Peter Wilson
Sun
HP has a display of what it calls its digital living room as demonstrated by Jeff Cates, consumer business manager. Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
Digital images, music files and downloaded videos not only hog space on hard drives, but they’re also valuable assets either in dollars or as memories.
And a sudden crash can wipe everything out, including your most precious photos.
As well, with the addition of high-definition television to our lives, a lot of us want to get that content from our computers to our living room.
Tech giant HP believes it has the answer with its latest lineup of devices — including its Media Vault and MediaSmart TV — and it came to Vancouver this week to show them off.
Basically, the Media Vault is a network-connected device — with either a 300 or 500 gigabyte hard drive ($1,300 and $1,500 respectively) — that connects to a home network.
“It allows you to back up all of your content from all of the different PCs and notebooks in your house,” Jeff Cates, consumer business manager for HP Canada’s personal systems group said in an interview.
Then, added Cates, all that content can be streamed out to other devices like your high-definition television set via a directly connected Ethernet cable or wirelessly.
If you need more capacity for the Media Vault or simply want to duplicate what’s on the main drive, you can simply add another one in the slot provided.
“And there are USB ports on the back as well as the front so you can add extra drives,” said Cates. “And there are three print servers built in so you can print from all of your computers to a single printer.”
While the Media Vault can be used with Macs as well as Windows machines, Cates pointed out that Microsoft’s upcoming media server platform will allow users to access content from Media Vault while they’re on the road. Or they can let friends and relatives get access to photos and music.
HPs first MediaSmart TV also connects to a user’s home network.
“HP has been the first to come out with [Internet protocol]-based TV,” said Cates. “What that means is that you can connect it to your home network, your notebook, your desktop and pull all the content out. So you can see your pictures, your videos and hear your music through it.”
Although the present 37-inch model ($1,800) offers a 720p picture (the highest broadcast quality), other HP MediaSmart TVs will feature a 1080p picture, or one good enough to handle HD DVD content.
“As well as having access to what’s on your PC, the Media-Smart TV also allows you to go out to the Internet and pull content,” said Cates. “It’s similar to Apple iTV but it’s not going back to a proprietary solution.
“You’re able to go to partners like Cinema Now and Rhapsody and pull content from their sites. With Cinema Now you could buy or rent a movie and download to your PC but stream to the Media-Smart and it will all operate through a remote.”