Dvr Design Problem
title: DvrDesignProblemGeneral —
Digital Video Recorder
Trying to beat the competition to develop a better set-top box, the company you work for has designed a new DVR with built-in MPEG-4 encoding, hardware based high-definition HD up and down sampling (it can handle 720 I and P and 1080 I and P), all with a terabyte of storage and 2GB of memory. It also includes two HDMI ports, Ethernet connectivity, optical outputs, etc.
We need to create an amazing user experience that includes watching live TV; recording up to 4 additional channels while watching a 5th already-recorded video and creating something similar to a season pass that will record all occurrences of a given show on a given channel.
There is an upcoming trade show in 19 weeks and we need something to demonstrate if we want to have a chance at making any kind of impact in the next year. Since we generally spend most of our marking dollars at this trade show, the deadline is important.
title: DvrDesignProblemProductOwner —
Product Owner
During initial discussions with the product owner, a few things might become clear (if asked):
- The system downloads program information over Ethernet. It offers a dial-up service for a small monthly fee, but the Ethernet service is free.
- A season pass needs to allow some amount of configuration:
- number of episodes to record
- the same show on other channels
- to keep the episodes before automatically deleting them
- only new or new and repeat episodes
- watches this show – so if two or more people in a household watch a show but don’t watch it at the same time, the show won’t be deleted until everybody has watched it.
- Shows can be rated when watched. This information is anonymously fed to an online service that tracks ratings.
- The system can make recommendations based on what you like compared to what other people like (all anonymously).
- The system should integrate well with FaceBook, YouTube and SecondLife (or other popular social networking/web 2.0 sites)
- The system can both be connected to a TV and a monitor, with PiP support on the TV and the monitor can either show a second show or show a browser and general access to the system.
- The system should use open source where possible and the solution should be open sourced itself
- The system supports both playing music fed over the network connection as well as by the service provider. It can also access your ITunes music and other music on your network, if available.
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