« A-Frame RV | Home | Illuminated Messaging T-Shirt — Gives a whole new meaning to 'you light up my life' »
August 31, 2008
TechnoDolt™ World: Half-mute is brain-dead
TechnoDolt™-World is the newest bookofjoe feature, making its debut with this post.
This category will subsume stuff that's just plain stupid and annoying — preferably both.
Getting a little close to home there, eh, joe?
Go away.
This inaugural post highlights a "feature" I discovered only when I set up my new Toshiba 19" LCD TV this morning, to wit: "1/2 Mute" (above and below).
1/2 Mute is what happens when you press the "Mute" button on the remote.
Press it again and you get full Mute.
Excuse me?
Since when did I ask for this?
Maybe some people did and Toshiba thought cool, we could do that, and so they did it.
Alright, maybe some people might find it useful when someone's at the door or the phone's ringing or what have you.
And true, Engadget's review said, "Another feature we haven't seen before — that all TVs should have — is half mute, which lets you quickly turn the volume down without completely muting it."
But why can't those of us who find it beyond stoopid disable it?
Huh?
Is that too much to ask?
To go back to getting silence when the commercials come on and you press the Mute button?
The way it should be?
Turns out Toshiba's been "featuring" the 1/2 Mute function on all its TVs since at least 2006.
Feh.
August 31, 2008 at 04:01 PM | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c5dea53ef00e554d4d0e88833
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference TechnoDolt™ World: Half-mute is brain-dead:
Comments
Would be useful during commercials, which are always at louder volume than regular programming. Wish my TV had this feature.
Posted by: Scott | Dec 30, 2008 2:32:17 PM
this strikes me as the TV equivalent of a feature that has been on better car stereos for more than a decade, but perhaps it would be better as its own button, instead of forcing the viewer to press it twice to reach the normal mute button...?
Posted by: johnjohn | Sep 3, 2008 3:33:03 AM
Servus Joe,
Like clifyt, here in Europe the commercials are very loud and consequently, my girlfriend turns the sound way down. Problem is, she normally forgets to turn it back up, making me wonder if I should make an appointment with my local ENT doc because I'm constantly turning the sound back up.
Pax,
Uncle Jake
Posted by: Uncle Jake | Sep 2, 2008 7:27:14 AM
Agree with Milena... Mute is mute, no sound, no words. What is a half-mute? There's no such thing. And it takes 2 seconds to push the "-" button to get the TV lower... I don't see the point in this, really.
Posted by: Jen | Sep 1, 2008 5:58:33 AM
I live in a country were commercials are still allowed to be twice as loud as the programs and I would love it if I had this option.
Posted by: Carol Feldman | Sep 1, 2008 3:18:22 AM
I like the idea of half-mute. I don't know how many times I'm sitting there watching television and some idiot starts talking moronic statements and while I really don't want to listen, I am intrigued by the level of ignorance and need to rewind the conversation without disturbing my stories.
Again, not enough to really turn away from what it really important, but enough so that I can wrap my mind around what may make even stoners seem lucid.
My car use to have this...great for taking those unwanted phone calls...mute was pretty much POWER OFF, while this just dropped about 6db (acoustically, half the volume).
Posted by: clifyt | Aug 31, 2008 5:33:27 PM
It's a female thing; at the risk of sounding chauvinistic, all people that I know that turn the TV down to 1/2 mute are women or cubically castrated individuals who don't want to miss out on something. When I mute something in my home it is frowned upon whereas my wife will turn it down to 1/2 mute. (I was wondering why we had those Japanese engineers here last year) So you can't quite hear it if you were a Keith Richards or Roger Daltry fan. (It might also a right wing conspiracy to get even with old hippies.) Yet it is a relief for mothers who want to hear background noise so they don't feel compelled to have a conversation with the elephant on the couch.
Posted by: jon | Aug 31, 2008 5:23:29 PM
Mute is mute is mute - but then again, what do I know? This is an in-between world where words may no longer cling to their absolutes. Hence, we may half-mute.
Posted by: Milena | Aug 31, 2008 4:58:39 PM
