I’m sitting here staring at my home entertainment set up. What a mess. Cables and wires are everywhere. Heat and noise are pouring out of multiple boxes. It’s digital hell.

I’ve got about five separate set-top boxes because they all do different things. Can’t I just get one box that does them all?

Right now I have the following sitting in on my home entertainment center: An Xbox 360, a Wii, a cable box, a cable modem, an Apple Time Capsule — and I still don’t have everything I need. I have no DVR and no way to get my iTunes-bought movies to my TV. It looks like I’m going to have to add another two boxes. I shudder at the thought.

Yes, I’m leaning towards getting a Mac Mini with an Eye TV device to turn it into a DVR, but that is somewhat complicated. Certainly more complicated than getting an Apple TV and hooking it up via a single HDMI cable — the Mac Mini has no HDMI output and of course, isn’t supposed to be a DVR. This set up is also more complicated than getting a TiVo, which is built specifically as a DVR.

Apple is missing a real opportunity with its Apple TV. It could be the one box for the living room, but it lacks crucial components like DVR, gaming and a optical disc player. Patents suggest they realize this and are working on solutions, but who knows if those will ever come. If nothing else, I’m sure Hollywood will put pressure on them not to add DVR to a box that is playing their movies.

What we have now are several companies with boxes that do one or two things well but cannot cross over into other areas. The Xbox 360 is close as it plays games and allows you to rent movies – but the movie selection is limited and the box still has no DVR functionality. It also, naturally, won’t play movies I’ve bought on iTunes.

My cable box does DVR if I want it to and gives access to some movies, but it’s UI and overall experience is god awful. I also refuse to use the DVR functionality on it because I refuse to pay the cable company any more money. I already ranted about my $150 cable bill ($110 of which was for TV), well I’ve managed to get that down to $33 after bitching and threatening to cancel everything – but I still eventually want to leave them entirely if they don’t shape up.

The Apple Time Capsule is cool because it’s an external hard drive and a Wi-Fi router, but can’t this just be built in to the Apple TV or Mac Mini? I don’t care if the box is a little bigger. It’s not a portable device, it’s sitting in my living room.

What’s even worse is that none of these boxes talk to one another. They are all just little entertainment islands in my living room.

I want one device that does it all: DVR, plays movies (both digital and discs), plays games, etc. One box with one single HDMI cable. That is my dream. Can anyone make it happen? Probably not.

Even while writing this, I just remembered that I kind of also want to get that new Netflix Roku box. I could be looking at double-digit boxes on my entertainment center. The thought just makes we want to throw them all away.

At least until wireless electricity and wireless HDMI become a reality.