Dale,
I took a gander at your ccf again and replied to your comments below.
On 08/28/02 23:49.42, Darnitol said...
...about EasyTheater:
The hard cursor keys in EasyTheater are not "wasted
on navigation." In the hard-key version, you use
the cursor keys to navigate the menus, but when
you get to the activity you select, the hard keys
are dedicated to that activity. In any case, you
can always choose to use the soft-key version.
I'm going by your 6000 version, maybe you changed this in the 9200 version. I consider a button that jumps to another device, "navigation". Your hard keys do nothing but jump to another device with a pop up "menu" at which point you have to use the screen anyway. The point of hard buttons to me, is to avoid using the screen as much as possible.
You do not need to "create dozens of panels" to
add activities to EasyTheater. I did that for
you. On the soft-key version, 24 panels are used
for navgation. Very few people will need to add
additional panels to accommodate all of their
devices. But if they do, they'll only need to
add one or two--not dozens. The hard-key version
uses a lot more panels, and it's not for the TSR
newbie. I've posted already that even though the
benefit of being able to hard-key your way through
the interface is great, I doubt that many people
will bother. I bothered because I want to use
this feature myself. However, even though the
hard-key version has many more panels, you still
don't need to create them. They're already there
for you. (And even in the hard-key version, you
can still use the soft-key navigation scheme if
you don't want to use the hard keys.)
I haven't seen your soft-key version. I'm going by your hard-key version. If a person has more devices than you they DO have to add possibly dozens of devices if they want to maintain your interface. Since these are DEVICES and not just panels, they also have to set up the hard button properties for each device since they're used for navigation.
You are not limited to four sources in EasyTheater.
In fact, you can have as many as you want. The
default configuration demonstrates this with six
sources under the Watch menu. Instructions are
right there on the screen: In the soft key version,
touch the menu icon to see more sources. In the
hard-key version, touch the menu icon or just
scroll down.
You ARE limited to four sources on a panel. Plus there is no visual indication that there are more sources. I've dealt with "users" before and trust me when I say that they don't bother reading fine print at the bottom of screens.
The only "tiny button screens" on EasyTheater
are the ones designed to be used rarely, if ever.
All activities that support keypads offer full-screen
keypads that use very large buttons.
I don't know about you, but setting the timer on my VCR , jumping to specific Title/chapters on a DVD and using my TV's menu are NOT rare activities. I like to use the keypad when setting timed recordings. It's faster. The only way to do that on yours is by jumping back and forth between panels OR using the tiny button screen. I couldn't find a way to jump to a specific chapter on a DVD on yours without using the tiny button screen. The same goes for using the TV menu.
Going by my examples above, I don't think I made any "falsehoods" about your ccf as you claimed.
