Wow!  What a day on the Show Floor at CEDIA.  Lots of cool things to talk about!  One of the most incredible products I saw was the Pioneer ETAP or Entertainment Tap Media Server.  You can rip or stream movies, music and photos from multiple online providers. You can even rate the movies you watch and send the update directly to Twitter.  The people who follow you on Twitter can see your rating and be provided a link to Amazon, where they can purchase the movie. Pioneer seems to have crammed an incredible number of features into it, with many more being tested or developed.  It has an internal 1 TB hard drive that allows you to rip “Managed” copies of Blu-Ray movies onto the hard drive. The movie studios will develop and release the “Managed” feature on future Blu-Ray movies.  This allows you to legally rip a copy of it to the ETAP server.  The studios have the option to charge you an additional fee for this capability.  Once the disc is put in the player, a screen pops up with info and the fee for of the “Managed” copy rights.  Click OK and your credit card is charged the fee and it can now be played back from the Media Server. 

Pioneer ETAP Media Server

It is powered by Control 4 director software, so it can control the other components in your system, and with the help of a Control 4 dealer, be expanded to full home automation.  The user interface has been customized by Pioneer using Control 4′s upcoming Flash based GUI. It uses a Zigbee based 2-way remote control.  It even has a Slingbox like capability that will allow you to remotely connect to and view the content with a smart phone.  A similar capability for the iPhone is planned. Here is a list of some of the other features:

• HD User Interface with Video Overlay
• Online shopping based on media
• Built-in LPCM and FLAC CD Ripping
• iPhone control (use the iPhone as a remote)
• Blu-Ray DVD/CD playback 

Project ETAP

The product is still in development, and won’t likely be out for 6-9 months.  The price has not yet been determined.