NEWS - Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Voodoo Unveils PC-Xbox Combo System
THE LAUNCH OF MEDIA CENTER 2005 brought out a huge list of me-too announcements, we are pleased to introduce yet another lookalike PC with a cheesy remote stuffed into the box. Then came one that really stood out, the Voodoo Vibe, but it is more than just looks, not that the looks are that bad Red on black or black on red, how can you go wrong. The thing that really caught my attention was not the cool case, but the XBox sitting beside it. It is not a simple color matched XBox, it is an XBox with the Media eXtender package shipped as a part of the system. The Vibe on the other hand is a high end PC with a Athlon64, more than a Terrabyte of HD space, and just about every bell and whistle you can think of. It is a gaming PC in every sense of the word. As the folks from Voodoo pointed out, why the heck would you want to put such a brutally high end PC on it’s side and next to a TV? You want it near you to play games on with a big high rez monitor, not in your stereo cabinet. That is where the XBox comes in. Now, the Media eXtender part is where Voodoo made the brilliant move. You keep the PC where it should be, next to you, and put the eXtender by your TV and stream all your Terrabytes of video to it. Think of the XBox as a glorified remote node for the Vibe, PCAnywhere for video and audio. It is a win/win, and a really bright move. As far as I can tell, no one is doing this, it is only Voodoo that is stepping out and doing the right thing, not the ordinary thing. Add in a Logitech Harmony remote, two tuners capable or playback and recording at the same time, and you have one hell of a box. You also have something that as far as I can tell, no one else has. It is not cheap, but it is beautiful and innovative. MS’s intrusive DRM aside, it is one heck of a chunk of hardware.Source: http://www.theinquirer.net
