who read a PS3 manual? How about a car manual? :p

Purchasing a used car, I would have NEVER known to change the oil, or how to even know when to change it, if it weren't for my friends and family. I kinda have to agree with you though, it is irritating, but what's more irritating, is finding that information in the first place. I get frustrated with the Internet all the time, because I can never find a definite, solid explanation of what I'm trying to find.

[quote name='bigdaddy']Also A lot is two words, that one pisses me off... a lot...[/QUOTE]

Are you sure? I honestly don't know, but isn't an actual lot, like a parking lot...an open space of some sort? Your telling people that there is a lot. Alot makes more sense to me, meaning there is more than one. Wait, what? I don't know, nevermind.
 
This thread is above all else why when my folks bought their HDTV with surround sound setup I told them that I'm doing the setup. Needless to say they have a perfect setup all around plus I explained to them stuff such as why some movies still have black bars and such. I still need to figure out why their Harmony remote doesn't always turn things on/off correctly but otherwise yep its proof that people who don't know any better should at least have their geek family member or geek friend help them with setting this stuff up.
 
[quote name='Rodimus']My dad has a 60' Sony LCD and still buys fullscreen DVDs.[/quote]
I blame the DVD's. They should always have both version in one. People usually don't think about it and then they get stuck with the wrong version.
 
[quote name='Nifty_Shark']I blame the DVD's. They should always have both version in one. People usually don't think about it and then they get stuck with the wrong version.[/quote]

At first I blamed it on the fact that calling it "Fullscreen" is deceiving for people who don't know any better. But I've told him & my mom 3 times already to buy Widescreen. It just hasn't sinked in yet. :wall:
 
[quote name='Riyonuk']



Are you sure? I honestly don't know, but isn't an actual lot, like a parking lot...an open space of some sort? Your telling people that there is a lot. Alot makes more sense to me, meaning there is more than one. Wait, what? I don't know, nevermind.[/quote]

The word "lot" has more than one meaning.
 
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