Over at The Furrygoat Experience we read of one possible future in home media management:
…the server should be the box that actually has the TV card and records video.
Think about it – with the upcoming living room war between Sony Playstation 3 and XBox 360, combined with all of the connected devices (PC’s, UPNP DVD players, Tivo’s, etc), what you really want is a central location that records programs that I can access from anywhere (inside and outside the house), remotely setup recording schedules, etc. [The Furrygoat Experience]
I totally agree with this assessment and believe that things are about to get considerably easier in this regard. Storage prices continue to head south allowing for greater storage. The trick of course is having a robust enough box at the helm, that can record and serve content to multiple points in the home and beyond even through a simple experience.
Last night my wife and I were talking about whether we wanted to have a TV in the bedroom of our new house. We have one now, but rarely watch it. Her reason for not really watching in the bedroom is that the DVR is in the living room and that’s taking care of making sure there’s something good to watch on a Friday or Saturday when TV really gets lame.
This stuff is sort of there … The UPNP (Universal Plug and Play) standard is supposed to make devices play nicely so you can pass content around but it’s far from complete. Throw in DRM and you’ve got a nice mess with content purchased from online sources or rerecorded from premium channels. The only thing that semi-easily moves around your home network is content you’ve created yourself and that can be tricky as well if you don’t have the right kind of network – either wired or wireless.