Apr 15, 2009 12:03 PM
841 Views
A thing I m goona to write is totally theory
of mine only .......
it's a balancing act, I tell you.
If you know nothing about technology, you'll
keep running into totally opaque, utterly illogical problems that totally
shatter your workflow - or entertainment-flow, for that matter - and
confidence, leaving you feeling like a chimp trying to pass a driving test.
If you learn all of the ins and outs, though,
you start to notice things.
Bad
things.
Things that may drive you stark raving mad.
I certainly don't wish I were ignorant.
knowledge good.
Take the other day, for instance, when I
changed my Windows desktop resolution and, of course, ended up with all of my
icons in a pile. So I used Microsoft's Desktop Icon Layout doodad to put
them back.
And my Recycle Bin disappeared.
Maybe it was under some other icon(s). Maybe
it was completely gone. Who knows? Windows is like that.
I didn't care. I just used Tweak UI to (definitely) remove the Bin from the desktop, then
replaced it again, and bing, there it was. No problem. It was the work of ten
seconds.
Just thinking about walking someone else
through that procedure, though, makes my head hurt.
If you're clueless about computers, this kind
of problem arises all the damn time, and not only for people unfortunate enough to be using Windows.
So, yeah, it's great to be able to fix stuff
like that.
But when you know a lot of technical things,
you start getting annoyed when you see things that aren't right. Even when
people less knowledgeable than you don't notice anything wrong.
The obvious example is screen refresh rate,
but the Curse Of 60Hz
is more and more a thing of the past now that LCD monitors are commonplace.
Take audio/video synchronisation, though. It
drives me nuts when the soundtrack of a TV show or movie doesn't quite line up
with the video. And it's common, too. It happens all the time in computer video
files - I think because different sound and video driver and codec setups
introduce different amounts of delay, so even if the original encoder perfectly
syncs the file on his computer, other people won't necessarily see it the same
way. But the same problem also commonly happens with pay TV services of various
kinds, and sometimes with free digital TV too, depending on the decoder.
Your average TV watcher does not, so far as I
can tell, notice bad audio sync at all, unless it's really awful.
But when you know about codecs and drivers
and signal processing delays, things like this jump out at you.
Knowing how to fix problems helps you notice
the darn things.
Another example? How about incorrect aspect ratios, folks?
They're no problem for the ignorant, either.
As I'm sure you all know, now that widescreen TV sets are no longer reserved
for rich home theatre geeks.
I'd find it hard to believe if I hadn't
witnessed it myself, but lots of people don't seem to notice grossanamorphic-video-expand
button when they're watching 4:3 TV on their 16:9 set.* aspect ratio problems. They've got a widescreen TV, so
they expect everything to fill the screen, and they cheerfully press the
Now all of the cars have oval wheels and
Chewbacca looks like Wicket, but they just don't care.
You can fix many of these problems, of
course. The more tinsel-free PC media player programs, like Media Player
Classic, let you jockey audio sync and aspect ratio around. The very
handy all-in-one, no-outboard-codecs VideoLAN media player lets you quickly cycle through all of
the popular aspect ratios. And unless Uncle Fred won't let you touch his remote
control, you should be able to fix home theatre aspect problems too.
There's a whole separate world of pain
awaiting you as you try to figure out whether that Discovery Channel watermark
has an exactly round globe in it now, not to mention when you keep watching the
same five seconds of video over and over again while you tweak the audio timing
back and forth until you lose the ability to tell exactly when someone's mouth
is meant to make a given noise and have to wait for a nice clapper-board moment
like someone shooting a gun.
But at least you can fix the problem,
then.
If you've got a satellite TV box with a 30
millisecond sync problem, and you notice it, all you can do is try to get hold
of a different model without that glitch. Or a firmware update that fixes it
(fat freakin' chance).
Or you can shell out for a home theatre amp
that has configurable audio delay. If, of course, your audio is in front of
the video, you'll still be screwed.
The list goes on.
Lousy de-interlacing that gives moving
objects zig-zag edges.
Surround speaker systems with three out of
six speakers connected out of phase (but not the subwoofer, even though its
phase switch should be flipped for it to sound right in the place where
it's been put).
Low - or, worse yet, uneven - frame
rate video. My hat is off to anyone who can watch an action movie on svcd
without needing at least a stiff drink.
Some uneducated consumers notice stuff like
this, and are once again left in the unfortunate position of being aware of a
problem they have no idea how to fix.
Does my technical knowledge let me get more
pleasure out of a perfectly configured... whatever... than I would if I didn't
have a clue?
Nope.
So clearly I - and probably many of you -
need to cultivate a mystic balance between knowing and needing, seeing and
doing, being and thinking.
"Wise men hear and see as little
children do", according to some dude who may or may not have existed. And
a bloke who definitely did went on to say "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis
folly to be wise" - though not really
