[SS] The Trap of the Sweet Temptation of Automation

The wave of automation has been coming for several years now, with the feeling that applying automation to everything makes life easier, saves time, and maintains work quality.

When I think about it, I realize that the relationship between the TV and the video recorder is also linked through automation. My home video recorder automatically records all programs on 6 channels to the hard disk. Actually, I would like one more recording channel, but that is irrelevant to the story, so I will not pursue it. In terms of automation, the video recorder has a feature that allows programs recorded on it to be viewed automatically by referring to the past program guide on the TV side, without having to operate the video recorder's remote control. I had been using it as if it were natural, but this is also the fruit of the automatic linkage between the two devices.

At home, the video recorder's remote control has almost no use anymore. Since I can watch programs just by referring to the past program guide and playing them with the TV remote. Of course, programs that I intentionally saved can also be played with the TV remote. It is wonderful. Since it does not take any extra effort, there is no need to learn various functions. I felt every day that the benefits of automation due to the evolution of technology were wonderful.

Today, my wife is making a fuss about something. She says she cannot play past programs. When I checked, I found that yesterday's programs could be played, but today's past programs could not. They do not appear in the past program guide. My wife just keeps shouting, "Why, why?" There is no way I would know, but I somehow feel responsible for having set it up.

However, even after checking this and that, I do not understand. Since it is linked via WiFi, I checked the network settings, but there seems to be no problem. I remembered, "That's right, I should be able to link and watch from my iPad too," so I immediately launched the app and tried playing yesterday's program first. No problem. When I tried to play a program from this morning, an error message appeared and it could not be played. I hit a wall here. Even though I had not made any particular setting changes, it started behaving differently from yesterday.

Judging from everything, it feels like a problem with the video equipment, not the TV or the iPad. However, even looking at the settings, there is nothing strange. That is to be expected. Because I can watch yesterday's programs. I was completely stuck.

A while ago, there was no problem because recorded programs were played by switching to the video recorder. However, although I confirmed that it could be viewed by switching to the video recorder and playing it with the video recorder's remote control just like this time, for my wife who only operates with the TV remote, processing by switching to the video recorder is apparently out of the question.

I realized that parts that have been turned into a black box by automation are things that, when an unexpected failure occurs, you will encounter a situation where you cannot return to the original state without putting in a tremendous amount of effort. The distrust became so great that it erased all the satisfaction I had felt from receiving its benefits.
　
In the end, without knowing the cause, I returned the TV settings to the factory default state and started over from the channel settings. What a letdown.

The End

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