Does anyone else get this magazine?
They have a really interresting article called "Lords of the Digital Jungle" in which they describe current companies efforts to release a consumer friendly 'box' Media Center (for lack of a better term). Pretty much they are saying that it's gonna take $10,000+ to put one in your home right now. And none of the ones they talk about have all of the capabilities of MC.
It made me think immediately of the building across form J River that Jim wants to stock with goodies for sale.
Jim, you MUST read this article. A basic machine networked with a terabyte of HD space in a RAID array would blow away anything in this article, and you could sell it for 1/2 the price and still make 300% margins.
I checked EH online and they do not have the article online yet (they still show March as the current issue). I will keep checking and post a link if they put one up.
If you want both CD and DVD hard-drive storage, your only route we know of as of this writing is an AMX MAX Multimedia Server System, or MMS as it's called. The MAX systems originate from Media Access Solutions, a company AMX purchased last fall. The MMS server line provides storage for 125 to 900 DVDs, or 1.2 to 7.2 terabytes - a small video store - with prices ranging from $10,200 to $60,000 respectively. AMX says you can store about 25 CDs for every DVD's worth of storage space. So you can rip DVDs and CDs to the same place and have them appear on a graphical interface. Although you will need a control system with that...
So at least in theory, hard-drive media servers accommodating both CDs and DVDs are feasible in the $10,000 neighborhood, a price level which would certainly come down as more are produced.
Very interesting read...