A Swiss Army Knife From Vidabox

OK, first of all, apologies to everyone, and especially our beloved web monkey, who hates stock photos at shows. I couldn't get a decent shot of the Vidabox equipment so I grabbed an image from the web.

Vidabox was sharing space with Cinepro and using its Lux media server for parts of the demo. Running Vista's media PC interface, this thing manages your music and movie libraries, acts as a dual-tuner HD DVR with two CableCARD slots, and is also a format war killer in offering Blu-ray and HD DVD drives for playback of both formats. Now that's a universal player- and more!

DVDs can be ripped into the system as long as they're not copy protected, or you can hang large CD/DVD changers off of the Vidabox as well. All Music Guide handles the artwork and background info for the music library, and Microsoft provides the channel guide for an easy to use and detailed DVR system. The Vidbox can be expanded to 3.7 terrabytes(!) of storage space.

The Lux isn't cheap at around $7K configured with HD DVD and Blu-ray for the show. But its capabilities are so immense that I assure that I've just scratched the surface here. I'd love to get one of these in for review, hint, hint!

X