Meanwhile, there is a Technology Side...

Haven't talked about this much yet. In parallel with all of the thinking and changes relating to the physical properties of the house we (or in this case I) have also been wrangling with what to do from a technology point of view. There are two primary concerns:

1. We both like to watch TV. Just not the same things. I like sports. She likes....well, let's just say she likes a lot of shows that I suspect many of my friend's wives like. We need the ability to watch any of a few sources on any or all TV's in the house. And it needs to be easy.
2. We both use computers a lot. We need ready access from wherever we are in the house, or even immediately outside the house. These computer systems need a robust backup architecture, etc.

These two benign and normal sounding factors produce a nearly endless array of choices and technological challenges.

Take television. What is television these days? There are shows, movies, documentaries or educational programming, sports, and news. How is this media delivered?

• Old School: Pay the cable or satellite provider to beam you content.
• Pros: Generally reliable delivery of content with a known standard of quality (personal tastes notwithstanding).
• Cons: Expensive, somewhat inflexible, requires additional hardware to be able to watch content at convenient times (more expense), have to "deal" with stupid companies (providers).
• New School: Get it on the internet.
• Pros: Watch what  you want when you want it. Don't pay for anything you don't want. 
• Cons: Can still get expensive if you watch a lot. Quality often not as good as broadcast. Reliability also not perfect. Can actually be harder to skip the commercials than with a DVR/broadcast system. Many shows (especially sports) still unavailable.

Todays reality is that you need some combination both paradigms, and each of these two methodologies requires different infrastructure to pull off effectively. They each have different nuances to getting the most out of them, etc. As it stands right now it's necessary to build out the infrastructure on both fronts and then add hardware to integrate it all together. Further, even within something as straight forward as broadcast content there are several choices, each with their own pros and cons. And what is the best appliance for watching (or possibly even recording) internet content? There are a surprising array of choices. None an obvious winner on all fronts. Combine that with the fact that we hardly ever want to watch the same things, we (as mentioned above) need to be able to deliver any of this content to any of several screens in the house, in high definition, 5.1 surround (at least in a couple of places), with an ability to watch what we want when we want. And we need to a simple way to control all of this hardware. Wives aren't interested in patch bays, source select buttons, etc. And frankly neither am I for this application. We need to be able to pick up a remote in any room of the house and put what we want on the nearest screen with a couple of button pushes.

On to computers. We have several, plus iPhones and iPads, and who knows what the future holds on this front. Suffice to say we need robust networking throughout the house. We need access from anywhere. The house is big enough that one wireless router isn't going to cut it. We need to integrate a few of them. There are different speeds and formats one needs to be compatible with. And I like to provide separate wireless access for guests and their equipment (so that doubles virtually everything). Backing up of data on all machines is crucial. No excuse anymore for losing data when a hard drive goes belly up. Need a central storage location for items that may commonly be used on multiple computers such as music and video libraries, accounting software, photos, etc. Need a music and video delivery infrastructure. And all of this, at least where it crosses the moving line into entertainment, needs to be integrated with the A/V and remote control infrastructure.

All of this stuff is quite doable, especially since I have access to people who know a lot about it. The challenge is in the decisions pertaining to the best way to go about it. It's easy to say, "just run this wire there and you're all set." But in an existing house you can't always do that, so other creative solutions are needed. It all needs to be implemented in a way that's simple enough to be robust, but still flexible. And you need to be able to get in and make changes as technology and preferences change.

Had enough yet? There's more, but I'll spare you for now.