In one sense, distributed video has been around for as long as TV—put a splitter (right) on the antenna or the cable feed and you had video wherever you wanted it. But you pretty much needed a VCR for each room unless you wanted to string another set of cables or go to the other room and set an A-B switch, right? If you were originally a Beta disciple, you ended up with a second VCR anyway. (Did you ever get all those movies transferred before your last Betamax died?) Maybe you were into video disks. That added another device and now you needed an A-B-C switch.

Ok, next you needed a "multiswitch" (left) for the satellite feed. Then the DVD player gave you the same problems as the VCR. Your TiVo (or Replay) let you record one show while you watched another, but you needed multiple TiVo's for multiple TV's unless they were all tuned into the same thing at the same time.

Today, distributed video means a single set of sources — one satellite feed, one DVD player, one "off air" antenna, etc., and a distribution network to get the signal where you want it. Of course, with proprietary technologies like TiVo, it's not quite as simple as it could be, but at Infinite Sight and Sound we strive to make it simple to use by moving the complicated parts to what we do when we set up the system, not in what you have to do to use it.

Furthermore, technology that originated in the computer world offers exciting new possibilities for distribution of audio, video, still pictures, and text. All these can be saved as digital data on a media server, a computer specifically designed for rapid, continuous data access. It is then transmitted as digital data over a network using internet style protocols, and played back by a receiver set up to display data the same way a browser displays it.