On screen menus

[crt89]

What do you think was the best on screen setup on a TV or other device?

I liked the old 80s/early 90s Magnavox setup with the display button, you just pushed it until the correct adjustment appeared and then pushed + or -. I guess other brands were the same. I really liked our early 2000s Sanyo also, everything was separated - CC, Sleep, and V-chip all had their own buttons on the remote, just push + or - to adjust. Only picture adjustments were under menu, really simplified it.

Some of todays menus are more complicated. I'm not sure when pictorial menus first came out, but my 2007 Sony DVD/VCR has graphical menus.

[dishdude]

Zenith with the menu/select/adjust/enter buttons on the front panel. RCA would be a close second when they used the setup/video/audio buttons.

[centralradio]

Never was a fan of onscreen programing.I rather have all the pots including the very hold and hor hold.Fed up with everything on the remote for those lazy asses.VCRs included.

[crt89]

Originally Posted by dishdude

Zenith with the menu/select/adjust/enter buttons on the front panel. RCA would be a close second when they used the setup/video/audio buttons.

I remember those Zeniths also but never really messed with them.

One of my least favorite was a white 10" or 13" (don't remember size) Mitsubishi I found. Pretty cool set but I didn't have the remote and there were no buttons at all to access the adjustments. It had a fuzzy picture also and I couldn't program the channels or anything. I don't remember what I did with it.

[Findm-Keepm]

NEC Micro-controlled projo (think stadium....)chassis had some really cool menu and on-screen features, even more if you knew the back-door key sequence on the remote. They made chassis for some projo units we serviced, and a tech from the projo company met us once for a warranty dispute - he was cool and showed us key sequences (long since forgotten) that brought up Japanese games and some cartoon faces, dunno who they were. The explanation was that the mask ROM in the uProcessor had 512K memory, and only 60K was used if the set was single system (NTSC...),and the remaining 450K or so was filled with an engineer's fantasyland. Images, patterns, and a demo mode....in Japanese. 513 lines, 4Mhz clock frequency, and 512K.....ancient, I tell ya!

Philips had some sets that required a Service Remote - had to buy a special white remote to enter the service menus. I still have one floating around here somewhere - called a SciFi sounding name by the Philips crew at the service seminars (always fried chicken served....they were based in TN).

Some of the multi-system JVC and SOny sets sold by AAFEES had some cool setup/calibration features. JVC had a 36" set with a series of alignment patterns built in for height, linearity, centering, Bow/symmetry of the Pincushion, and even a test tone for stereo separation testing. SOny had some sets with the bargraph tuning and the ones with the later DV-cam interface had split screen edit mode, with two video windows for the home video guys. We replaced a CRT where the guy forgot to shut it off, went North to ski for a few weeks, and came back to CRT burn. Almost 600 dollars for the CRT, bonded yoke and multi-lingual videotape instruction for setting it up after replacement.

Some HP 8562 Spec Analyzers had SPace Invaders, easter eggs, and an April Fools mode which inverted the screen at random. Fun stuff to pull in a cal lab, but after the cal school started teaching such stuff, no longer a secret.

[Titan1a]

On screen menus just complicate matters for me. The aren't typically "user friendly" and take much longer to make adjustments. Perhaps the creators of these systems might try using them. Maybe things would get easier instead of more obtuse.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Findm-Keepm

Some HP 8562 Spec Analyzers had SPace Invaders, easter eggs, and an April Fools mode which inverted the screen at random. Fun stuff to pull in a cal lab, but after the cal school started teaching such stuff, no longer a secret.

MSOE throughout my time there (and probably still) had Agilent (HP) scopes that had a fun Easter egg...A knock off of asteroids called "Rocks"...You got into it by saving an image of your trace with the file name rock_on. It made waiting for other students/the prof in some of those blasted 3 hour labs on those back killing backless lab stools a little better...