Currently, our home entertainment system consists of 6 ReplayTVs. Some of you may be wondering, even for a gadget-loving guy, aren't 6 ReplayTVs for two people a little extreme? My initial reaction to such a question would be "Hell no", but there is also a logical explanation. The original plan was to only buy four ReplayTV units. Two for us, and two for my mom. For my mom, one was to be for her house in Illinois and one for her condo in Florida.
Two of the units I bought were 320GB ReplayTV 4000 units. However, when they introduced the ReplayTV 5000 units, the ReplayTV 5000 units were not compatible for video sharing in your home network with ReplayTV 4000 units. The company offered a free upgrade to the ReplayTV 5000 units. Super!
In addition, they did not offer a 320GB ReplayTV 5000 unit... So for customers who had bought a 320GB ReplayTV 4000 unit, they offered TWO 160GB ReplayTV 5000 units! Super super!
So that is how we have 6. And since my mom no longer has house in Illinois, my mom theoretically only needs one in Florida. At the moment though, she does have two as she has been having some problems with the ReplayTV unit on occasion so the other one is acting as her backup.
ReplayTVs are something which my wife has been able to enjoy using. Recording shows is very easy with the program guide and finding recorded shows is also very easy. ReplayTV lets you pause live TV at any point (such as when there is a phone call) and lets you watch recorded shows while it is recording a new show. Despite how much she enjoys using the ReplayTV units we have at home, she is against me trying to get a unit to her parents in Japan. I'll have to continue to work on that.
One of my major objectives, besides having a seamless approach to a home entertainment system, is to have an easy way to view the archive of recorded TV shows.
To me, having the proper "eye candy" is important. This is where something like Boxee, XBMC, and MediaPortal, could come into play. I'm still struggling with the solution though. Recently, Plex has announced a media server which works on Windows. The advantage of a separate media server is then it is not tied to the client, providing more flexibility in choosing the client. Of course, the client will have to be compatible with the media server.
Part of the problem of having an analog wife is that I have to figure out what the strategy is before buying the components. It's not as if I can play around with something and then later decide to go in a completely different direction, so it looks like I'm no closer to this solution than I was several years ago. Sigh.
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