I recently bought a TV that allows me to rotate the picture so it is upside down, mirror image or upside down mirror image. Huh? Do you know why a person would need or want to this feature on a television set?

Someone who watches TV through a mirror a lot?

Probably since it can be used as a computer monitor. I do a lot of weird stuff with mine. I turn mine 90 degrees all the time if I am coding. Height is more important than width. OS X has a setting for doing it.

Sounds like something fun to watch (say, while playing Nintendo) when drunk.

@johnpowell That would be useful but there’s no option to turn it 90 degrees, only upside down, mirror image, or upside down and mirror image.

You are right.. That doesn’t explain the option on the TV. Luckily my sister is dating a cable guy and he is upstairs so I asked him. He said that he sometimes runs into installs where the TV is mounted with a VESA adapter and is hung upside down so the buttons that are normally on top are on the bottom. So people can reach them. This is usually when they are high up, like in a conference room.

@johnpowell You’re getting free cable, aren’t you?

yes

@johnpowell OK. That explains the upside down, but I’m still baffled on the mirror image and the upside down mirror image.

My best guess is that it doesn’t serve a purpose. It was just easy to code and it was a feature they could add without doing much work.

@johnpowell ah…one of my big pet peeves about programmers, adding useless features that clutter things up and confuse people just because they can.

Blame the marketing department. They are the evil ones.

Maybe it’s for watching your home videos from the time you first got your camera and kept holding it upside down.

clearly, they are features that exist only to confuse and amuse you

do you think there might be people with autism, or similar disorder, where they see things like its in a mirror?? idk, just a thought

I finally found my answer, at least I think this is it. In case anyone cares the answer is…. drum roll…. it allows you to use the TV as an external monitor when you are shooting video with certain depth of field adapters. The mystery solved.

I also found some kits people use to turn regular TVs into large screen projections TVs but the lens projects the image flipped both vertically and horizontally, as the DOF adapters do.

Forgot to post the links if anyone wants to know

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth-of-field_adapter

http://ezinearticles.com/?Achieving-the-Film-Look-With-Digital-Video---35mm-Adapters-and-More&id=1259721

To be honest, sometimes while falling asleep I watch the tv through the mirror on my wall. I wish mine had that feature :/

I really don’t know, but all of these features would probably be very interesting if a viewer were ‘tripping’ on something – otherwise, I haven’t a clue why any of these attributes would be needed.