There was a point, just before VCR's were introduced, when home media was simple. Less feature filled than today by a lot, but simple. What I mean by that is that you would get your components, a bunch of RCA audio cables (red and white), and just plug everything in. It was pretty easy to do, and the same cables worked everywhere.

Then cable TV and the VCR arrived, and things got a little more complicated. Suddenly you had the split the cable signal and feed it through the VCR. Still not too bad, but a little harder, especially if you decided to hook your speakers through it.

Now, we've arrived at the huge ball of complexity that Russell Beattie sketched out on his site. Click over there and look at the picture - it's more than most people have in their homes, but not a lot more. In our family room, we have a ReplayTV, a Comcast cable box/DVR, and an older digital cable box just for the Replay (since it can't handle HD). There are 5 other A/V inputs in use on that TV, and most of it flows through the receiver.

The array of cabling needed to hook it all up is no longer the simple set of RCA cables - now there's component video, S-Video, coax, ethernet, and DVI. Probably other things I'm not remembering right now. It's enough to make your head swim; we have photographs of the setup taped to the back of the TV, so we can get it right without having to hand trace the cables.

Now, there's a new kicker to slap into the mix: DRM. That's the focus of James Governor's addition to this topic. It's bad enough that the equipment is hard to set up optimally - it gets worse when you get to play a delightful game of "which piece of equipment will let me play this legally owned content I have here?". James has some thoughts on the subject, and they seem reasonable to me.