God I love learning about analog tech! Very creative design!
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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You'd love Technology Connections on YouTube if you haven't seen him already.
It just feels so much more clever than the modern stuff, even if it's much more complicated overall now.
Funny, when I was a little kid my grandmother had a Zenith TV with that exact remote. I still remember the long throw and clank of those buttons. TV remotes were uncommon then so I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Yeah dating myself here.
My grandmother had one of these.
I somehow discovered that if I took this magnetic screwdriver, and this bent piece of coat hanger and slapped them together, her tv would turn off.
I fucked with her so much she took her tv to a repair shop because she thought it was broken.
Good times.
I think this is hacking in its purest form. You’ve discovered a new way to do something unexpected, and you went ahead with it just because you could.
If you’ve ever heard someone refer to a TV remote as a “clicker,”
I say this to my son sometimes. "Throw me the clicker." The first time he looked at me like WTF are you talking about. Told him it's another name for the remote, but didn't tell him why, so he still has no idea
My grandpa had a tv store around the time, and he always told the story of him pulling someone's leg by making them believe the tv was voice activated, with that thing in his pocket. So he covered the click sound by yelling at the tv.
I like your grandpa.
I once told my friend that my car was self driving. Little did she know I was driving with my knee.
We had one of those TVs when I was a kid... and our dog had one of those metal link collars, and when she would shake her head the TV would change channels, and the volume would change. :). I had forgotten all about that.
Yep, my neighborhood friend had one. I discovered that my keys, when shook, would hit the frequencies to do stuff too. His dad was annoyed by it and I don’t know if he figured out how his TV would spontaneously change to channels
Reminds me of getting trolled by my friend with an IR blaster on his phone. Took me way too long to catch on. Simpler times...
Modern design is boring and ugly as hell compared to what engineers and designers were able to come up with decades back.
Modern ‘design’ is all about pushing physicality and tactility out of the way, in an attempt to focus as much of your attention into your display as possible. As a result, everything aside from your screen has been ‘pushed aside’.
I get it, I really do…but it’s all so depressingly sterile.
There's a great YouTube channel of this younger guy who teaches design and he makes very good videos that dissect a lot of the BS design trends. One of them is taking the old school "less is more" type of thinking into a stupid extreme. He explains that far too many designers are missing the deeper meaning in that design ethos which ends up making the user experience MORR complicated all so they could save adding an extra button to make navigating the device's interface infinitely easier.
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I think it also often simply boils down to cost. A cheap touch screen or capacitive button is much cheaper than adding durable buttons with a satisfying click
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Would it have been possible for the speakers of the time to emit those frequencies? Imagining the equivalent of a Twitch raid: "I'm done broadcasting so I'm going to send you to the next channel."
Possibly. Still nott as bad as, "Alexa, order a 12pack of dildos"
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This is a really neat way to pull off remote technology. I wonder if there are still any applications for this type of ultrasound remote tech.
I remember people claiming they could activate these by flexing cans.
That would make sense, flexing cans would create the ultrasonic noise the TV is listening for. Even still, I think it's a neat technology.
I think that kinda just makes it cooler. Lose the remote? Flex a can!
That's surprisingly cool
"Again, it required no batteries — much desired by Zenith, as the company didn’t want customers to think a TV was broken when the battery died."
Was this really that big of a concern? Did people really think that LMAO
Layer 8 issues occur all the time.
What's layer 8
Its a play on the 7 layer OSI Model. Layer 8 would be the user, also known as an ID-10T (idiot) or PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair).
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In a world where remotes are scarce, I could see how this would be a concern, yes.
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If you're planning on selling 1 million units, a half of a percent of people making that mistake means a big headache.
Damn that's interesting, I had heard of the light control but never these
That was incredibly interesting.
My aunt and uncle still had a TV with one of these things when I was growing up in the 90s (the 70s version). The buttons had a distinct and satisfying click to them.
There was only one volume button, and and each press would turn up the volume in 3-4 steps and then cycle around to mute. You couldn't turn the volume down without turning it up first. If you wanted more fine control you still had to get up and adjust the volume knob on the set.
I wonder what my aunt and uncle eventually did with that big old box. It belongs in a museum.
That looks like it was so satisfying to click.
My parents had an appliance/electronics shop when I was growing up and they took used items on trade occasionally. Someone turned in one of those zenith sets and I actually got to use that remote. Bear in mind we were well into the age of infrared remotes by this point (late 80s).
It was definitely interesting and I think I could just distinguish the difference between the sounds of the buttons.
I know this is about the tech, but OP's name is just cracking me up. Thank you @FartsWithAnAccent
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Interesting purely mechanical design. Our first remote (that didn't have a cable connection) used sound as well, but it was battery powered and as a kid, I could hear at least some of those sounds. It had way more than just 4 buttons though, maybe the mechanical design hits a limit there at some point (or electronics just got cheaper).
I thought this thing was a gag at first, but that's actually really clever. I wonder if dogs would hate it.
The article does indicate that animals were sensitive to the noises:
"It did have its flaws: people found that jingling keys or coins could be picked up by the TV’s microphones and accidentally change the channel, and the high-pitch frequencies from the remote were discernible by pets."
Quite ingenious and simple design, even considering the limitations of the time.
Old-school tech came up with some of the most elegant solutions sometimes. This is quite neat, I wonder if it could be improved upon with modern signal processing.
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