Control access to media via an online application accessed via biometrics. When you pause a video or audio file, your fingerprint is read by an appliance and the command to pause is sent to the server. On resuming, you touch another device or the same one, anywhere in the world, and it continues from where you left off watching or listening to it, whether it was on YouTube, other streaming video, a portable media player or mobile 'phone. Works within a house by networking, outside it via the internet. Also works for Web 2.0 applications and gaming. Any device with a copy of the game can load the save data from the point at which you stopped playing, so you can go to another place and carry on playing where you left off.-- nineteenthly, Feb 10 2010 YouTube was just one thing. I was thinking more of longer media files, which were maybe stored locally, which could then be accessed from wherever. It would apply to YouTube but also to your personal collection of music and videos, and a number of other things.-- nineteenthly, Feb 10 2010 A large element of halfbakedness comes from the biometrics: you'd require every terminal to have a bio reader/fingerprint scanner.
That aside though, the security aspect can be relatively straightforward (but by no means 'easy'). The challenges that really arise are scalability issues with maintaining one's personal preferences, and tailoring the services to running on different devices (start thinking desktop vs mobile). You either keep your preferences on all of your devices, keep your prefenences somewhere within the network, or some hybrid scheme.
I worked on a project that looked at, among other things, translating digital content into 'appropriate' formats for the mobile user. They could be watching TV and leave the house and then continue the stream on their smartphone. Not only did this require the new device to be pre-authenticated and then the stream to be "handed over" across different administrative domains, it also required the ability to recognise the capabilities of the new device and tailor (or otherwise reconcile) the incoming service to fit the device. Lots of engineering challenges!-- Jinbish, Feb 10 2010 The thing is, biometrics in the form of a fingerprint sensor on a control or other sensor would be neat because it would mean the user could do exactly what they do now and achieve this result. Another option might be a keypad PIN. I don't think anyone's going to saw your finger off just so they can see what happens at the end of 'Eastenders', even if it was a particularly gripping episode, though i do recognise that they might want to use it for more serious purposes.
How about keeping it on some kind of dongle? I suppose interfacing would be the problem there. Or, what if the mobile handset itself stores the preferences and bluetooths it or USBs it to whatever device you need it for?
There is a messy way of keeping the preferences simple. Just take the lowest-spec device and use its resolution, audio, colour depth and so on. It would result in cruddiness a lot of the time.-- nineteenthly, Feb 10 2010 random, halfbakery