This is probably a lame rant, but it has been building up.
Whose bright idea is it to build home entertainment cabinets with the DVD/VCR compartments on the bottom, next to the floor? This might make sense if the DVD player buttons were larger than FREAKING KERNELS OF RICE and the button lettering was bigger than ONE MICRON. There’s nothing I love better before watching a movie than getting down on my hands and knees and trying to push the right button to eject the disc tray. “Let’s see, is it this one? Nope, that was power. Turned it off. This one? Bingo. Oops, the power’s off,” etc. Reading glasses don’t help - they don’t stay on when you are basically standing on your head! Maybe this wouldn’t have been an issue when I was 22, but now that I’m 46, rug burns on my knees don’t look sexy anymore.
Know what I love? Because of the surgery I had on my back, I don’t bend much at all. I have to literally lay on the floor if I need to access the DVD player. Thank Og for remote controls and husbands.
Ya know, I am so glad I didn’t hug you that time in Niagara. I have a tendance you pick people up when I hug them. (I didn’t know about your back then.)
I’m not convinced that this is a design flaw – after all, there aren’t all that many places to put the electronics unless you buy a much bigger entertainment center. Virtually every DVD/VCR player made today comes with a remote control which pretty much does away for the need to hit “grain of rice” sized buttons.
Now granted, this configuration may irritate the OP in which case there are other compromises that can be made – e.g. buying a combo TV/DVD player (convenient but more expensive and failure prone), or placing the DVD/VCR elsewhere (requires a larger entertainment center and possibly more cables).
Now it could be that the OP bought a TV caddy where the electronics are really low to the ground (mine has a cabinet for tapes at the very bottom and the VCR above that cabinet). In this case, well, not a great design for the cabinet, but you didn’t have to buy that one
The top of the television is sort of curved, and won’t support a DVD.
Of the two of us, I use the “form over function” theory when purchasing household items, and Mr. Pug uses the “gee, let’s get the prettiest one” theory. Guess which one of us bought the cabinet.
I do use the remote control once I put the disc in, but putting the disc in is what requires the “down on your knees, bitch” step. Also, our remote is one of those that you buy to combine all the functions of the television, satellite, DVD and VCR remotes, and there is no provision for “open the DVD door, Hal” thereon. Therefore, it’s necessary to manually hunt for the “eject” button on the DVD, which is situated handily right next to the “power” button; hence, my quandary.
Okay, how about the fact that on newer electronic items there are features which can ONLY be accessed with the remote? Lose the remote, let the bird eat it JUST ONCE, or let the battery go dead and voila! you have lost full functional capability of your widget.
Well, Aleq, it’s not that difficult to acquire a new remote…
But, yeah, anything accessible by remote should also be accessible by a little control panel on the main unit itself, in my opinion. I’d call it lazy corner-cutting on the part of manufacturer’s, except even the super-high-end models that cost ten times as much for no apparent reason (unless they give blowjobs, I’m not sure) often lack an on-unit control panel.
And why do all the stereos, TVs, VCRs and DVD players these days have to have everything labeled with tiny little dark-grey letters on a black background? Are they trying to ruin our eyesight? Are they in league with the opticians?
I have the same problem as the OP, exactly: Television is kind of curvy, so the DVD and the VCR have to go on the bottom shelf near the ground, and the remote control (also a universal remote thing) doesn’t have the eject button on it. I can’t tell you how many times I have damned the eyes of the manufacturers, especially when my dog decides: “hey, he is lying on the floor! That must mean I have to lick his face incessantly and not let him see the buttons (which is a virtual impossiblity anyway) until he screams at me to get off, then I’ll bring the ball over and start the nightmare that is playtime!”.
Damn their eyes, I say!
A handy solution my SO and I use… we don’t buy entertainment units. We use other cabinetry – my SO uses a kitchen-pantry thingy, it’s a larder of sorts (kind like these, but much fancier. Hers is actually an Amish “jelly cupboard.” It looks great because with solid wood doors, you can just close them to make all the ugly electronics and video clutter vanish. It doesn’t look like something that belongs in a kitchen, so until it opens, most people think it’s some kind of wardrobe.
Added bonus is that you can arrange the shelves in any configuration you’d like, so the VCR is just under the TV, but the TV is at about chest height.
I have a similar cabinetry system. Hides the ugly electronics (no matter now nice they make the TVs, they will always be big, clunky glass squares) and I can put the VCR wherever I see fit. Mine is just above the TV so I can eject tapes and poke at the buttons while standing.
The only downside is that the cabinets are not usually very deep, so we both have to stick ours in the corner so that the back of the TV set has room to stick out.
