This one goes for stored video on harddisk, streaming video over internet and for live TV (I know it will come later).

Seems like there are big problems getting audio and video to play correctly in sync. And yet, no player I have seen have the possibility to do anything about it. Would be nice to be able to nudge audio in either direction while playing until you get it in sync with the video.

I have not seen any player or media center that is able to do this today. I think this could be a feature that can win a lot of fans.

This HAS to be something that can be done while the video is playing. I am not sure how big the buffer should be. It should be enough with 2 sec. In PAL (25 pictures pr. sec) each frame is 40 milliseconds. So if you want to delay audio 1 frame, you delay it 40 milliseconds. But as this also need to work for streaming video that can play back in a variety of framerates, you might have to stop thinking about frames altogether and just delay it in steps of 10 milliseconds at the time...

Here is one that is for the upcoming TV module.

I want a button on the remote to quickly take down the soundlevel a predefined amount. The default should be about 6 db.

We have all been watching a movie late at night and gotten used to the soundlevel of the movie. And then comes commercials. We dive for the remote and desperately try to lower the soundlevel before the kids wake up!

All commercials use compressors on their audio. This makes the perceived level of audio higher even if the technical level is below the required level. Also, they sometimes try to add a little so that it get even higher. And if the broadcaster/tv station does not notice this it will go on air higher than the others...

The rule of thumb in TV today is that they are allowed to have audio up to 6 db above 0 VU. And usually they say that if the sound is compressed it should not get above 3 db above 0 VU. And if the compression is heavy, they should reduce peak levels to 0 db VU. All of them compress heavy today. And all of them leave it a 6 db above 0 VU.

So being able to push a button and knock the soundlevel down 6 db would be perfect. And then hit it again when commercials are over. The amount could be a setting that you can change if you do not like the default.

More on the video side:

It should be able to handle RSS feeds with torrents so you can subscribe to vidcasts. I like the way Miro handles this. You download the vidcast, it stays until you have seen it and then 5 days after it is automatically deleted if you did not specifically save it.

Audio - it needs to handle webradio well. There are several possibilities, a good one would be to be able to tie into the www.radiotime.com website. Their list of radios is very good. But you should be able to add your own channels to it as well.

A comment regarding MP3 players.

This is a function I have never found on any podcast receivers at all.

As Entertainer will handle podcasts and you are thinking about making it possible to handle MP3 players, I think you should make it possible to identify the players when they get connected. In the Entertainer, there should be a setting for each player that getes connected so you can "subscribe" to a selection of the podcasts (and vidcasts) that you like. Entertainer should then check what episodes are already on the player. If any newer exists, these should be transferred. And the older ones on the player should be deleted. There has to be a setting that say how many episodes you want to keep on the MP3 player at any time. This will keep the player from getting filled up by just adding the latest episode until it is full.

By connecting a USB hub to Entertainer, a family can then just connect all their MP3 players in the evening and have them ready with fresh content in the morning, ready for going to work, school, exercise, relaxing or any other activity people prefer to use the MP3 player with.

Photo: I use Lightroom to import, catalog, colorcorrect and add info to my pictures. I am not so sure that Entertainer is the right tool to handle import from cards etc. But it could be handy being able to play pictures directly from memory cards.

One thing though that would be really nice is to enable Entertainer to read the correct IPTC fields and add the title of the picture and caption if it exist.

You might also want to think about a screensaver. If a video is finished and Entertainer go back to some menu, it would be nice to have it go to a screen saver after a number of minutes.

Both normal TV sets and LCD screens get burn-ins. Yes - I have personally seen it in a lot of LCD screens. So your big screen flat tv will get a burn-in from the menues of Entertainer. So please design everyhting with this in mind.

Timer for turning the system off or on.

We use the timer for the TV all the time and will continue to use it. But it might be an idea to put a timer function on Entertainer and let it turn off the TV first and then itself. Turning off the TV can be done through the use of an IR transmitter. If you buy a Microsoft remote (really cheap and it works well) you get an IR receiver with two ir transmitters. So you can attach these to two different devices and control them. One for the TV and one for your set-top box.

A timer for turning Entertainer on can be just as good. It could then wake up and start recording something. Or simply turn the webradio on at a given time, starting at low volume and getting a litte higher as time passes. So you can use it to wake you up. Or otherwise call attention :-)

A way to make a standalone entertainer setup, maybe based on ubuntu or another lightweight distro, so that one can install it on the apple tv :P

Video - Movie info downloaded from imdb or other site automatically (from file name)

Video - Trailer downloaded (youtube?)

Music video (last.fm + youtube mashup) - Why not integrate something like this? (http://tv.timbormans.com/) or http://www.musicmesh.net/index.php

Music - last.fm radio support (with tag cloud?)