As it turns out, a random movie is nice but if I get one that I’m not in the mood for, I’m stuck for 2 hours with the one that’s on. What if I really did want a specific movie I wanted to see? That’s another issue. What I now needed is a way to better control my channel.
Here came the database. I looked at creating an MS Access database but that really wasn’t a direction I wanted to go. This is about the time I poked around on my NAS drive and found out it was much more than a file server. I could, with a click of a button on their user interface, install a database (Maria DB). There you go! I now had a Maria DB and with some upgrades to my C# module, it was now taking requests from the central database.
Why stop there? Why not put my inventory of movies into a table? Hey, maybe I can make certain types of movies play at different times of day randomly! Done!
So the platform ran for a while so I could think about what I could do next. I really didn’t like my HDMI decision. These cables are bulky and require me to send a single channel through the wire at a time. I really wanted to have multiple channels. As it stands, I would have to run a cable for each signal I wanted to send (or switch it in the basement). I also hated to switch modes on the TV from regular OTA to my HDMI signal.
What to do…what to do…