Why no real user manuals any more?

[fithsk]

A TV set is an incredibly complicated device these days. So how come Sony produces a marvellous device, KDL 32EX500, but no user manual to explain properly how to use it?

Oh yes, it is delivered with a few pages in print to get started, in every single European language, even the most obscure, EXCEPT ENGLISH. Why on earth NO ENGLISH???

And it is delivered with an almost useless i-manual that can at least be downloaded to a PC but the contents of which is so superficial that it isn't worth the toner to print it. It basically tells everything that's obvious and leaves everything out that's not. When I'm looking for answers, they aren't there.

I HATE I-MANUALS. It's impossible to make notes, highlights, and to get a good overview of the device and fully understand it.

I admit that the user interface is better than 10 years ago, but some themes require more information than others, for example image formats, parental control, explanation of the differences between SCART/RGB/video composite, video composite alone, YPrPb Component Video, complicated things that Sony just skips lightheartedly over. The so-called SMART image format isn't smart at all if one hates image proportion distortion or cropping. There is no help getting rid of black bands without image distortion or cropping.

Am I alone feeling disappointed about the bad quality of modern user manuals?

[losinj]

Rest assured, you are not alone in your disappointment.

It seems you can apply the same criticism to very many electronic devices, whether a PC or basic mobile phone.  When do you get a printed manual in the box explaining how to use Windows, for example?  With my mum's bottom-of-the-range mobile, chosen for its limited features and - you would think - simple operation, the maker (Nokia) has made absolutely no effort to explain how to use the myriad menu options, in either printed or downloadable form.  For someone with limited or no previous knowledge of these things it turns a "simple" device into something very much the opposite.

Having said that, all manufacturers are having to do their bit to minimise environmental impact.  Reducing printing is one way.  Pity they don't all see the value in producing decent e-manuals.

Thankfully an exception appears to be cameras.  The previous two I've bought both had very good paper manuals, which explained all the features, even if they did leave the user to figure out how best to make use of them.

[fithsk]

I absolutely agree that Sony is not isolated. Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft, the lot. Nokia do include printed manuals, but not in sufficient details to configure some of the more complicated menus. The last Samsung manual I got for a satellite receiver was an absolute disaster in the English version, some South Korean with basic English skills having translated it with predictably incomprehensible result. Fortunately, another language version was linguistcally correct, but technically insufficient. Bad manuals give a bad image though.

I don't mind so much if the manual is delivered pre-printed if I can at least download it in an A4 version and print it myself in one single document, not several hundred html files, as Sony's I-manual. I don't need 37 different printed language versions of course, and I don't necessarily want a French manual just because I live in France, for example.

But the lack of technical detail is unforgivable. If Sony can include YPrPb component connectors, why can't they explain what they are, instead of just using a generic and imprecise term "component video" which can also mean RGB and S-video, and why don't they explain that it's sometimes referred to as YUV or Y'UV? Why don't they explain that this is the highest analogue quality possible so people can make informed choices about connections?

An alternative to repeating the same technical explanations in hundreds of different manuals is of course to provide one generic technical manual with general technical information for TV and video and make that available for download.