It’s not really fair. My TV (and every other piece of home electronics) is a slave to a remote. But because the remote only barks out orders and never asks questions, or listens, it’s a cause for frustration.

We have a Logitech Harmony remote, and it’s a great thing. But because the communication is one-way it’s often as frustrating an experience using it as trying to find the right one of the half dozen remotes scattered around the living room.

Now, imagine a world where every TV, Xbox, Squeezebox, and amplifier had a Bluetooth (BT) or other wireless chip in and as well as listening for orders they can communicate their status both between devices and to their controller.

Couple that with a smartphone (or a dedicated smart remote control) and you have a real universal remote that can be task driven (I want to watch Cable or play a DVD on the Xbox or listen to music), query the relevant devices (to confirm what state it thinks they are in) and then make intelligent decisions about they need to do (on or off, change source, adjust volume levels) – including powering on or off devices in the correct sequence.

Today’s IrDA based devices don’t offer that sort of flexibility or control – the communication isn’t two way, the protocols defined in the 1970’s don’t really have the flexibility or richness and the limitation of line of sight control starts to interfere with talking to multiple devices concurrently anyway.

In this solution there would be no more line of sight problems (can even talk to equipment in a cabinet). No more getting out of sync with the source channel on the TV (because it's cyclical rather than direct access). No more pop from the speakers when the TV turns off before the amplifier (they can communicate... if the TV "knows" it's using the speakers - or the remote does - part of the shut-down process could be to mute the speakers, shut them off and then shut down the TV, or if changing over to the Squeezebox then mute them, change source, start Squeezebox, turn off TV, un-mute speakers returning them to the default volume and EQ for listening to music as opposed to for TV)

The problem today is that while BT to IrDA devices exist that's only half the solution... The back channel to the remote doesn't exist. For this to work the Bluetooth, ZigBee or WiFi SIGs would need to be more aggressive in promoting the value of something like this to the hardware manufacturers. Bluetooth and WiFi are already supported in most smartphones, but ZigBee with its lower power requirements would be an interesting solution if it has the living room range.

For it to work there needs to be one standard that can be rolled out cost effectively. Who is going to step up and lead the charge from the three incumbent wireless technologies (or will we see a new player emerge to eclipse them?)

Hulu and Netflix are two amazing examples of using the internet to deliver content but while I don't mind watching a 30 second funny clip on youTube or Soapbox there's no way I'm going to watch an episode of Gemini Division or Dr Horribles Sing-a-long Blog, let alone a full length movie unless I can lean back in my chair with the dogs at my feet and remote in my hand and enjoy TV as it's meant to be.

At home we already have a Media Center PC (it came with us from Australia and it great for watching DVDs that are not Region 1 encoded or has interesting codecs that need some extra support), an Xbox360 (can front-end the Media Center and play back content from network) and the majority of our content living on a Windows Home Server with some Maxtor external drives to extend that a bit further.

Until now most internet content has required jumping through hoops to get downloaded and delivered... but now it's time to PlayOn!

All you have to do is install the PlayOn transcoder application on a Windows PC (WinXP SP2, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Home Server - if it can run Windows Media Player 11 it should work) that's on the same network as your Xbox360, PS3 or HP Media Smart TV (they want to get it working on the Wii as well), follow some simple instructions and you're pretty much good to go.

On the transcoding PC (which takes the Flash video or other formats from the web to something that your Xbox or PS3 can display) you can enter your Netflix account details or Hulu credentials and the application displays your queue [Actually, at the moment they don't have the Hulu queue working, but you can still access videos by navigating categories and drilling down alphabetically]

You still get to see the adverts that pay for Hulu (or need a log in to get to a Netflix queue) so it's not a way to bypass the monetization models of the providers but it's another wake-up call to the old school TV providers that they need to deliver more content when the audience wants it rather than rely on their programming schedules....

I'd happily pay what I currently pay for Cable for an online, on-demand delivery mechanism that uses much better ad targeting to reduce the interruptions to make for a much better end user experience.

I’m a big fan of the 3.0 release of the Zune software, and the new 120 GB device. But the best thing about them is that today I can use them in public without having to make sure no-one is watching ;)

For the last couple of months I’ve been dogfooding both the new Zune 120 (great screen, great battery life and, in case you missed it, 120GB of storage!) and various iterations of the new new desktop app and device firmware.

Rather than list all the features head over to Zune.Net and check out the update – it’s free for any Zune device. The official feature list is here.

My personal favorites though are over-the-air access to the Marketplace at Macdonald's (it even works in the drive-through queue!), Purchase from FM (hear a song you like… don’t need to remember it, just add it to your cart) and the games :) The feature that’s been there since day #1 that I still love – WiFi sync… let’s me plug the Zune into my car and update music from the driveway.

I mentioned the very cool BigScreen Pictures the other day, well in related and very exciting news a DelicateGenius has a couple of licenses for both the Photo and Weather apps to give away.

The competition ends on Jan 30th so you'd better hurry... but even if you don't win check it out (there's a free trial for all-comers)

Although there's been a bit of news recently about Dave Winers new FlickrFan product for the Mac Mini it's not the break-through technology that folks have been touting it as. It's pretty neat and certainly offers some value to the very small Mac Mini user base.

But there's nothing new under the sun. Before I left Australia I was running some of the BigScreenGlobal add-ins for my Media Center (news, weather etc).

Today a DelicateGenius and FrankArr both gave me the scoop on version 2 (that's right, the second generation) of the BigScreenPictures app which lets you use Media Center (either the Media Center Edition version of WinXP or the functionality included in Premium and Ultimate versions of Vista) to display a photostream from Flickr (and other data sources) on your high def TV.

I guess because it's running on Microsoft technology and Niall doesn't have quite the same blogsphere presence BigScreenPictures (which doesn't have quite the same catchy name as FlickrFan I'll admit) probably won't get as much attention, thought it certainly deserves it. Give it a try, and while you're there check out some of their other great apps.

I'll leave the last word to Loren Feldman.

In what must be a very bizarre commentary on the times we live in early seasons of Sesame Street have been released on DVD - cleared labeled that they are not suitable for young children!

Is the world becoming such a sanitized, nannied place that Sesame Street isn't bland enough to feed our kids? No wonder Grimm's Fairy Tales have been sanitized to the point of Disneyesque mindless pap.

Yet in the same world we expose kids to violent video games and cartoons that leave them inured and unable to judge right from wrong.