There's a fortune to be made by someone here, Shadow.
Shadow_Ferret said:
But they should be like toasters. They'd probably have a much larger market if they were. If any schoe could take it home, plug it in, push toast and watch a dvd in surround, those things would be selling like hotcakes (or Eggos, since we're talking toasters).
Instead, receivers are still pretty much relegated to audiophyles and technophyles. In my circle of friends and acquaintences I only know one person who has a home theater and that's a relatively inexpensive HTiB.
Price might be one reason, but I think intimidation by the technology is the main one.
As I said in a previous post, the more a unit does, the more you have to learn how to use it. When someone designs a receiver that knows what you want and need ahd can set itself up with as minimal thinking as possible, then we'll have something.
Of course, there's always vintage stereos where everything is pretty intuitive but the current crop of HT receivers does quite a bit more than play an internal tuner and a stereo phonograph and/or tape deck. All you had was a tuning knob, a sourceselector knob, a volume control knob , maybe a bass and treble control and that was about it.The biggest issue was when someone accidentaly pushed in the tape monitor swuitch of turned off thes peakers.
Times change. They do a heckuva lot more today.
As it now stands, the only thing that even comes close for user friendliness iis the upper priced Bose all in one systems and these are not without their faults.
Besides, once the initial setup is done (correctly) modern receivers can be fairly user friendly, particularly if you invest in a good universal remote and program all the macros. ...at least until you change the batteries.
but, it will come eventually. Remember back in the old days of computers before windows and you actually had to key in commands into a blank screen? Can anyone say "DOS"?
