This is no longer a vacation. It's a quest. It's a quest for fun (UB1)

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted. Good thing I never made any promises as to how often I would update.

My thoughts today turn to content hardware. I avoided saying media players, set-top box, etc. here on purpose. Those are the terms commonly used to describe the box I am envisioning, but they simply aren't adequate. Each describes only a small portion of what I believe this piece of hardware should be doing.

I was going to initially have this be an in-depth post on what I think the box should have, how it should be presented, etc. Instead, I think I'm going to approach it incrementally. A series of posts describing the various features, or products that implement portions of them. I'll include at the end of my wacky subject lines a UB (Ultimate Box) abbreviation on posts that apply to this topic. Eventually, I'll try to create a summary post that ties everything together.

Today I saw a new product that serves a fairly cool purpose. It is the PC-P3LWG/DVD from Buffalo Technology. This device is a progressive-scan DVD player with the following cool features:

• 802.11g wireless connection for streaming audio and video
• Support for a large variety of compression schemes (WMV, WMV HD, DivX, DivX HD, MP3, WMA, etc.)
• Automatic up-conversion on HD-capable sets. (720p and 1080i)
• USB port for connecting additional media locations (Flash drive, Hard drive, auxiliary DVD or CD, etc.)

The price is a bit steep right now at $300, but that isn't completely out of line. This box serves a wide range of purposes for me. It would allow the media to be stored off on a giant server and drive array somewhere else in the house, and not require running additional cabling to the DVD player. I can see where potentially with more online delivery of movies (and a blazing fast Internet pipe) that the compressed HD format files might be very nice.

From an immediate needs standpoint, I like the automatic up-conversion for playing on my HD set. The documentation doesn't mention it either, but this is available through either a DVI or HDMI (can't tell which) connector. It's also nice that this player has a multi-format drive. Many current players including mine only support DVD-Video and DVD-R. This drive support rewritables and +R varieties alike.

I really like the enormous support for compressed media formats as well. I was already impressed when I read the overview, but I was slightly miffed that it didn't support AAC, given my growing iTunes collection. Lo and behold, I read the full specs and find out it supports the following:

• dat, mpg, mpe, mpeg, m2v, m1v, vob, avi, asf, divx, xvid, rmp4, mp4, vro, m4v, m2p, hnl, wmv, wmv hd, divx hd
• mp3, mp2, ogg, wav, aac, wma, pls, m4a, ac3, mp1, mpa, asf, m3u
• jpg, gif, bmp, tif, png

Yeah, that's pretty much the kitchen sink. This thing will display pretty much any form of media that you've got. The glossy sheet also completely ignores the fact that this thing has an Ethernet jack as well. That way if you do have a network drop near your player, you can do your streaming over a nice, fat 100 MBs link.

Here's what I feel is missing from this specific piece of hardware. I won't go into the complete details of what it is lacking to be the Ultimate Box (UB) yet.

1. Why in the hell is the USB port only on the front? I can see using a hard drive far more often than I would use a flash drive, or pull from my camera. At the very least, throw a port on the back as well.
2. The wireless security is fairly primitive. The literature only claims support for WEP 128. I would like 802.1x at the very least, although by now I would expect WPA2 support.

Stay tuned for additional posts fleshing out more details on this Ultimate Box (UB).