Jeff -

I agree that a good-quality, well-programmed one-touch universal remote can help with the ease of use and reliability of a homebrew system. But it still can’t fix things when they go wrong - that takes a technical person.

And unless you live alone and never invite anyone over, there will be users of your system other than you. I know I’m extrapolating here to other systems besides just a media server - it’s because these things are all very similar in the abstract.

In order to make your entertainment system (or house, or car, or office) work for multiple people, you have to set and abide by some standards. These include:

- a standardized interface. Getting a task done has to make sense to the user, based on their previous experiences. Standards are no good if everyone uses a different one!

- a reliable sequence of steps. You have to be able to do the same (short) sequence of steps every time to accomplish the task. Too many steps and the operation becomes too complex. A different sequence of steps in certain conditions and the user gets confuse.

- reliable results from that sequence of steps. The same thing has to happen every time. Again, the user gets very confused if they have to think about what to do next.

A well-programmed remote can help with some of these issues, for example by providing a single well-labeled button to perform an activity.

But reliability of results can be trickier. And more complex operations, like ripping a movie, getting cover art, or classifying movies get even more difficult.

Can these issues be solved in a home-brew system? Sure, with enough time, knowledge, and energy. And that time, knowledge and energy has already been put into a Kaleidescape or other commercial system.

If it takes you 40 hours to put together your home-brew system and get it all working, and another 4 hours/month in the care and feeding of said system, that’s an investment of around 90 hours in the first year. I know what my time’s worth - for that money, I could have just bought the K-Scape system!

If you’re a hobbyist, no problem. It’s what you love to do, so you’re willing to do it for the sheer joy of tackling that challenge and bragging rights that you did it. But for non-technical people, or even technical people who prefer to spend their time on hobbies other than building and maintaining a media server, it’s just not worth it. And if they can’t afford (or don’t want to afford) an 8K media server, they’ll happily live with changing discs when they want a different movie.

Either way, good luck with your entertainment system!

Rob Schultz
Inspired Electronics, Inc.
http://www.inspired-electronics.com

@Simon:  Agreed. 90% uptime, even 95% uptime is not acceptable.

I got really angry last night when a backup hard drive failed, and I bought the hard drive almost 4 years ago.  Sure it’s well out of warranty, but it illustrates your point perfectly.

And yes, my wife blamed me for the failure, and was ranting about “nothing ever works for me”!

There are other commercial movie servers available - some of which are licensed and all of which are less expensive than the K-Scape.

They are still nothing like as cheap as a PC with some freeware.  However the problem is that they still have problems either with ripping the DVDs or the quality of their DVD database. 

We find that a client that spends $8,000 on a K-Scape WILL be happy.  One that spends say $5,000 on something that is like a K-Scape but isn’t quite, and works pretty well but misfires some of the time WON’T be happy.

It the same with many products in our industry.  If you are an enthusiast that installs something that works 90% of the time you will be rightly pleased with yourself.  If a professional installer installed it you perceive that you have a substandard system.  Again as others have mentioned here your partners at home aren’t always as pleased as you are with the 90% reliability ease of use factor.

Good work Paul, but the difficulty of homebrew for family members is left behind with a good universal remote like the harmony one.  Besides that key point I completely agree.  As long as you have the ability and time to set thing up on your own.  I am sure It’s not so much that k-scape is so painless to setup, but the ease of use after install.

We are all also overlooking the part of the article that says he wants a unit to replace his receiver/amp as well as his dvd player.

I don’t believe there is a product on the market that also offers switching and amplification as well as a media server.

Anyone?