Dream Machine
At the end of the year I permit myself to dream a bit. I guess all the nice people you dine with, the elegant wines, and good food tends to make you a bit mellow. This year I have been fantasizing about my ?dream machine?. This dreaming was instigated by the nightmare of today?s technology. I have ranted often about the electronic industry?s clothes (or better: lack therefore) and the amazing silence about this. Last week I bought five electronic devices, this week I?ll have to return fout because they did not work as advertised. Two devices, were broken, the antenna signal did not inter-operate with my TV (France uses SECAM, my Sony TV uses PAL), a universal remote control could not work with my Pioneer amplifier, and last not least, the DVB-T receiver could not find any signal in my neighborhood. Ok, enough of that, I was supposed to tell you about my dream machine, not about my daily nightmare with electronics.
First, what should my dream machine do? I have 20 gigabyte of MP3 files, 6 Gigabyte of digital pictures, and another 10 Gigabyte of videos (and I have not even converted 5% of my videos to disk). Additionally I have not so massive, but oh so important. data like calendars, address books, mails, articles, blogs, and so on. Then there are gigabytes per minute streaming into my house with my satellite receiver providing news and entertainment. And all this data is growing at an alarming rate.
I want two things with this amazing number of bytes: keep it safe and enjoy it anywhere. Correct, there are two teenagers living in my home and we all want to enjoy our videos, photos, and music in our dens, living room, and cave.
However, what I do not want to become is a disk jockey, librarian, or computer technician. If I am having guests over and the topic requires some picture to illustrate the discussion, then I want to show this picture on my TV screen in less than a minute. While looking at the pictures, the music should continue to play uninterrupted. If I am looking at a movie then I should be able to continue looking at that movie in the bedroom without requiring a manual. physically moving devices, or joggling remote controls.
I actually have a UPnP media server (I actually have two because the clients are not compatible). For some reason, it always takes me at least half an hour before I have it working again, something always seems to be broken. Oops, ranted again.
The first responsibility of my dream machine will be to store the data and provide access in a reliable way. From a technical point of view it would probably be best to store it in the network at an operator. However, there are a number of drawbacks. First, it is my data and I want to keep it that way. Second, the Internet is just not fast enough; high latency might kill much of the fun. So my dream machine needs reliable hard disks in a configuration that will make sure it never loses data, potentially using a backup scheme over the Internet. Obviously, it must be easy to add enough storage over time.
How do we connect to the satellite receiver, settop box, wireless network, Ethernet or any other of the myriad of protocols we need to support? And how do we do this without creating a tangled web of power and data cables?
I think the solution lies in USB and a big case for the dream machine. Any useful protocol in existence today is supported by a USB key or dongle. The dream machine should have 16 USB connections and space to store the USB device itself together with its cables.
USB devices can easily be diagnosed, power-cycled, or removed from the bus allows the software to provide highly reliable and self-repairing solutions. The level of reliability could further be increased by adding redundant interfaces.
The distribution of the data is the hard part. Did you notice how modern TV systems have reduced functionality from 50?s TVs? Settop boxes, satellite receivers, Internet TV, digital terrestrial TV, allow you to view only one channel at a time because they separate the tuner from the monitor. Analog terrestrial TV allowed you to see any channel on any TV or recorder because the tuner was built into the TV or recorder. Teenagers want their own TV, so we should use devices that use (wireless) Ethernet to access the entertainment available on the dream machine.
The dream machine should replace all the unnecessary cruft that we find in today?s entertainment systems. For example, we need just a monitor connecting to the dream machine over Ethernet. Audio should go over speakers connected over Ethernet, no more matching impedance, polarity, and left or right side!
From a software point of view, a file system will just not cut it, we need an information manager that is aware of the intricacies of the data we store. My dream machine should be able to learn new addresses I entered on my phone and update my portable; without asking questions or other use interaction. This information manager needs to be extendable because the file formats and the way I want to use them is extendable.
The information manager on the dream machine will require extensions in many dimensions: USB drivers, protocol providers, data managers, and applications. Coincidentally, the OSGi Service Platform would be an excellent choice for the dream machine! Happy New Year!
Peter Kriens
posted by Peter @ Thursday, December 29, 2005
