Television remote control
Do you remember ten or twelve years ago it was usual, as it still is in the United States, for television shops to offer a remote control switch for channel selection and tuning? Another handy refinement, no bigger than a small transistor radio, controlled the tele- vision set without a wire.
Why are these lazy people's aids not avail- able? I should like to think that it is for some technical reason connected with the difficulties of controlling both the 425 and 625 line channels. A more likely reason, to my my mind, is the television set manufacturers' habit of making sets to please the rental chAins, rather than the ultimate user. The renting companies do not want small ancil- lary equipment subject to damage and loss, or more important, needing repair, in the hands of the their hirers.
If Sir Jules Thorn who is both a manufac- turer and renter, the Plessey Company and GEC, who are manufacturers, are going to compete successfully with the flood of solid- state Japanese sets which, at the moment, are for sale for cash or on hire purchase only, they had better give us a better choice.
It is time that most people realised that it is better to buy, whether for cash or on deferred terms, than to get into the grip of the hirers, to whose advantage it is to spread the myth of expensive tube failure and break- down, on which so many huge fortunes have been based.
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