Blueado m5e Media Center - Mini Media Center Designed for your Living Room. The device is about the size of a small shoe box (4.2 in (10.7 cm) W X 7 in (17.8 cm) H X 12 in (30.5 cm) D) . It runs MS XP MCE and according to the manufacturer it runs virtually silent.

 

Features:

250 Hours of High Quality Video - This must be Standard Definition 

Create your own DVDs from your favorite TV Shows - You can dump shows that are recorded on the hard drive to the DVD burner. You can also copy your familiy videos to DVD.

Built in ATSC and NTSC tuners - watch and record OTA HDTV.  

Store and playback music and listen to Internet Radio  

Support for Digital Photo Storage Cards - reads and writes Compact Flash I & II, Memory Stick, Smart Media, and Secure Data cards

 

Aquavision -  Televisions designed for use in your bathroom and shower.  Available in 10.4 and 15 inch 4:3 screens. There are two widescreen versions at 17 and 23 inch. The scrrens are heated to prevent fogging and they include a waterproof floating remote control.

 

Philips MiraVision  - is it a reflective mirror or is it an LCD TV. Turn the TV off and it is a mirror. Turn it on and it is a LCD TV.

 

We have talked about some alliances and consortiums, like HANA and MoCA, that are trying to make home video networks a reality.  Last week we had the opportunity to meet with Bill Thompson, the President of a company called usTec.  They claim to have already made the dream of home video networking a reality with their tecStream product.

What if you heard there was a product on the market that could support 30 simultaneous high definition video streams over one Cat5 cable?  What if that same product also carried traditional Ethernet and phone line traffic over the same cable so that your audio-video, internet/lan and phone network all existed on the same Cat5 line?  That's what tecStream does.  The tecStream system is comprised of one main switch that handles all of the trafiic between any of the two proprietary set-top boxes in your home.  The two flavors of set-top box have identical outputs, but allow either one or two input into the system, via very-close-to-real-time analog to digital encoders.

The system is currently only available through custom installers, but we can discuss setup briefly anyhow.  Setup is very simple.  You add the switch at your "home-run" location, the place where all your Cat5 cables are run to.  Then in each room you simply plug in one of the two set-top boxes, the tecStream 2000 or the tecStream 2500, and your ready to configure.  Configuration is fairly straight forward: you sit in front of one of the set top boxes to name all of them (family room, den, home theater, kitchen, etc.) and name the devices connected to them (DVD player, Cable box, Media Center PC, etc.).  Once you've done that, you learn all the IR codes for each device into the tecStream system.  The IR codes are then automatically distributed out to each set-top box, so you can control any device from any connected room.

Once everyting is installed and configured, you can go to each room and control or watch anything from any other connected room.  All you need is the tecStream remote.  If you have a nice universal remote, like a Harmony, Home Theater Master or a Pronto, it can learn the tecStream IR commands and control the system as well.  Then you have a fully functioning audio-video network, to any room in the house.

The one catch is that the tecStream only supports high defintion, input and output, via IEEE 1394, or firewire, connections.  Everything else is 480i analog.  The inputs are either composite video or s-video, with composite, s-video and component outputs.  As the penetration of firewire devices increases, the viability of the tecStream system as an HD video network will grow, but until then it's standard def only.  We asked if they would be adding digital inpust and outputs, for HD video and surround sound audio, but they aren't sure yet.  They're really looking for firewire to be the  HD solution.

UsTec, the company behind tecStream, has been in the structured wire business for many years.  In fact, after speaking with Mr. Thompson, I went home to see who makes the structure wiring solutions installed in my own home (which is probably something I should know, but don't) and it happens to be usTec.  As wiring pros, I asked how much the average home owner should expect to pay to retrofit his or her home with Cat5.  They estimated a cost of around $100 per room - which is quite a bit less than I anticipated.  It all has to do with the compexity of the installation, but to think you can run Cat5 to eight rooms in your home for under $1000 seems very reasonable.  But on top of that, how much would the tecStream system set you back?  Since it's only available through custom installation, there is no set MSRP.  They estimated that a standard installation of between four and eight rooms would cost between $5000 and $12,000.  That would include all the hardware, set-up and configuration.  For what it can do, today, right now, it's a great value.