Roku does a great job of combining sources however it doesn't support DVR or local storage (i.e. Downloads)

Boxee also did a great job of combining sources and did a good job with local storage. It also didn't support DVR.

To be honest DVR is an animal that I've seen nobody crack successfully.

See, here's the thing about Roku and competitors (like the WD box, etc): they all require you to start different "apps" to browse different sources of content. I don't care where the content comes from, I just want to watch it. So, when I say "DVR", what I mean is a DVR-like interface to combine all content from various sources.

Roku supports a unified search now, though unified search doesnt support all apps/channels. It does support Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Vudu, and Crackle though.

Also, most (all?) Roku's support local storage, but it isn't ideal. Usually, I need to throw some content on a thumbdrive and stick it into the Roku. Not horrible, but I wish I could use the Roku to download content to use it to stream via DLNA.

The search part is good, but I want to then put that search to good use to allow me to subscribe to "seasons" of shows so that when I turn on the TV, I see a date-descending list of shows (and their watched status). A la DVR. If the Roku had that I'd be all over it. But it still sticks to the silo app model at the end of the day. Just not my cup of tea.

You should try http://www.plexapp.com/ with the roku. It's what I use and it is great.

I tried to get it setup once, but it doesn't work for my situation (for instance, my laptop is usually in hibernation when I'm at home. I have a connected disk that supports DLNA and I wish I could stream from that.) With this considered, just plugging in USB storage is fine. Not ideal, but fine.

Also, when I last tried to use Plex (though, this was more than a year ago), it was extremely clunky. Maybe things are different now, or maybe I was expecting it to behave differently, but I didnt like it.

plexapp is decent, but it really could be a lot better... I use it myself.

I use a combination of mythroku (https://github.com/ear9mrn/MythRokuPlayer/tree/master/mythro...) and plex channels for playing local content on Roku.

What about Tivo? Tivo does the DVR perfectly.

My experience with TiVo (quite recently) has been sub-optimal at best. Slow, incomplete, and 15$ a month. Bad codec support. Crashy.

when you have hundreds of albums and all your DVDs ripped, it's actually preferable to have your sources separated as it makes searching easier. Furthermore, I don't think it's hard to switch between music and videos on XBMC (since you mentioned the "wife test", my non-technical wife manages XBMC fine).

In fact the very reason I switched away from Boxee and Moovida back to vanilla XBMC was because I wanted a media player that separated my music and videos and respected my file system hierarchy.

However looking at the screenshots for this project, it looks like it separates music and video in the same way XBMC does. So I'm not really sure I understand your point.

Music is another beast; I'm focusing on video in my rant. Right now on (e.g.) a Roku, the process of finding a specific show to watch consists of opening several apps: check Netflix... Not there? Check Hulu... Not there? check YouTube. Not there? check NBC.com. Not there? check other stations' content sites. Not there? Check local storage. Not there? Check NAS. All I want is something to organize this into one DVR-like list. It can start the various necessary apps for viewing (not ideal, but I understand their commercial interest to keep their properties siloed). I am just sick of having to dig through every individual source to watch what I want. Furthermore, a good application would keep tabs on release date and watched status for me, like you'd expect from a DVR.

Yeah I did misunderstand you. Sorry :)

What you're describing isn't really a feature I personally want (just having random YouTube results mixed in with offline content would annoy me), however I can totally understand why it would be preferable for many other people.

> Furthermore, a good application would keep tabs on release date and watched status for me, like you'd expect from a DVR.

To be fair, XBMC does do that.

To nitpick: on the Roku, all you have to do to search across all your installed channels is just use the search app. Also there's no official Youtube channel, as far as I know. But I get what you're getting at.

That was the intent of Boxee, although it didn't really do it very well.

Which was really just a skin on XBMC. It had the right idea, too bad so sad.

Thanks for sharing this awesome vision, I totally agree, the Open Web deserves an Open TV :)