2 On Target For Q4 Media Center Servers

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 10/13/2008

NEW YORK — Exceptional Innovations and Niveus Media are on target for their announced fourth-quarter shipments of custom-oriented Media Center A/V servers capable of serving up to eight live and stored digital-cable programs simultaneously throughout the house to up to 10 Media Center extenders.

Niveus Media of Milpitas, Calif., firmed up its ship date, scheduling Nov. 1 for shipment of its Pro Series N9 media server, which doubles the support of current Niveus servers to eight CableCARDs from four and which will simultaneously deliver eight separate video streams to up to 10 Media Center extenders.

To achieve eight-card support, installers will pair the $19,999-suggested N9 with four add-on dual-CableCARD tuners already available at a suggested $1,499 each. Although the N9 is the only Niveus server to date qualified to support the Media Center platform's maximum of eight CableCARDs and 10 extenders, Niveus is currently testing its entire Media Center-based server line to determine if its other servers will support more than four tuners, said a spokeswoman. Test results will be available later this year.

For its part, Exceptional Innovations of Westerville, Ohio, reaffirmed mid-Q4 shipment of its Life|media LMS-810 server, which incorporates eight HDTV CableCARD tuners and HD DVR. It features 12TB of RAID 5 storage for recorded TV, movies, music, photos and videos that can be streamed over a home network to up to 10 Media Center extenders. Pricing still hasn't been announced.

EI also plans add-on CableCARD tuners in two-, four- and six-card versions for connection to existing Life|media servers, which incorporate two tuner cards.