During the winter, many people use more electricity and tax their wiring more than usual with a range of heaters, gadgets and entertainment devices to keep them occupied during the dead of winter.
However for every great living room centrepiece, some devices are at best a waste of electricity, and at worst can require an electrical installer to come in and help fix broken wiring.
Here are some examples of electronic entertainment technology that did not necessarily end up being entertaining.
Mobile ESPN
In the mid-2000s, the sports network ESPN had the perfect example of a great idea implemented in a particularly poor way.
They wanted to provide a way for sports fans to keep updated with news and see clips on the move, and the result was Mobile ESPN, a combination of a mobile phone, service plan and suite of applications.
The problem was that it relied on a particularly old and clunky Sanyo MVP (later replaced with a Samsung ACE), which was a flip phone in black and red, with a monthly service cost of up to £200 per month.
Famously, Steve Jobs called the phone the “dumbest ******* idea” he had ever heard, and the service lasted only nine months before being shuttered.
Commodore CD-TV
Many technology companies have tried to make technology to get themselves into the living room by adapting the systems they already have, and whether that takes the form of Xbox One’s regrettable Kinect integration or the Phillips CD-i, most have failed.
Few were quite as unsuccessful, however, as the Commodore Dynamic Total Vision, better known as the CDTV. It was a highly expensive VHS-shaped computer with a CD drive that was advertised to people who already owned its underlying technology.
It, alongside the CD-i, Tandy Video Information System and Pioneer LaserActive, all tried to fight for a market that did not really exist, and none of these systems sold well.
Mattel Power Glove
Arguably most famous as a prop from the 1989 moving Nintendo catalogue The Wizard, the “so bad” Power Glove was treated with the reverence of an experimental weapon, complete with flight case and Miami Vice guitar wails.
Unfortunately, whilst the idea of a motion controller was a fascinating idea, the underlying technology simply was not sensitive enough and the controls were far from intuitive, making it a worse control option for nearly every game on the system, even the ones it was designed for.