Niveus, Lifeware Stretch Media Center with Support for 8 CableCards, 10 Extenders

Microsoft worked with these two vendors to double Media Center's current capacity. Coming Soon: Lifeware's LMS-810 "High Density TV" server and Niveus's Pro Series n9.

At CEDIA, Lifeware is showing eight high-def streams from CableCard distributed to 11 displays—one local TV and 10 remote TVs via Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders.

Sep
04

By Julie Jacobson
Filed in: News, Product News, Distributed Video, CEDIA, Media Center, Exclusive
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Most importantly, according to Moorer, eight tuners allows users to build up their movie libraries, setting keywords in Media Center to record any movie featuring their favorite directors, actors, genres....

With its 12 TB of RAID 5 storage, the Lifeware LMS-810 is a great place to build a video library.

For its part, Niveus is coming out with the Niveus Storage Server Cargo Edition. Based on the Windows Home Server platform, the product boasts up to 16 TB of scalable storage.

By allowing five additional Extenders, to boot, households should never have to fight for their content.

"This has finally fulfilled the vision we've had," says Moorer. "You have a gigabit network in your home, and the network switch is your video switch. You've got an ecosystem of Extender devices that you can put with every TV so you're really starting to simplify."

If One CableCard is Difficult, is this 8x Worse?

CableCard is famously painful to configure in PCs. So now Lifeware and Niveus are recommending eight of them?

Moorer says that, with CableLabs' latest firmware, "CableCard got remarkably easier."

In any case, he adds, "They're not a pain once they're set up. There are some isolated CableCard set-up issues but it only occurs once."

For its part, Lifeware has dramatically increased its resources for CableCard support, according to Moorer. "We have a world-class CableLabs authorization support team," he says. "Once authorized, CableCards are almost bullet-proof."

He says that these days it takes about 30 minutes to authorize one CableCard. "With eight, it doesn't take that much longer.

More 8x10 Systems on Horizon?

It isn't clear if more manufacturers will be able to support eight CableCards ad 10 Extenders in the future.

The capability is not part of some formal service pack from Microsoft. Instead, the functionality emerged as part of "collaborative work" between Microsoft and these two vendors, says Collins.

"These are partners that are taking Media Center to the next level," he adds.

Check back today for more Media Center images from the CEDIA Expo 2008 show floor.

Lifeware is at booth #410 at CEDIA Expo 2008.
Check out more news from Lifeware at CEDIA 2008

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Julie Jacobson, Editor-at-large, CE Pro

As a co-founder of EH Publishing in 1994, Julie has edited and contributed to all of the company's publications at one time or another. An authority on home automation, networking, integration, digital convergence and the CE pro channel, Julie speaks often about these subjects at industry events. She graduated with a B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan, and received an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. Julie is a washed-up Ultimate Frisbee player.