I've recently used two different Freeview (free UK digital TV) boxes (only used one for any length of time though), and was appalled by both.

Firstly, there are way too many buttons, and they're not clearly grouped or labelled. You've got buttons with colours on, buttons with tiny words/abbreviations (X, OK, TXT, MENU, INFO, etc.), and direction buttons. I can't see the point of the colours, red is used to trigger 'interactive' features but the rest have no clear role.
Surely it just needed something like the 4 directions, a Yes/OK button, No/Back, and 2 or 3 buttons for specific main features (e.g. Settings, Interactive, Programme Guide)?

The menus look & feel unnecessarily complicated, and aren't always consistent. Little or no thought has been put into optimising key tasks - choosing channels in the guide was painfully sluggish. It would've made sense to do things like make up/down automatically bring up the guide and get the user straight into channel-hopping, maybe combined with left/right for paging through quickly.

Certain channels allow you to press the red button for extra features. The extras I saw weren't presented in a slick, easy-to-use way, it was all slightly muddled and clunky.

The developers clearly haven't learned a thing from recent experiences with the web, games consoles and mobile phones.

Posted by: Matt Round on September 25, 2003 06:19 PM

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As usual it's a matter of economics.

Are enough people willing to pay a bit more for a more usable set-up, e.g. a handset with bigger buttons and labels, and possibly with its own menu display?

Would they mind having to order another enhanced handset from the same maker (lock-in!) because this kind of set-up would be very hard to use with a generic handset?

If goverments want to make accessibility regulations about digital set-top boxes, who pays and how? (The answer is probably: non-disabled users, either via taxes or via higher prices). And what is the most efficient way of paying for the enhanced-accessibility models in terms of total cost to the economy as a whole?

Posted by: Philip Chalmers on September 27, 2003 04:58 AM

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Interface usability is the least of Digital TV's problems. There are several aspects of TV as we know it that are fundamentally broken on today's digital systems:
- You can't program your VCR to tape shows, unless you limit yourself to a single channel and keep the cable box on that channel.
- You can't record one show while watching another.
- You can't use multiple TVs without multiple cable boxes. "Cable-ready" TVs no longer are.

A PVR like TiVo solves the first two problems, but then you get a new batch of problems - you can't record a show in one room and watch it in another, you can't save a tape of a show you like, and so on.

We switched from digital TV back to analog a few months ago - that shouldn't have felt like a massive improvement, but it did.

Posted by: Michael on September 27, 2003 10:22 AM

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