Home theater component for a virtualized home theater system

A home theater component in a home theater comprising a plurality of home theater components including the home theater component, comprising:

• a network interface communicatively coupling the home theater component to a Wide Area Network (WAN) via a router and adapted to receive a media content stream destined for the home theater component from a virtualized home theater service via the WAN, wherein the media content stream has a plurality of absolute playback timestamps and is one of a plurality of media content streams sent from the virtualized home theater service to the plurality of home theater components in order for desired multimedia content to be presented at the home theater, and the plurality of media content streams comprises a different media content stream for each of the plurality of home theater components;
• circuitry adapted to provide playback of the media content stream according to the plurality of absolute playback timestamps for the media content stream comprising a delay buffer adapted to delay the media content stream from the network interface according to a delay adjustment value controlled based on the plurality of absolute playback timestamps for the media content stream;
• and
• a delay adjustment calculation function adapted to, for each absolute playback timestamp of at least a subset of the plurality of absolute playback timestamps for the media content stream, update the delay adjustment value based on a difference between an absolute playback time defined by the absolute playback timestamp and a current time.