Axxlog

I mentioned the overly-bright red LED indicating that the PVR is fulfilling its evolutionary obligation by recording your precious TV shows. In broad daylight, this LED beams out at me like a laser pointer. At night you can get a good tan from it.

Maybe I’m sensitive to devices beaming red lights at me since I distinctly recall watching 2001: A Space Odyssey when it came out. I was three years old, I sat on my mother’s knee, and I have a crystal-clear memory of the house lights coming up and the stage curtains closing on the final scene before intermission: HAL’s red eye staring with malevolent impassiveness.

A digital device that is not exactly solid-state but which has no visible moving parts does not need a recording indicator. It’s a skiamorph: A remnant of an outdated function.

And besides, as we will see later, this device violates Asimov’s first and second laws of robotics. It ignores me and sometimes even harms me. I get enough of that when I go out to the bar.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2004 at 17:51 and is filed under Digital TV, PVR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.