Passive Technologies intros Blu-ray / HD-DVD combo media center
By Donald Melanson 
posted Dec 18th 2007 1:58PM
posted Dec 18th 2007 1:58PM
It's far from the first, but those looking to go format neutral while still keeping things neat and tidy in a media center now have another option to consider from the folks at Passive Technologies, which has just introduced its new LifestationHD unit. While exact specs are still somewhat light, in addition to that Blu-ray / HD-DVD combo drive, you'll apparently get "silent operation" courtesy of unit's DynaChill 3 cooling system, along with an AMD processor of some sort, SSD storage (or up to 9TB with the optional Lifeserver), and "audiophile grade" audio, with a Bluetooth remote and keyboard also available as an option. No word on a price, but given that these things come custom-installed, it likely won't be cheap.
3, 2, 1...
Your countdown fails.
The format war is nearing the end of its first phase, people are settling in for a long haul and all the points have been hashed and re-hashed.
The days of mindless fanboyism on posts faintly related to the format war are (mostly) over, with everyone waiting for the next major announcement or event.
More on topic, this media center looks awesome but I'm sure prohibitively expensive.
Note that Samsung did not posit that these screens would be made for the "home" Engadget did. The use for these panels is "very" clear to anyone who follows movie production. 1080p is the standard for cameras now but with Red One www.red.com and other cameras delivering 4k recording for under 30k we're seeing a shift to acquiring content at 4k resolution and then delivering the output at the appropriate resolution. No they will not be inexpensive and you will not be buying movies at 4k rez for a while if ever. There really is no need for 4k display for consumers for the near future. 4k is a good archival rez but you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between it and 1080p on consumer playback devices.