What grabbed me most once I sort of got to grips with LMCE was the scalability of the system. When we did some big alterations on the house I did some basic planning of my ideal system but knew I couldn't justify (or source) the funds to go the whole hog but all I had to do at building time was put in the conduits for the network jacks! Brilliant. In this part of the world we still build houses mostly with brick walls so putting in wiring afterwards is expensive and messy but if you plan right when building you just stick in the conduits and blank points at almost no extra cost.
Then I have pulled in the cables later as I've expanded my system... media director by media director.
To me this is a real winner that can suit the average guy who doesn't have the cash or can't at this stage see the benefit of full home automation and media. All he has to do at build time is "future proof" his building a bit with the infrastructure at very little extra cost and then all the rest can be added as required.
The fact that it all runs off an IP network is also wizardry as far as I'm concerned. No need to pull in 2'' video or audio cables and have a massive amplifier driving high-end speakers- it makes so much sense to have the processing and decoding done at the client end and then only send compressed audio/video over the network.
So the flexibility and architecture is a winner.
For Christmas (and note I'm willing to tackle all these projects on my own when I can), I'd like-
* Synchronised audio at media directors (same song, at same point, multiple places). So synchronised multiroom audio without using squeezeslaves. I know opinion is divided on the subject - I say it is possible, everyone else says it isn't ;-)
* streaming video from security cameras. my single IP camera works like a charm but I gather it's sending static images fast enough for me not to know the difference. Fine for now but as I add cameras it could be problematic.
* Slicker and sexier UI
* Knowledge of what works and what doesn't....
The last two have been mentioned by others and I think they are, to some degree, a product of a community project like this. Understandably, the limited dev time is focussed on getting devices (new and existing) up and running. Much more sensible than someone spending hours trying to tweak the look and feel or document / categorise /maintain the wiki or working out that one strange bug that is so easily worked around.
All in all, though, I love it and thanks to everyone involved. Keep it up guys.
