2006-09-28

Video Mute

Today's WTF struck me while sitting in a presentation. The presenter mashed some buttons on a remote and a fine line of text was projected on a black screen. This text told how to undo the Video Mute.

I'd never really thought much about it, but why in the world do we call it video mute. If a mute button turns off the sound, then shouldn't a blind button turn off the video?

Is it somehow more politically correct to be mute than blind?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

<devil's advocate>
I think mute is correct. If you were to blind it, you would turn the TV completely off. Instead, you are "muting" the image, using the verb form of the word meaning to dull, dampen, or turn down.

I think where it came from, was that the old static displayed was generally very noisy as well (way tool late to even attempt to describe the reasons behind that), so video mute displayed a single color which did in fact mute the noise (both video and audio).
</devil's advocate>