3 ms·

Back in the day, when VCRs were a thing, everybody used to joke about how no one new how to program theirs. Heck, half of them had the blinking clock forever ca

Back in the day, when VCRs were a thing, everybody used to joke about how no one new how to program theirs. Heck, half of them had the blinking clock forever cause people couldn’t figure out how to reset it. After reading this book, I realized that maybe if one person can’t program their VCR, you could have argued that it’s their fault. But certainly if so many people have problems with it, it’s clearly an issue with the design.

bombcar 4y ago
It can also indicate a process that is (currently) beyond the capabilities of the interface available (thinking the difficulty of programming a VCR when you have four buttons and one LED that can display 88:88 and that's it vs a full touchscreen interface on a phone). Arguably the VCRs did as well as they could - BUT they made the critical mistake of not realizing that programming and setting the clock would be difficult (and for many uses of the machine, not necessary at all, so nobody would bother figuring it out), and so didn't set the VCR to just not display the clock until the time was set. Very few people bought VCRs to use as a clock, after all.
- corrral 4y ago
  The clock was crucial to timed recordings, which were how people recorded TV programs when they weren't around for them before things like TIVO existed. Set a it to record when your program's supposed to start and for X duration, put a blank tape in, go to work, come home and find it's recorded that daytime program you didn't want to miss. If you weren't going to use that feature, yeah, it was pointless and could have just stayed blank rather than blinking 12:00 or whatever.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Interestingly car radios have the same "how do you set the time" problem, and arguably a clock is more useful in a car anyway - but almost all of them set the time to 12:00 when they get power back. They don't blink. Which means that if you can't figure out how to set the time, you can just remember to disconnect the battery just before noon, and then reconnect it. The flashing clock on a VCR is actually an error message because if it lost power/lost time, it won't record correctly until you tell it what time it is. But if you have no timed recording setup, there's no need to report that error.

bombcar 4y ago

It can also indicate a process that is (currently) beyond the capabilities of the interface available (thinking the difficulty of programming a VCR when you have four buttons and one LED that can display 88:88 and that's it vs a full touchscreen interface on a phone). Arguably the VCRs did as well as they could - BUT they made the critical mistake of not realizing that programming and setting the clock would be difficult (and for many uses of the machine, not necessary at all, so nobody would bother figuring it out), and so didn't set the VCR to just not display the clock until the time was set. Very few people bought VCRs to use as a clock, after all.

corrral 4y ago
The clock was crucial to timed recordings, which were how people recorded TV programs when they weren't around for them before things like TIVO existed. Set a it to record when your program's supposed to start and for X duration, put a blank tape in, go to work, come home and find it's recorded that daytime program you didn't want to miss. If you weren't going to use that feature, yeah, it was pointless and could have just stayed blank rather than blinking 12:00 or whatever.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Interestingly car radios have the same "how do you set the time" problem, and arguably a clock is more useful in a car anyway - but almost all of them set the time to 12:00 when they get power back. They don't blink. Which means that if you can't figure out how to set the time, you can just remember to disconnect the battery just before noon, and then reconnect it. The flashing clock on a VCR is actually an error message because if it lost power/lost time, it won't record correctly until you tell it what time it is. But if you have no timed recording setup, there's no need to report that error.