Fuze Media Systems unveiled their full home media system, which has several advantages over the pretty and fully competent Microsoft Windows Media Center. In a nutshell, it’s designed to be used throughout the entire house, with multiroom streaming. There are extenders called the Fuzemini that have HDMI out, DVD/CD drives, CableCARD. There’s even a touchscreen control panel, on top of the regular remote. But hold on: This Media Center PC isn’t actually a PC.
It’s built on an Intel platform. But you never have access to the desktop, for reliability reasons. (No internet access?) It does whole house audio, synced. And the UI in those screenshots have blue backgrounds, and familiar MCE menus, but they’re not.
Media can be sent to the rest of the house using Ethernet and the Fuzemini boxes. But using CAT-5 cables (via USB adapter) audio can also be sent to powered amp’d wall switches, complete with track controls (but no actual TCP-IP). And there are even powerline versions of this panel.
Hmm. Interesting. We’ll see how it plays, and how much it costs.[Fuze via CEPro]