QNX-based media server takes home EISA award

I know that it may come as a shock, but often, judges hand out industry awards without laying their hands on a single product. They simply review the written award submissions and dole out prizes based on what they’ve read.

The European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) takes a different approach. It insists that the products submitted for its annual awards are made available for detailed, hands-on evaluation. And this year, the evaluation process resulted in an EISA Best Product award for the QNX-based Harman Kardon DMC 1000 media server.

Equipped with a 250GB internal hard drive, the DMC 1000 can digitize and catalogue more than 60,000 songs. It comes with USB jacks and memory-card slots, so you can quickly stock up the hard drive with music, movies, and photos from all your personal devices: iPods, cell phones, digital cameras, camcorders, thumb drives, etc. Other features include a 1080p upscaling DVD player and the ability to distribute 4 audio streams throughout your home.

I’m in the process of digitizing analog tapes that I recorded almost 30 years ago. If someone told me in 1980 that I would eventually digitize this material and play it on a home media server or handheld MP3 player, I’d have stared at them as if they had 3 heads. (A tape deck with 3 heads, on the other hand, I would have gladly welcomed.) Things have changed since then, and thank goodness for that: I'll take a single, sleek DMC 1000 over a wall of cassettes any day.

For more info on the DMC 1000, check out the Design News article, "New Media Center Stops Blue Screen of Death."