Avid4 is the fourth iteration of my "Avid" (Audio Visual Integrated Delivery) software, which is my personal system that I use for watching, recording and playing TV, movies, music and photos.
It integrates:
- Digital TV
- Digital radio
- TV time-shifting
- On-disk TV & radio recording and playback
- Integrated electronic program guide for scheduled recordings
- DVD
- Audio jukebox
- Photos
- BBC iPlayer
- Sky
- Spotify
In so far as anything is novel in this line, the novelty is in the way in which it is controlled. The significant point is that a single touch phone or tablet user interface controls everything, in a totally integrated fashion. The remote control is fully bidirectional and interactive. There are no conventional InfraRed controlers anywhere. It was very important that it all could be used by non-technical people. It also has to look right, and fit in to a living room environment.
This is the fourth such system I have built since 2005. The first one (obviously known as "Avid") used a Pocket PC for remote control but was retired as a result of hardware unreliability after over six years continuous service. The second one ("Avid2") was retired after only a year as a result of major refurbishment of the living room and the AV equipment. Many of the original "Avid" ideas have survived intact in Avid4, though with a "touch" flavour in place of a stylus. Also the capability has grown over the years, with the addition of (e.g.) Sky, Spotify and BBC iPlayer. Original Avid was obviously much more novel in its time. But I remain surprised that there are still few commercial offerings with a fully bi-directional remote control. Once used to the flexibility offered by such systems it is extremely difficult to return to "old fashioned" one-way InfraRed controllers.
All the software and documentation I have developed for Avid4 is in this repository and freely available under the MIT license.
Note: The name for my project was chosen before I discovered the existence of the Avid digital video editing systems. I assume no-one will be confused by this. I'm certainly not!
The project name "Avid4G.Net" has evolved along the way, acquiting sufixes
- The ".Net" came in with Avid3, which moved the software to an ASP.Net IIS platform.
- The "G" came when Avid4.Net moved from my private TFS repository to GitHub.