Smart A/V Network

While attempting to talk (over the phone) a non-technical user through the process of getting a DVD to play on our home theater system recently (“Okay, press source, then channel up until it says HDMI 1, then press source again and see if it works”), it occurred to me that the whole process is ridiculously complicated. Even among components from the same manufacturer, true interoperability is still a pipe dream. Furthermore, each device comes with its own overly complicated remote control, which God forbid you should lose lest you are unable to use the device again. There are far too many connection paths for the average user to be able to set up, which is utterly silly since, no matter how complicated your home theater setup, you still can't watch more than one device at a time.

A vastly improved alternative would be to simply have all of the devices attached to a bus, and have the television negotiate communications across the bus. Under this system, each device would only have two (or more) identical connection ports, except for the television which would only need to have at least one. Each device would be connected into the system by daisy chaining devices together or using splitters or devices with more than two ports. Since the whole system is bus based, either daisy chaining or linking them in a star topography would result in the same effect. The process of adding a device to your network would consist of “plug one end of the cable into the new device, and plug the other end into any other device”. The bus would carry audio, video, and control data between devices and the television.

Each device would have an “Activate” button on the front, that would, when pushed, make that device active on the network and put any other devices to sleep (except for the television). Alternatively, you could simply operate the device and it would automatically become active. For example, loading a DVD into a player would turn the television on and make the DVD player the active device. The television remote would be the master remote for the system, so in this case any commands issued by the TV remote control would be then relayed to the DVD player. You could, of course, change the active device from the remote control as well. Since all functions are operated from the television, the only buttons that would need to be on the actual device would be the “Activate” button, and a button to open the tray on removable media devices such as DVD or Blu- Ray players.

Lost the remote? Not a problem. Every television equipped with this system would have a built-in keypad sufficient to operate any function on any connected device. It would have, at a minimum, a directional pad, an enter button, pause/play, stop, rewind, and fast forward buttons, and a menu button for calling up any other functions on the active device. Each device might still have its own remote (although the television's remote would be sufficient to operate any function on the entire device network), in which case simply pressing any button on the device's remote would automatically make it active.

Legacy converters would be available, in order to attach older or unique devices (e.g. video cameras, gaming consoles, or that vintage Betamax player you just can't bear to get rid of). The converter would accept video input from a single source, and effectively turn that source into a standard device on the network (including a limited control ability via a built-in IR remote transmitter).