System and method for allowing family members to access TV contents and program media recorder over telephone or internet

A unified access system for controlling audio/video components, comprising:

• a unified access controller having port for communicating with at least one audio/video component and for supplying control commands to said component;
• a speech recognition system coupled to said unified access controller;
• said speech recognition system having a first input for user entry of spoken information by microphone and a second input for user entry of spoken information by telephone;
• storage system for acquiring and storing an electronic program guide that identifies program content that is available for presentation through said audio/video component;
• natural language parser coupled to said speech recognition system and to said storage system for extracting semantics from said user entry of spoken information and for correlating said extracted semantics with said electronic program guide.