Are you looking for a Media Center PC capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD high definition discs? You might be interested in the new lifeStation hd system by the folks at Passive Technologies. The lifeStation hd system comes with an HD DVD/Blu-ray combo drive embedded within a sleek machined aluminum case design. The product is billed as a Windows Vista solution with support for music, movie, and photo server, TV PVR capabilities, Internet access, and on-demand media services. Although Passive Technologies does not outright mention Windows Media Center, I assume the box utilizes Microsoft’s Windows Media Center as the central user interface (though I could be wrong here).

The chassis utilizes Passive Technologies third generation DynaChill 3 cooling system which provides silent PC operations thanks to its fan-less design. Although actual specs and prices are missing, we do know this much. The system features:

• HDMI support
• 1080p resolutions
• AMD processors presumably
• RAID 1 storage – up to 1.5 Tb of space
• mCrystal DAC boards
• SSD options

As Newlaunches mentions – this system is bound to be rather expensive.

[Check it out via Newlaunches]

Technorati Tags: Passive Technologies, lifeStation hd, Windows Media Center, Windows Vista, HTPC

Samsung officials in Hamburg, Germany have announced that their new dual format BD-UP5000 high definition disc player will be coming out in October of this year for a price of approximately €550. Similar to the LG Electronics dual format player, the BD-UP5000 will support both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. However, Samsung claims that their player will fully support both formats including their interactive technologies – HDi, and BD-Java. The LG dual format player fully supports Blu-ray but will only play the movie portion of an HD DVD disc.

[Check it out]

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