One box that retransmits all kinds of television signals on a closed circuit in the house. The maximum number of analogue channels through a coaxial cable is about 40, enough I would think. This is to avoid the ugly clutter of settop boxes in the house. Just stash them away in the closet where the wires enter the house.

When you have cable-tv, you get a settopbox with a decoder and smartcard inside. It has a tuner inside, so you switch channels on the thing instead of on your television.

When you have a satellite dish, the same issue.

Now if you have 4 televisions and 2 VCRs in the house you need a whole bunch of those tuners (6 ideally) or you have to switch channels in another room.

What we now do is put one central box in the house where all tv- signals go in from all kinds of sources. Regular antenna, cable-tv, satellite, but also the decoders for encrypted pay-tv and the likes. Perhaps even RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and all that.

On this box you make a preselection of 40 channels that are watched in your household. Perhaps make it easy to make changes from any television in the house. Only one coaxial wire comes out and goes to all televisions and VCRs in the rest of the house, which will receive all 40 channels in exaclty the same way.

It would be even better if the box also has a harddisk in it so it can function as a central VCR, TiVo style for the whole house. It should be able to serve several 'clients' at the same time. And while at it, make it a server to store all the MP3s in the house also. Perhaps it should broadcast the channels also through wifi, so you can watch television using VLC on your laptop.
-- rrr, Mar 01 2003

random, halfbakery