Boss Box From Alienware

The Hangar18 from Dell’s boutique brand Alienware is like a muscle car of home media servers: up to four tuners (two digital, two analog), two terabytes of storage, 1080p resolution over HDMI, 200 watt surround sound amplifier, a DVD drive (eventually Blu-Ray) and WiFi.

Of course, all those boss specs will cost you — the model line starts at $1,999.

My eyes pass over such an unrealistically expensive price tag. I’m perfectly happy with last-gen hardware running open-source software to play back standard-definition video. And while the Apple TV certainly has a number of faults, including what I feel is too high a price, I could conceivably give up some shoe shopping for one. This thing, I’d have to miss a more than a few meals over.

But maybe you readers are in a higher tax bracket, or have better credit, and want more of this stuff? If so, I’m happy to post more drool-worthy tech like this if only to daydream.

In related set-top news, Dave Zatz suggests that TiVo is getting ready to start offering direct-to-box downloads from Amazon’s Unbox service, which would sidestep the currently required layover on a computer before it gets to your TV — though he says he still prefers his XBox 360 HD video downloads.