A long time ago, in a living room not so far away… the home theater experience consisted of a rooftop antenna screwed into ye ‘ol black and white TV with some 300 ohm antenna wire, and the choice of 3 different TV channels on the dial. There were no colored cables to figure out, no on-screen guides, and certainly no set-top boxes. Heck, TV’s didn’t even come with remote controls back then, but you could breed your own if you really wanted to change channels from the couch.
It’s amazing how things have changed since then. Using my own home theater for example, I’ve got no less than a dozen devices integrated into my home theater system: 1 TV, 2 DVRs, 2 digital media receivers, 1 DVD-Player, 1 VCR (for no real reason), 1 CD changer, 4 game consoles… do I really need to go on? How many do you have? Five? Six? Twenty? Whatever the number, the complexity of the modern day home theater system nearly requires a certified installer live on site just to turn the thing on.