All Those Remotes
I was on a visit to my parent’s place recently when my mother asked me to show them how to use their DVD player. I felt a shudder immediately. I’ve been through this before, but I agreed to see what I could do. They have a cable converter that’s connected to their TV. This is all they normally use, with one remote control. They also have a DVD player that’s connected to a different input on the TV. This sounds simple, but it’s far from it.
I told them I’d try to figure it out for myself first. To begin, I needed the remote control for the TV. Father handed me one. When I examined it, I noticed that the brand name on it didn’t match their TV. I said “This is for your old TV”. “I need the remote for the new one”. Father handed me another one. This one did match. I tried it out: nothing happened! Father said “It’s probably the batteries”. “Whenever I have trouble with a remote, I change the batteries”. Now, I have many remotes at home. I’ve never changed the batteries in them. They only use battery power while the buttons are pushed. They should last for years.
I opened the battery compartment: no batteries! “Where do you keep the spare batteries?” Father said “In that drawer over there”. The drawer contained dozens of different batteries, rolling around. I asked “Which are the new ones?” Father said “Just keep trying them until you find a set that works”. I picked out a new-looking set of batteries. By some miracle, they worked.
Now I just had to figure out how to switch inputs on the TV, using this unfamiliar remote. I tried a few likely buttons, but none of them worked. I recalled from last time that a group of buttons enclosed by an engraved box were the correct ones. Right! One labelled `Source’ cycled through the various inputs. I’m almost there.
Next I needed the remote for the DVD player. I asked “Where is it?” Father said “Look in the box that the DVD player came in”. He was right. It even had batteries. I knew how to use this one because the DVD player was the same as the one I used to have. Quickly I used it to power the DVD player on and open the drawer. I popped in a DVD, used it again to close the drawer, and finally we all saw the movie appear on the screen.
Now, what did I do? How do I explain it? It was too complicated to explain. I gave up. I switched the TV back to the cable converter. They have hundreds of TV channels there, including ones with movies. They probably wouldn’t watch DVD movies anyway.