Cirgon Encore Digital Media Server

[Trog]

Digital Media Servers are destined to become a key component in all home theater systems sometime in the near future. As we consumers spend more and more of our money on home theaters and home audio it becomes necessary for us to have one component that allows us easy access to our music, digital photos and movies.

Cirgon’s Encore Digital Media Server is the latest attempt to tame the animal and reduce it to an acquiescent consumer electronics product. The Encore has more than a few whiz-bang features, but power users will be disappointed by several design compromises.The Encore's software appears to be devoted primarily to managing and displaying photos and music. This is not surprising considering that Cirgon's chief product to date is its 19-inch, flat-screen MediaFrame 100 photo viewer.

Like the MediaFrame, the Encore is designed to integrate photo slideshows with custom MP3 playlists, but in this case the display is an attached HDTV instead of a dedicated display.Unlike most PCs that would like to take up residence in your living room—Dell’s XPS One or HP’s TouchSmart, for instance—this one doesn’t rely on any form of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Cirgon instead designed an entirely custom graphical user interface and laid it on top of the Linux operating system. And by avoiding the excess baggage that comes with Windows, Cirgon was able to build a PC using simpler components that consume considerably less power.It’s no surprise that the design of the Encore is focused primarily on photo and music management, since Cirgon is well known for their digital media products.

What makes this product different than the rest of the product line is that this product doesn’t ship with it’s own screen. Instead, the Encore is engineered to connect to your HDTV.Encore Media Server is very light, weighing in at just 10 pounds and it won’t cause a blackout anytime soon - it consumes only 40 watts of power! The rear panel features connections for DVI, TOSlink digital audio out, RCA audio I/O, 10/100 Ethernet, S-video, and three USB ports. There will be plenty of storage space included, as this device comes standard with a 320GB hard drive and includes the option of upgrading to a 500GB or 750GB drive.

One downside is that the Encore only ships with a standard DVD player, so Blu-ray users will have to wait for that functionality. The product also lacks Wi-Fi, Zigbee, or any other wireless support.You can listen to Internet radio stations, but of the hundreds operating today, Cirgon oddly limits you to three: Last.FM, Sirius and XM Radio.

The Encore will rip CDs and automatically download album art, song titles, and artist names for you, but it provides only two encoding choices: Uncompressed WAV (perfect fidelity, but with intense storage consumption), or MP3 at a bit rate of 320Kb/sec. (Note: The machine we evaluated ripped MP3s at a bit rate of 128Kb/sec, but when we fact-checked this story with Cirgon, a company representative told us our unit was misconfigured at the factory and that production servers rip at the higher bit rate.) Fortunately, the Encore will play tracks encoded with FLAC (a lossless codec that delivers bit-perfect fidelity in files much smaller than WAV files). Our advice to Encore buyers would be to rip CDs using another PC and transfer them to the Encore over the network.

The machine also supports audio files in OGG and AAC format, but it cannot run iTunes and you can’t use it to purchase music from the iTunes store or any other online retailer.The Encore won’t rip DVDs (not surprising, since that would run afoul of the consumer-hostile Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but it will play movies you’ve ripped using another PC. And since it doesn’t have a TV tuner it can’t function as a DVR.

According to Cirgon Founder and CEO Darwin Throne, Encore uses Fedora Linux and xWindows. Fedora, which was recently rev'd to release 9, is a free and distributable Linux distro based closely on Red Hat Linux. Fedora is designed to enable developers to create embedded appliances or enterprise desktop Linux images with Fedora in confidence that they are not accidentally redistributing proprietary software.

Encore is expected to ship for a modest $2000. An additional $100 can snag you an add-on PCI card that provides digital 7.1 surround sound.

[Trog]

In most cases your home computer does not have the capability to showcase these pictures using that 50’ HDTV you paid so much for, or allow you to listen to your music utilizing that whole house audio sound system. So while you may be up on digital technology for portable use, you still have to utilize CDs and DVDs for in home use.

This is where a Digital Media Server becomes so valuable.And Encore is for the same.Images can be stored on the Encore from a CD, DVD, or from an external, USB-based memory-card reader. Photo management features include cropping, resizing, editing, and creating slide shows. Up to 64,000 JPEG photos (5MB each) can be stored on the 320GB drive version, assuming no other media storage, says Cirgon.The music software supports ripping and burning of CDs, and setting up a digital music database, including album metadata. The Encore saves music in uncompressed WAV format, as well as MP3, and compression of ripped CDs to MP3 is said to be performed in the background.

The Encore also offers backup software for backing up to CDs, DVDs, or an external hard drive. Its audio connections are much more robust. In addition to stereo analog output and eight-channel digital audio outputs (optical and coaxial), the Encore is equipped with a Zone 2 audio channel that can play music independently of what’s happening on Zone 1’s channel (provided you have an amp or self-powered for that second zone, or an A/V receiver that can handle two zones). What’s more, you can play music on the Zone 1 channel in the background.

This means that song titles and album art are not displayed while the music is playing, so you can run a photo slideshow at the same time.The Encore has a built-in Ethernet network interface card (NIC), but it’s limited to speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. Most conventional PCs in this price range are equipped with one or even two NICs capable of running at speeds up to one gigabit per second. The speed difference is meaningless when it comes to streaming audio or video across a network, but it will take much longer to transfer large numbers of files over the network.

Encore Features:-

File types supported:

• Audio: mp3, wav,flac, wma, ogg, aac
• Photo: jpeg
• Video: mpeg 1,2,3 wmv 1,2 h.263, h.264, avi, mov

Options:

• Disk drive: 320GB, 500GB, 750GB (standard drive is 160GB)
• Rack mount kit

Physical Specifications:

• Rack mountable with two rack mount ears
• Operating temperature: 0°C to +40°C
• Size: approximately 17.0"w X 3.5"h X 10"
• Weight: 9lbs
• Power requirements: 100-240 volts, 35watts (standby <3.0 watts)

Media Storage:

Encore can store music, photo, and movie files. The following table provides an estimate of the media storage for music and photos for several hard disk size options. The example shows storage of 10,000 and 20,000 digital photos. There is no practical limit on photo storage except for available disk space. Addition of movie files will significantly reduce the space available for photos and music.

[Trog]

With Cirgon Encore, you can plug in a USB microphone and add narration to any photo, and you can easily create slideshows—with our without music—and burn them to DVD. Even cooler, the music’s volume level will automatically fade back when a narrated slide appears. The Photo Resize directory is also extremely cool. Any photos copied to this folder are automatically reduced to a predetermined size (ranging from 640x480 to 1280x1024) in order to render them more manageable for attaching to email or for uploading to an online photo site such as Flickr.

But since this isn’t a typical PC, you can’t use it to actually send those emails or upload those photos to Flickr. It won’t help you balance your checkbook, write the next great American novel, play games, or do a hundred other things that conventional PCs are useful for, either.

Specifications for the Encore server:

• Display -- supports HDTV with 1080i resolution
• Storage -- 320GB hard drive (500GB and 750GB drives optional)
• Networking -- 10/100 Base-T RJ-45 Ethernet
• USB -- 3 x USB 2.0 ports, including one front-facing
• Remote I/O -- IR In, Out; RS232
• Zone 1 Audio -- 1 S/PDIF coaxial and 1 S/PDIF optical, 7.1 surround
• Zone 2 Audio (optional) -- 1-2.5 mm digital, 3 line out, 7.1 surround
• A/V connections:
  
  • DVI connector
  • Triple RCA jack for Component Video, 1080i
  • Mini DIN S-Video
  • 3 x RCA (left, right analog audio output; Composite Video)
  • MIC input
• Audio file types -- MP3, WAV, FLAC, WMA, OGG
• Photo file types -- JPEG
• Video file types -- MPEG 1,2,3; WMV 1,2; H.263; H.264; AVI; MOV
• Power -- 100-240 Volts AC; 40 Watts consumption; Standby power <3 Watts
• Other options -- Battery backup; Pro audio form factor with rack-mount ears
• Operating temperature -- 32 to 104 degrees F (0 to 40 degrees C)
• Dimensions -- approximately 17.0 x 3.5 x 10 inches
• Weight -- 10 lbs
• Operating system -- Fedora Linux

I feel with the Encore, Cirgon is one of the companies that are helping to push and challenge the industry to move quickly in that direction. They have a product that is more affordable then most, yet still accomplishes most if not all of the functions one would want in a Media Server while remaining very user friendly.

[Villiers]

Hey.. i have one Cirgon Encore. Its really great device with lots of features. The encore 33 key remote control is used to operate all the system functions. There are special keys for photo management such as EDIT, ROTATE, MOVE, PAGE UP and PAGE DN for easy viewing and sorting of photos.The system comes with easy to follow step-by-step instructions.