If you want just one device to store, play and stream all your digital music and movies, US company Escient may have the solution.
It's adding to its range of digital music servers with the new Vision Series, designed to store all your CDs and DVDs on a single hard drive.
The flagship VX-600 (£5499) has a whopping four Terabytes of storage capacity – equivalent to 50 MacBook Airs – so there should be plenty of room for even the biggest of disc collections.
The Escient system can import complete DVDs, including menus and extras, but you can strip out DVD trailers and other irritating pre-film features if you so desire. Once loaded on the hard drive, users can search the video library using the cover art – a bit like iTunes Cover Flow – and create bespoke movie playlists.
You can also browse films by title, genre, actor, director and rating.
The VS100 and VS200 players and the VC-1 zone player can spin CDs and DVDs, and the latter can be upscaled to 1080p via the HDMI 1.3a output.
If you want the system to deliver multiroom entertainment, up to ten VC-1 players can be run off a single VX server, and up to four VX units can be linked together to provide storage of around 2400 films.
The system can be configured to allow you, say, to watch a film on your HD projector in the front room, listen to music in the bedroom and watch a slideshow of your family photos on the flatscreen TV in the kitchen.
And of course no such system would be complete without an optional iPod dock, in this case the Escient FP-1.
The complete Vision range will be available from Easter. Prices are:
- VS100 £2999
- VS200 £3999
- VC-1 £1499
- VX600 £5499
