andrewducker | Adios you stack of strange cables

Anyone that has connected several different media devices (video, DVD player, cable box, Tivo, television, amplifier in my case) together knows, you end up with a complex web of cables, where frequently each box has to be connected to at least two others. And then you discover that you've hooked them up in a subtly wrong order and have to tinker with it for hours. And then recording only works from the cable box if you leave the sound turned on (as happened to one person I know). Oh, and the various boxes don't really understand each other, they just take a simple video signal and try to interpret it as best they can.

I did wonder (to myself, of course, I didn't know anyone else to wonder at at the time) why firewire wasn't used to link them all together, with intelligent switching allowing the various devices to talk to each other sensibly.

Some of the world's largest companies seem to have had the same idea. Which means in a couple of years it should be possible to plug everything together using one kind of cable and let them sort it out between themselves.

Which will, of course, leave the home-entertainment geeks with more time spare to play with their speaker cables.