Finding one news channel should be easy. This video times it both ways on the same TV, with a clock and a count of every press.
It opens on BoomerOS, the simple TV home screen we're building for our parents: one tap on the tablet remote puts the Chargers game on, and the TV switches over and types in the channel by itself.
Then the DirecTV remote. From the power button, I look for MSNBC: the guide, scrolling channel by channel past thousands of stations, then a search typed letter by letter with the arrow keys. It turns out the channel is called MS NOW now. That took 2 minutes 30 seconds and 85 button presses. The long waits play sped up, with the clock still counting real time.
Then the same search with BoomerOS, starting from a TV that's off: Watch TV, News, MS NOW. Three taps, and the TV turns itself on and puts the channel on. Most of its 54 seconds is the TV starting up. More on BoomerOS.
Transcript
Let's look at the Chargers. So I click that. You see how it's saying putting it on?
It switches to the DirecTV, puts in the channel, and we are watching this.
So I have the remote. I hit the power on button.
Okay, so imagine you're an elderly person. I'm here. I want to get to MSNBC, right?
Oh, I see something called guide. So I'm going to select that. Guide.
I don't know what channel MSNBC is. So I'm going to start looking. Where's news? I just want to look at news.
There's 4,000 stations. The sports. Oh my God. Okay, let me go. I guess I have to search.
Or did they change the name? Maybe that's why. It's called MS NOW. Is that what it's called?
I don't want to deal with changing inputs or sources. The idea is to just quickly browse and get to what you want
without having to deal with a lot of the logistical things you have to deal with when watching TV.
Let's go watch TV. Let's go to news. MS NOW with All In with Chris Hayes. Let's see.
So all I did was tap each of those right there. TV is turning on. Oh, it's already there.