Escient Announces Delivery for Media Management Products

Escient’s VS-100, VS-200 and VC-1 all feature external control capability via Ethernet.

The new Vision series will be available to store your movies, music and photos beginning February 2008.

FireBall fans (and wannabe owners) will be happy to know that Escient has announced a ship date for its new Vision line of whole-house movie and networking products.

Scheduled to ship in February 2008, the company’s Vision Series Media Management products will play and import movies, videos, music and photos via the front-panel drive and any home network.

Two versions will be available: The VS-100 ($3,999) and the VS-200 ($5,999). The VS-100 will have 500GB of storage; the VS-200 doubles that amount. Add-ons include the VC-1 ($1,999) networked audio/video zone player and the VX-600 ($7,999) media server.

Each one has RAID backup and access to Real’s Rhapsody music service, which will cost an extra $13 a month (after the free trial). Other features include HDMI 1.3 support and upscaling to 1080p. Before you ask, neither has high-def DVD support.