When the PC hobbyist thinks about building a library of
their DVDs where they can select a movie at the touch of a button, the majority
would consider building a multimedia PC (such as one designed to look like an AV
receiver), insert a huge HD and then perform the tedious task of ripping each
movie. Well, for those who have the extra cash and don't want to spend
many hours in front of a PC ripping discs, Niveus has a different solution
- its daisy-chainable Ice Vault 200-disc DVD-changer.
This DVD equivalent of a Jukebox can hold up to 200
DVDs and is specifically designed to work with any Niveus Media Changer PC via
Firewire. When a selection of DVDs are loaded, the Niveus Media Center
retrieves the DVD case images and details online and the selection of DVDs is
presented on screen within Windows Media Center's 'My DVDs' section. For
those who have an enormous DVD collection, several 200-disc changers can be
daisy-chained to handle collections of even well over 1,000 DVDs. The
changers come as a stackable or rack-mount form factor.
|
With this in mind, high-end audio/video manufacturer Niveus has just announced a 200-disc DVD-changer for the (very rich) everyman which allows for on-screen selection of the desired movie. (Further down the article) Several Ice Vaults can be daisy-chained together, giving you access to over 1000 titles, and metadata is automatically updated as new discs are added. |
As pricing has yet to be announced, chances are that this will not be within
everyone's budget, much like those 50+ CD Jukeboxes. Then again, for those
who have enough space below their TV and don't have the time to manually
re-encode their entire DVD collection (not to mention learning how to do so for
the novice user), this may do just the job.
On the other hand, one may think why not just offer a system which automates
the job of importing loaded discs on to an internal hard drive? Well,
apparently the system would need to break the CSS copy-protection, which
obviously not be tolerated by the movie industry. This system instead
holds the user's physical DVD collection, so nothing is copied, i.e. once the
user removes a disc it no longer remains in the archive. HD-DVD and
possibly Blu-ray will offer the capability to build a library of movies on a PC without legal
issues.
The major drawback I see is that not only does the disc changer depend on a
PC to operate, it specifically requires a Niveus Media Centre PC, which
basically forces the consumer to buy one of their PCs if they want to get one of
these changers. There are many other DVD changers on the market that can
operate independent of a PC, so chances are that this will not be appealing to
consumers who don't want any sort of PC being tied into their home
entertainment system.
Source: engadget - Home Entertainment
