One box that retransmits all kinds
of television signals on a closed
circuit in the house. The maximum
number of analogue channels
through a coaxial cable is about 40,
enough I would think. This is to avoid the ugly clutter of settop boxes in the house. Just stash them away in the closet where
the wires enter the house.
When you have cable-tv, you get a
settopbox with a decoder and
smartcard inside. It has a tuner
inside, so you switch channels on
the thing instead of on your
television.
When you have a satellite dish, the
same issue.
Now if you have 4 televisions and 2
VCRs in the house you need a whole
bunch of those tuners (6 ideally) or
you have to switch channels in
another room.
What we now do is put one central
box in the house where all tv-
signals go in from all kinds of
sources. Regular antenna, cable-tv,
satellite, but also the decoders for
encrypted pay-tv and the likes.
Perhaps even RealPlayer, Windows
Media Player and all that.
On this box you make a
preselection of 40 channels that are
watched in your household. Perhaps
make it easy to make changes from
any television in the house. Only
one coaxial wire comes out and
goes to all televisions and VCRs in
the rest of the house, which will
receive all 40 channels in exaclty
the same way.
It would be even better if the box
also has a harddisk in it so it can
function as a central VCR, TiVo style
for the whole house. It should be
able to serve several 'clients' at the
same time. And while at it, make it
a server to store all the MP3s in the
house also. Perhaps it should broadcast the channels also through wifi, so you can watch television using VLC on your laptop.