For starters, I'd like some box consolidation in my home theater. Right now, I've got an aging DVD player, a TiVo-HD, and an AppleTV.

I bought the AppleTV after spending weeks dorking around and failing to get a decent on-screen UI to stream my music from iTunes down to the home theater. (This was prior to the iPhone "remote" app, which combined with an Airport Express, would have done the job.)

Now that class is over, I'm going to start dorking around with patchsticks for the AppleTV. With Hulu or Boxee or whatever else, I should have a pretty good way to get at free stuff online (e.g., missed TV shows) as well as ripped DVDs on my computer.

I've held off on getting a NetFlix account, but this would seem to increase the value proposition to the point that it's worth it. I'd rather pay $9/month for all I can eat than feel artificially constrained by Apple's $2/show prices. (I'll listen to music over and over, but I rarely want to rewatch a TV show or movie.)

Bumping up the DVD player to a Blu-ray or whatever doesn't seem like it's worth the bother. None of the content I really care about is available on Blu-ray. My daughter, who will happily watch her kid shows over and over, is quite happy with whatever the TiVo has happened to grab. Regardless, I just don't trust the standard box builders to get the UI even half-way right. If I could get rid of shiny round discs altogether, I'd be happy.

My only gripe with NetFlix or AppleTV or whatever is that they don't give you the DVD menus, the multiple soundtracks, and so forth. That's just lame, since you only need to stream one at a time. You've got the damn data. Ship it!

Ideally, at the end of the day, there should be one box in the home theater. Give me TiVo hardware with Apple software (but not Apple's useless remote control), and then toss in third-party extensibility, of the sort that neither Apple nor TiVo is supporting, and then you'd have a real winner.

Oh, and please get Hollywood a clue. No more shiny discs. No lame DRM. I'll give you more of my money if you stop annoying me every time I want to give you money.