Movie Cowboy blends media hub, iPod dock
updated 10:45 am EDT, Fri April 24, 2009
Movie Cowboy Media Hub
Digital Cowboy today provided an all-in-one alternative for media hubs in the Media Cowboy DC-MC35ULI. The set-top box takes any 3.5-inch SATA hard drive and will play common audio and video formats up to 720p but also has its own top-mounted Dock Connector to play music and video directly from any click wheel iPod; a remote supports controlling both the Media Cowboy's internally stored content as well as that on Apple players.
It also has a built-in Ethernet connection for network media sharing, including native YouTube and Picasa viewing on the hub itself as well as piping its own video out to a web browser for remote access. It can natively handle video up to 720p in MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 formats as well as DivX, MOV, RMVB, WMV XViD and H.264 either by itself or in a Matroska container (MKV). For audio, common formats like AAC, MP3 and WMA are braced by support for OGG and surround sound in Dolby AC3 or DTS.
Output is provided by one each of HDMI, component and RCA along with optical audio; an RCA input provides an option for recording standard-definition video in MPEG-2 form. USB in and out provides a way of attaching storage or transferring content from a computer.
Digital Cowboy ships the MC35ULI to Japan sometime in early May and is expected to price it at the equivalent of $255. An international release hasn't been mentioned as part of the introduction. [via Impress]
