MediaConsole
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Mark Levinson ships activity-based No. 502 Media Console
You know you're an enthusiast when an AV receiver isn't good enough for you and you go the separates route. But leave it to Mark Levinson to give cash-saturated folks another level again. The No. 502 is kicking off a new product series for the company, and indeed the world -- at least that's what Mark Levinson would have you believe -- it's not a mere "A/V processor," but a "Media Console." We're sure the performance is top-notch with the Faraday cage chassis, six HDMI (cough, 1.1, cough) inputs, phase-matched bass management and Gennum VXP broadcast-quality video processing; and certainly the design is a far cry from what we envision when we hear "media console." But at the asking price of about $30,000, we'd like to see gear that does more than bundle an AV processor with Harmony-like activity functionality. Still, it is a gorgeous bit of machinery that screams "high end" without screaming -- check out the pics after the break. [Via CEPro]
Russound and Lifeware join forces to create Media Console
Every few months it seems like some company comes out with some new hotsy-totsy media server setup. CES is no exception, with Russound and Lifeware announcing that they're putting their heads together to create the Viiv-compliant Media Console, complete with a keypad that can display metadata. We don't know much about what exactly these consoles can do (as in specs), nor what they'll cost, but CEPro reports that the higher-end systems will be around $6,000 or $7,000, with two other more inexpensive models sometime in May or June of this year. That said, ZDNET spied a demo model with a Russound multi-zone audio distribution system along with a trio of Lifeware components in a concept house -- however, while the reporter was checking it out, the system had to be rebooted in order while MCE froze. So on second thought, a waiting for a few months might not be such a bad idea after all. [Via ZDNET]
