Learning electronics at home

We're learning about DVDs at our house.

The learning curve, I must say, is steep.

Which is why I am pleading, one more time, with Asian manufacturers of electronic gizmos to stop hiring Venezuelan immigrants living in Denmark to write the instruction manuals intended for speakers of English.

Not that a properly written manual would make a big difference to me.

I am from the "push every button until something happens" school of do-it-yourself installations. I should know better. But it appears the older I get, the less willing I am to listen to good advice about things I don't understand.

Now I know what my sons must have gone through.

I assumed that, since the new DVD-VCR combo player replaced the not-so-old VCR, I could just plug the connecting cords into matching holes and there would be no need for deciphering Chinese translated into Spanish translated into Danish translated into something barely resembling English.

To my way of thinking, the mechanics of any electronic gizmo is that something goes in and something comes out. How complicated can that be?

Very, as it turns out.

The holes on the back of the DVD don't look anything like the holes on the back of the VCR.

And when you factor in this business of two sets of cords with red, white and yellow prongs, it's pretty easy to see how the "watch out, you're screwing it up again" multiplier effect soon degenerates into something akin to the chaos described right there at the start of Genesis.

Let's just say that when I embark on one of my missions to conquer the entertainment center, my wife thoughtfully retreats to odd jobs she's been saving up just for days just like this.

OK. I'll skip the really ugly parts which manufacturer assumes you will resolve by calling an 800 number manned by computer-voiced robots, who, if you manage to get past the endless menus and options, will tell you with no emotion whatsoever that you should have paid the extra $25 for professional installation instead of being so cheap.

At least I think that's what they're saying. The computer-generated voices appear to be loosely based on the actual voices of humans from Venezuela who moved to Denmark and are currently enrolled in English-as-a-second-language courses at some mail-order institute.

I can tell you, with some sense of pride, that I eventually figured the dang thing out. I successfully played a tape that showed up on my TV set. I would have tested a DVD, but we didn't have one.

Now you can see, I'm sure, why it was so important to have a DVD-VCR combo player.

The fact is that each time we rent videotapes, we notice the expanding selection of DVDs are crowding out the tapes which, I'm guessing, will soon be obsolete .

I like to be prepared.

Several days after my success with the installation project, I went to the store and rented a DVD. I innocently thought the worst of my worries were over. How hard could it be to play a DVD? You just pop it in and press PLAY, right?

I don't know how you say this in Chinese/Spanish/Danish, but what you say at my house isn't printable.

The instruction manual, for example, led me to believe that I could choose the DVD viewing format. My wife doesn't like the letterbox format. So I pushed the buttons on the remote control to make the format fill up our TV screen. Which, of course, showed up in letterbox format.

That's the bad news. The good news I can get subtitles in 516 languages, including Chinese, Spanish and Danish.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.