#yellow #blue #green #red #buttons #remote #control
You’ve probably noticed that the controls on many screens and Blu-ray players have four colored buttons, in particular yellow, blue, red and green. What you may not know is what they work for., and these have various functions which vary greatly from device to device.
However, Its origin and development are quite interesting, even becoming functional for video game consoles.. Let’s see what use these mysterious buttons have.
An origin that dates back to teletext
It is not clear when these buttons were introduced to the public. In a series of Reddit threads It is mentioned that they were introduced in the Blu-ray era. In the context of disc players in this format, their function is determined by the brand of the player and the movie or series played. However, there are those who mention that At least part of these buttons are inspired by features dating back to 1970with the introduction of teletext.
If you, like me, did not enjoy the benefits of teletext, which accompanied viewers until the massive introduction of the Internet in the late 90s and early 2000s, you will surely not know what I mean. Simply put, teletext is just what the word describes: text on television.
In the early 1970s, John Adams, an experienced Philips designer, introduced teletext y By 1974 it was used for the first time for the public of the historic British BBC channel. Teletext allowed viewers to access additional content of their favorite programs, where they could find information about the weather forecast, sports, channel programming, important news or even financial data.
Teletext survived until the early 2000s, but with the total emergence of the Internet, many of its functions became obsolete. With technological evolution, the transition was towards HbbTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV). This new technology combined television broadcasting with the Internet, in such a way that the colored buttons were assigned various functions that depended on the channel or device used.
The case of HbbTV is slightly different from that of teletext, since By combining actions inspired by teletext with the Internet, its usefulness was much more diverse. In addition to additional content of the broadcast programs, applications can also be activated, as well as functions to activate subtitles, change languages or even jump between the HD and basic transmission of the channel.
Variable utility
Before we mentioned that The usefulness of each button varies according to the brand of the control. This is not due to simple laziness of not specifying what each of the buttons are for. If we go to the documentation from Philips TV, we will find a very specific section that mentions the usefulness of two of these mysterious buttons.
- Yellow Button: By pressing the yellow button, you can select favorite channels and keep them in the list.
- Green Button: If you press the green button, you can see how many favorite channels you have.
In the case of Sonyits function is more intended for operability within the web or search engines from television.
- Yellow Button – Input Mode: This button allows you to select between lowercase and uppercase.
- Blue button – ABC: this button allows you to delete characters, numbers or symbols.
- Red button – A/a: this button allows you to change the input language (English, French or Spanish).
- Green Button – Backspace: This button allows you to select between letters, numbers or symbols.
Using colored buttons not limited to televisions, but also apply to audio devices. Bose has a “Universal Control”, compatible with the Bose Soundbar, Bose Soundbar 500 and Bose Smart Soundbar 700, which also features these buttons. A user manual, available onlinelists its functions.
- Cable/Satellite Box Features: Please refer to the cable/satellite box instruction manual.
- Teletext functions: correspond to the color-coded page numbers, titles or shortcuts of a teletext screen.
In addition to mentioning teletext, they also add a timely description of these buttons:
“The red, green, yellow and blue buttons on the remote control correspond to the color-coded function buttons on your cable/satellite box or teletext functions.”
So diverse that you can even play Xbox with them
All of the above shows that these buttons do not have a universal functionits usefulness is general, in the sense that its response can be programmed as the manufacturer prefers, although it seems that there are also those who design their own functions.
As an extra detail, I found that in a thread from Reddit and in a answer From Quora, different people mentioned that when pairing their television controller with their video game console, Xbox One and Xbox 360 respectively, These buttons fit perfectly with the YBAX layout of the Xboxwhich if we remember, are the same colors yellow, red, green and blue.
So now you know, if for some reason you lose your Xbox controller, or want to play ‘Dark Souls’ in a different way, you can use your TV or Blu-ray controller and play.
