3 ms·

You want to use your TV as a touch screen? We used to have physical buttons on the TV that we used to change channels and control volume. Getting up to interact

You want to use your TV as a touch screen? We used to have physical buttons on the TV that we used to change channels and control volume. Getting up to interact with the TV was a giant pain in the ass.

boltzmann-brain 4y ago
ahahah i remember having 4 buttons on a drawer that pulled out to display 4 tiny plastic potentiometers that you had to turn if you wanted to check out any of the other channels once there were any - and yeah, you're right. god no but i guess it's nice for laptops and stuff
cesarb 4y ago
> We used to have physical buttons on the TV that we used to change channels and control volume. And I'm annoyed at the current trend of removing these buttons. It's not rare for the remote control batteries to be empty, or the remote control to be broken (with some buttons not responding to presses), or even the remote control to be lost somewhere in the house (to be found only days later). Having a fallback way to control the TV, at least power/channel/volume/input and preferentially also full access to the configuration menus (using the channel/volume/etc buttons as arrows and confirm/cancel), is essential. Ideally with capacitive buttons, which in my experience do not get broken as easily as normal physical buttons.
archi42 4y ago
I never said I wanted to do that ;) I was just really into the NUI/TUI hype back in the early 2010s. (I still like proper buttons, especially in my car) I wouldn't hang a screen like that on a wall, but put it in/on a table. Just came back from playing the "Root" tutorial on a 43" touchscreen, btw. Quite nice, looking forward to see how it fares with when playing with friends or using it as a virtual tabletop for pen&paper RPGs. Still need to integrate it into a table, and I think it needs a tilt mechanic for better ergonomics when playing alone.
- ForHackernews 4y ago
  > but put it in/on a table. Microsoft tried that. It didn't go great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY
  - archi42 4y ago
    Don't have sound right now, sorry. But that thing cost about 10kUS$ (and even more early on), that's nearly 14kUS$ inflation corrected. Might be the reason people didn't buy them for home use ;)
  - archi42 4y ago
    Finally watched it with sound. Oh well, it's kind of funny, and probably was really funny back then. But think of the time: This video predates Android 1.0 by over one year. Touchscreens were certainly not mainstream back then. Even today people on HN assume that "touchscreen" means "replace everything with touch" (like in automotive - a trend I despise) instead of thinking how touch could augment existing interfaces. Especially the PixelSense tech is still amazing. Normal capacitive sensing is limited in the number of simultaneous touches (e.g. 20 for a 85" screen), but with PixelSense you get an image of the reflections seen by the screen. This not only allows for a huge amount of simultaneous touches, but the really awesome ability is to detect objects and do proper TUI: If you put a unique black/white label under your object (e.g. RPG figurine or disc) you can detect the object, it's location and orientation. So you can move around your character by moving the figure. Or to adjust some setting, just turn that dial. IMHO this is a chicken&egg problem: There is little software that use these abilities, because with no-one having these screens there is no-one to sell it to. And OTOH why would you get an expensive screen when there are only a few techdemos that makes use of that feature. For comparison: Sales of VR headsets in 2021 were 11M (vs. 19M PS5 or 240M iPhones). And we're still only seeing a moderate ecosystem of games, content and productivity stuff. Now imagine the situation if there was no pr0n and the Valve-fueled hype didn't happen: We'd be stuck with crappy DIY stuff or expensive special purpose solutions; and even if you could get your hands on a proper VR headset, in that scenario you're stuck with a few tech demos and wouldn't get a lot of utility out of it. I think that's the situation with touchscreens on the desktop, or even in the desk.

boltzmann-brain 4y ago

ahahah i remember having 4 buttons on a drawer that pulled out to display 4 tiny plastic potentiometers that you had to turn if you wanted to check out any of the other channels once there were any - and yeah, you're right. god no but i guess it's nice for laptops and stuff

cesarb 4y ago

> We used to have physical buttons on the TV that we used to change channels and control volume. And I'm annoyed at the current trend of removing these buttons. It's not rare for the remote control batteries to be empty, or the remote control to be broken (with some buttons not responding to presses), or even the remote control to be lost somewhere in the house (to be found only days later). Having a fallback way to control the TV, at least power/channel/volume/input and preferentially also full access to the configuration menus (using the channel/volume/etc buttons as arrows and confirm/cancel), is essential. Ideally with capacitive buttons, which in my experience do not get broken as easily as normal physical buttons.

archi42 4y ago

I never said I wanted to do that ;) I was just really into the NUI/TUI hype back in the early 2010s. (I still like proper buttons, especially in my car) I wouldn't hang a screen like that on a wall, but put it in/on a table. Just came back from playing the "Root" tutorial on a 43" touchscreen, btw. Quite nice, looking forward to see how it fares with when playing with friends or using it as a virtual tabletop for pen&paper RPGs. Still need to integrate it into a table, and I think it needs a tilt mechanic for better ergonomics when playing alone.

ForHackernews 4y ago
> but put it in/on a table. Microsoft tried that. It didn't go great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY
- archi42 4y ago
  Don't have sound right now, sorry. But that thing cost about 10kUS$ (and even more early on), that's nearly 14kUS$ inflation corrected. Might be the reason people didn't buy them for home use ;)
- archi42 4y ago
  Finally watched it with sound. Oh well, it's kind of funny, and probably was really funny back then. But think of the time: This video predates Android 1.0 by over one year. Touchscreens were certainly not mainstream back then. Even today people on HN assume that "touchscreen" means "replace everything with touch" (like in automotive - a trend I despise) instead of thinking how touch could augment existing interfaces. Especially the PixelSense tech is still amazing. Normal capacitive sensing is limited in the number of simultaneous touches (e.g. 20 for a 85" screen), but with PixelSense you get an image of the reflections seen by the screen. This not only allows for a huge amount of simultaneous touches, but the really awesome ability is to detect objects and do proper TUI: If you put a unique black/white label under your object (e.g. RPG figurine or disc) you can detect the object, it's location and orientation. So you can move around your character by moving the figure. Or to adjust some setting, just turn that dial. IMHO this is a chicken&egg problem: There is little software that use these abilities, because with no-one having these screens there is no-one to sell it to. And OTOH why would you get an expensive screen when there are only a few techdemos that makes use of that feature. For comparison: Sales of VR headsets in 2021 were 11M (vs. 19M PS5 or 240M iPhones). And we're still only seeing a moderate ecosystem of games, content and productivity stuff. Now imagine the situation if there was no pr0n and the Valve-fueled hype didn't happen: We'd be stuck with crappy DIY stuff or expensive special purpose solutions; and even if you could get your hands on a proper VR headset, in that scenario you're stuck with a few tech demos and wouldn't get a lot of utility out of it. I think that's the situation with touchscreens on the desktop, or even in the desk.