me & her — What Apple will bring to your next television

What Apple will bring to your next television

It’s kind of remarkable. I’ve set up a couple of PCs and a few TVs over the last couple of years. Buying a new television and setting it up is far more complicated now than buying a computer and setting it up.

Hat tip to Daring Fireball for the link.

The trouble, to me, isn’t that TVs are difficult to set up. The trouble is that they’re difficult to set up right.

For most consumers, good enough is as far as they’ll ever get.

How many times have you been to someone’s house, forced to watch “fat people” because the person who owns the TV hasn’t bothered to fix the aspect ratio?

How many people even know what an aspect ratio is? Which one to choose when watching HDTV versus SDTV? (Don’t even get me started on the cute names TV manufacturers come up with to make aspect ratios seem consumer friendly.) How to handle one movie in one ratio versus another? What’s the difference in quality between an HDMI cable, a VGA cable, and a component cable? Digital audio vs. the “red and white” cable?

“Why the fuck am I getting bars on both the top AND bottom AND sides of the picture!?”

Of course, it’s “easy” to plug in and get everything wrong — “the fat people don’t bother me anyway; I hardly even notice at this point” — or use whatever cables come in the box.

When people ask what Apple could possibly bring to an Apple-branded television, imagine plugging your TV in and getting the best quality you can get, out of the box, every time.

Imagine a TV smart enough that you don’t have to be all that smart to get everything you can out of it.

If you’re thinking about it from the perspective of what Apple can bring to the table, you’re probably on the wrong track: It’s not about adding, it’s about taking away.

Simplifying.

Ideally, from Apple’s perspective, you’ll be using your new TV with their rich ecosystem of content. If you’ve got an iPad or an iPhone, all the better. Your new TV will fit your digital lifestyle like a glove.

If not, go ahead and plug that Blu-ray player in using the only option possible: HDMI for video and audio. You can go ahead and ditch any cable that Apple deems unworthy and don’t bother wondering if there’s a better option, because Apple won’t provide options.

Options result in stretched out fat people.

Settings?

For…?

Everything just works.