I wish all my various home electronic devices connected to each other via ethernet, instead of a tangle of coax, s-video, and rca cords.

In the late '90s there was big talk of connecting electronics in a similar way, but that fell through I guess.

I'd prefer wireless.

I'd prefer firewire (better isochrony support). I remember a couple pushes to do this, like HAVi, which might be what Jerrid is remembering.

Heck, I'd be happy if the controls (not even the content itself) could be networked. There were a handful of products in the early 90s that had some support for this but they all sucked.

Ethernet might not be an optimal protocol, but it's ubiquitous, cheap, is already present in many houses, and works well over long distances. If you plug devices that require low latency communication into the same switch, there shouldn't be any contention or QoS issues. For devices on the same 100mb switch, latency is pretty low (ping time of 100 microseconds or so).

Wireless might be good in some cases, but configuration, security, and QoS are harder. I don't really care if my neighbors can watch whatever movie I'm watching by eavesdropping on my signal, but it might not be a good idea for a default configuration, and setting up wireless networks correctly can in some cases be more inconvenient than just plugging in a wire.

I would much rather deal with the inconvenience of setting up a wireless network and keeping it secure than continue to have cords and cables strewn everywhere like I do now.

not ethernet, but something smoother than what i've got. wireless? maybe.