T.V.

The T.V. in the house can feed data to a central computer, which would then be able to make decisons about turning it on and off, and volume and channel selection. The computer would need to be able

Data
A central computer could be detecting what buttons have been pressed on the remote to see what kinda of operations on the T.V. have been preformed. It would record the buttons pressed and then could make decisions on it's own to help the user.

Duration / Power On/Off
By measuring the time from Power on to Power off the computer would know how long the T.V. has been on. It could try to find a pattern, like every monday from 8:00Pm to 10:00Pm it would know to have the T.V. on if this has been the pattern for the last 3 weeks.

Volume
The volume of the T.V. could be changed automatically as a person moves away from the T.V. based on the Center of Mass program built in the house. The volume of the T.V. could be cut in half if the phone rang or the doorbell rang.

Channel
Based on past data the computer could make a decision to have the T.V. on at a certin time, on the correct channel. If a channel is changed often, then the computer would recognise this as "Channel Surfing" and would know that it's not important, so if the phone rang, or the doorbell rang, it would automatically shut off. Assuming the Couch patato dident find something interesting and left it on one channel for more then 30 seconds.