Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo E is a home media PC which became very popular lately. Scaleo E looks nice (it won’t break an interior of your living room) and features:
- Intel Pentium 4 630 (3GHz)
- 1GB of Ram
- Intel 915 chipset
- Integrated graphics
- 250GB hard drive
- Dual layer DVD writer
- Outputs: 2 Scart, S-video, DVI, VGA outputs
- Inputs: S-video, composite
- Windows XP Media Center Edition
- 430 x 425m x 100m (w x d x h)
- 15kg
One of the most important parameters of home media PC is noise level. Scaleo E quiet enough but the noise increase when a DVD is spinning or the fans need to crank up to cool down the processor. The price of the Fujitsu-Siemens media PC is about $1400. It’s more expensive then ordinary PC which can be easy transformed to the PVR and made quiet enough for living room. Certainly, to do that you should have necessary technical knowledge and free time 
Samsung has announced a new “smart” oven. It reads special barcode from the frozen food package and cooks it according to the activated program. Before the intelligence came down to choice of oven program according to food type – chicken, beef, pizza etc. The using of smart barcodes is a big step to the smart kitchen where human shouldn’t know what food is in the package
Also, Smart Oven has extremely stylish design and uses innovation technology of the optimum mix of fan oven cooking, with microwaves to deliver perfect cooking in extra quick time.
The Smart Oven can decorate your kitchen just for $300.
[via Personal Tech Pipeline]
The security is one of important parts of the smart home. Camera 7546BB can see 100 feet in total darkness. It’s possible because of the camera features 66 high-power IR LEDs. Detailed specification can be found here.
The Gray Stone Outdoor Entertainment System may look like a set of three elegant garden stones, but inside is a full AM/FM/auxiliary stereo outdoor entertainment system. The main rock has an 8-inch subwoofer and 160 watts, while the satellite speakers are 6.5-inch two-way speakers with 100 watts each. The central rock includes a marine-grade digital AM/FM tuner as well as a concealed storage compartment and hookup for your iPod, MP3 player or CD player.
Here is a good example of using newest Intel-based MacMini as HTPC. The installation includes Samsung HLR5078W, Dual-Core Mac Mini, Series 2 Tivo, Comcast HD STB.
Samsung is going to release a SSD-enabled version of its Q1 Ultra Mobile PC. This upgraded model features a 32GB NAND flash-based solid state disk, an Intel Celeron M 353 (900-MHz) processor, 512MB of DDR2 memory, 7-inch WVGA TFT-LCD display, embedded DMB tuner, 802.11 a/b/g WLAN, Bluetooth 2.0, stereo speaker (2W x 2), and SRS sound enhancement.
[via Akihabara]
To watch analog TV on your Mac you can use TVMicro. The TVMicro is a USB TV tuner device with a remote control and compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4 and above. Also, TVMicro can record TV straight to your hard drive in VCD (MPEG-1), S-VCD (MPEG-2) or DVD (MPEG-2) quality. The price in Japan is around $100.
How should look like a kitchen in the smart home? Maybe it should be something like Z. Island by DuPont™ Corian®. The futuristic design and an “intelligent” environment that responds to the desires of the senses make the innovative functional kitchen:
The project envelops multimedia equipment, sound actuators and LEDs within a flowing shell of Corian® – the original solid surface from DuPont – enabling users to surf the internet, listen to music or create a particular ambience by means of a centralized touch-control panel.
It’s absolutely amazing! I like this concept! But I’m affraid I’ll be always hungry because I’m lost in the Internet on the kitchen table
[source: Yanko Design]
