There’s a bit of a crapstorm currently going down on the BBC Internet Blog, especially one of its posts concerning picture quality and bitrate. Now, on the one hand I do sort of want to stand with the people doing the complaining. On the other,  don’t have HD myself and can’t help but empathize with those being complained at.

I can’t help it. I work in IT, spending a fair chunk of my time dodging users. I spend a lot of that time taking a lot of flak for when the way things are don’t match with what the users want. And users/customers always seem to have this sense of entitlement that’s one step out of phase with reality. (Can you tell I once spent a year working in a Supermarket..?)

I guess the problem is more noticeable if, like me, you’re not affected by the issue at hand. I observe it logically, not emotionally. And I compare it with Strictly Come Dancing.

Stay with me here…

Many of the comments are like Craig. hardly ever happy. Always picking fault. And I mean always. And when someone genuinely dances awfully, they still side against Craig despite him being right. And I’m reminded of him when some people were complaining about the picture quality when others thought it was at least passable. Now, when there seems to be a real issue, the same people make the exact same comments and it’s really hard to take them seriously.
Then there’s Len. he nearly always tries to pick something positive out. So when he rails on someone, it means they really are bad. His negative opinion counts, as it usually means there really is something wrong. And some of the commenters are like that. They defend the BBC when they can, and slate it when it’s wrong.

My problem is that I can’t really side with the “users” in this particular case. For “picture quality” substitute “printers and photocopiers” and you get exactly the same tone of complaints that I deal with at work from people who simply won’t accept anything other than their view of how things have to be.
If it’s like any of the situations I face at work, if anything could be done it would be. The fact that the bitrate has been cut means that it’d been cut for a reason. It may be a good reason, it may be a crap one, but there’s a reason for it. And such decisions (especially the bad ones) don’t often get unmade. And it’s the poor sods in the firing line who get the flak.

And having been one of those poor sods in the past (and present), my sympathies lie with them. As do my congratulations, as I’d’ve gone off on one by now were I in their shoes.