We’ve got several of those ‘universal’ devices (that came with each of our remote controllable devices) and none of them really do it because they lack some level of granularity that the actual remote device has. You simply have to learn when to do what with what, but that’s too complex for you and the fact that your parents have figured this out but you can’t is a testament to your lack of capacity.

The most humorous thing is that you want to use a single purpose Mac (implying that you’d rather have multiple devices for multiple purposes) but would rather avoid havign to actually learn the purpose of multiple remotes (multiple devices for multiple purposes).

my current Sony uses all regular connectors between the components, in fact there are three different ways to connect the CD changer to the amp.

but if I use the remote to play a CD, the amp automatically switches to receive audio from two of these inputs. so there is an integrated feel to it.

I’d definitely love it more if they used USB/firewire/WiFi and went smart about the connectivity. and I do suspect we’ll get there, probably not by will of the manufacturers, but pressure from FrontRow and Media Center.

I don’t know for certain, but I suspect the problem is that the industry is so cutthroat. One strategy for producing this display would be for a company to produce the same old DVD, TV, tuner, units they always have, but also create a control bus that could connect the units together to be driven by a single CPU (this could be ethernet or firewire, for example). So, if you bought your units from the same supplier, you’d get this great benefit, but otherwise, they’d just work the way they always had.

The problem with this strategy is that what I’m describing is too expensive to just tack on and hope that someone uses. The market is too price sensitive to justify the expense of developing, manufacturing, and most importantly marketing such a solution. People are used to components that barely work together and see one DVD player as being pretty much the same as another and aren’t going to pay anything more for the system unless they get the full benefit.

In brief, it just seems easier to add (or continue to add) entertainment to personal computers than it does to add computation and networking to home entertainment.

well, Apple is just doing the same, except without faking support for other vendor’s components.

walled gardens applied to home entertainment.