The Richter Scale^®

So here’s another one of my current TechAnnoyances. And this one is probably all Microsoft’s fault too. Late last year I bought a Hewlett-Packard z565 Digital Entertainment Computer (DEC). That’s a fully loaded Windows XP Media Center Edition PC designed to reside in one’s living room among all the other A/V toys one has (never mind that it’s very deep and wouldn’t fit on the shelf under my TV).

The Microsoft weltanschau (world view) is that all media should pass through a media PC, incidentally, which doesn’t work very well with a family that just wants to be able to turn on the TV and watch it without having to also boot or wake-up a PC and Media Center software to do that. But that’s a separate annoyance.

My particular gripe is that the remote control for the HP DEC’s media center functionality happens to emit a number of the same coded commands as the remote for the Xbox 360. And in my living room, both of these devices are situated close to each other (not that moving one a few feet would make much difference).

The one remote control button which really causes me grief is the On/Off button, as when I power off the HP DEC (which puts it into standby mode), on comes my Xbox 360. Conversely, if I use the remote to power on my Xbox 360, the power state on the HP DEC changes too. I’ve taken to burning the extra calories it takes - all two of them, to go and manually switch on or off the HP DEC and Xbox 360 just to avoid this Tech Annoyance. But sometimes I forget (or my kids do), and on comes the Xbox 360 when you don’t need it…