4G causes loss of remote control

Pin It

The remote control for my Bang and Olufsen BeoCentre is cool. Very cool. Machined out of smooth matt aluminium, it’s perfectly weighted and shaped to fit snugly in the hand. It’s oval cross section tapers towards the top, the base forms a flat-bottomed sphere that houses the battery. The device therefore can be free-standing and not lost under a pile of cushions. It even goes well with some of No1 son’s sculptural pieces that artfully occupy various nooks and crannies of my living room.

The trademark Bang and Olufsen minimalist design is indeed exemplified by the remote control, which features just five buttons, rather than myriad multi-coloured mosaic-esque chaos of lesser remotes. Despite the simplicity of the device, I can control all the features of the integrated Beocentre: the TV, the Radio, the CD /DVD player and even rotate the TV screen on its motorised brushed aluminium stand to get the best possible viewing angle.

The remote control is cool, not just because of its unique appearance, but also because the design is so well executed that the tactile nature of the device enhances the home entertainment experience; the remote was one of the reasons I bought the Beocentre in the first place.

However, the cell phone industry is causing me a problem; it is going to end the relationship I have with my remote and hence disrupt my viewing pleasure. This I find particularly irritating.

As I’m sure you’re aware, there has been a massive increase of bandwidth since the inception of the cell phone. According to Ofcom, the widespread take-up of mobile data services, including dongle-based mobile broadband and smartphone use, has resulted in an increase in global data consumption of 159% in 2010 over the previous year. Cisco Systems’ Visual Networking Index found that UK data volumes increased by 124% to an average of 266MB per mobile connection per month in 2010 (other Ofcom data says 240MB).

Ericsson reports that mobile data traffic will multiply ten times over by the year 2016, and that mobile data demand will be divided almost equally between mobile devices such as smartphones on one hand, and PCs and tablets on the other:

O2 were the first mobile operator to retail the iPhone in the UK and they have tracked traffic usage since then, leading them to conclude that data traffic is doubling approximately every 6 months:

This massive increase in the use of mobile data is one of the reasons the mobile industry is rolling out the next generation of infrastructure, 4G, or as it is more accurately known Long Term Evolution (LTE). Both LTE and 4G offer significant improvements in bandwidth, with 100Mbps headline speed being offered for download by the former and 1000Mbps to a suitable handset by the latter, albeit asymmetrical.

I think if I were a copper-based landline operator (this includes coax cable, the core of which is copper), I’d be distinctly worried by the emergence of these new ultra-fast mobile networks. Why, for example, would I need to rent a copper line for voice just to get a derisive 6.7Mbps/0.7Mbps asymmetric DSL service when I could get better bandwidth by using my cell phone as a network access device?

In the UK, LTE requires a reallocation of spectrum. And herein lies the cause of my problem. The “Digital Switchover” as it’s called is shifting broadcast TV from antique analog to delightful digital, releasing the part of the radio spectrum previously used by analog TV (800Mhz). Later this year, this and more of the radio spectrum, up to 2.6Ghz, will be auctioned off by HM Government to the mobile carriers so that they can deploy LTE services (also known as 3.9G).

Naturally enough, the new digital TV signals necessitates all TVs to be capable of receiving these new digital signals, either by replacement or by adding a digital-to-analog converter box. As I previously stated, I regard my TV and its remote control as design icons and I had no intention of replacing either of them anytime soon. But the requirement to add a digital converter between the aerial and the TV has rendered my remote redundant.

This means I will have to resort to whichever dire and dreadful plastic affair, that I’m sure will look as if its been less designed than congealed, that comes with whichever Freeview box I end up buying.

Unless there’s an iPhone app. Now that would be cool.

Source:beophile.com

Pin It