Rather than just asking questions about things to consider in setting up a home entertainment system, perhaps I need to envision how it would work/look, and then find a solution which best fits this vision.
Since I hardly watch any live TV anymore, it is mainly recorded. Although older technology, all of my recordings are done by ReplayTV. ReplayTV recordings may be offloaded to a local hard drive.
I should be able to define different “watch lists” to identify movies or recordings to watch. I should be able to put them in a sequential order within the watch list. The watch lists could be like genres, so that if I am in the mood to watch a particular type of movie, such as comedies, action, etc, I would already know which movie I’d like to watch next. The watch lists should not necessarily be limited to genres, though. Ideally, the content of the watch list can be from many sources, such as recorded and stored locally or stream through some service, such as Hulu, Amazon, or Netflex.
It should be able to keep track of which shows I’ve watched or whether was in progress of watching. It should then give an option to restart where I last left off. I should be able to watch from any TV, any device, whether home or away.
I should be able to watch a trailer for any movie as well as information about the movie, such as synopsis, actors and crew, and see how other people have rated the movie.
It should support closed captions/subtitles, and even translating the subtitles into other languages. I’m not that into social networks, but it should be able to provide an social watching experience, such as sharing comments within your “circles” while watching, speech-to-text commenting, webcam, and even synchronized viewing (such as pausing or replaying will be synchronized across the social watching experience).
The TV platform will also support living room webcam/video conference experience. The TV platform also supports other media such as pictures and music, whether local or cloud-based. In case I am outside weeding in the backyard, it should be able to play music to the outdoor speakers. In fact, it should be able to show video to the yet-to-be-defined outdoor entertainment system, but I suppose that is another project all on its own.
If I am browsing a web page or video on the web, I should be able to easily transfer it to the TV.
If someone calls on the phone, it will flash the caller ID. This could be across all phones, land lines and mobile phones. In case phone # is unknown, it supports call screening capabilities.
Perhaps more related to home automation, but when watching TV, it should be able to control lights as necessary. In addition, if someone comes to the front door, the front door security camera displays who is there.
All upcoming TV shows (ie, TV program guide) is shown with way to see all programs for a given TV channel or all upcoming occurrences of a specific TV show. Ideally, it can tell me when there is some change out of the ordinary. For example, if one show has been moved to another timeslot due to some sports event… In fact, if this platform supports DVR functionality, it could also automatically adjust programming due to a sports event running long (whether you are recording the sports event or programming after the sports event).
I should be able to share programming with my mom or relatives in Japan and vice versa.
I’m sure I’ll be updating the above, but then what I need to do is when looking at different options, such as GoogleTV, determine how much it can support what I am looking for…
Some candidates for the components are:- GoogleTV (or perhaps Android in general)
- XBMC (running on a PC)
- Vulkano
- Digizon
- ReplayTV
- SlingPlayer
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