OTHER TECH

Denon has staked its reputation on putting out high-performance flagship receivers packed full of cutting-edge features. So its NS-S100 Network Multimedia Server isn't quite the radical leap it might appear to be. It's essentially a custom-installation twist on Denon's flagships, packed with as much of the latest networking technology as could be squeezed into a black box, but with the emphasis on high performance and ease of use. Having first heard about the NS-S100 at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, I traveled to Orlando, and the Electronic House Expo, to see it in action.

The server's big innovation is its ability to let you pause a video program in one room while somebody else watches the same program without interruption in another room. You can then go to yet another location and start watching the program again from where you paused it. This feature is an outgrowth of Denon's snatching up ReplayTV last year, and you'll find ReplayTV's fingerprints all over the server - in its dual TV tuners that let you record two shows simultaneously, for instance, or its Internet-friendly electronic program guide.

The NS-S100 has two 120-gigabyte hard drives to handle video, photo, and music chores. One is fixed, the other a removable "mirror" drive for backup and arch­iving. There's also a CD drive for ripping discs to the fixed hard drive. As you rip the CD, the server goes online to the Gracenote CDDB site to pull down the album and track titles. (While the NS-S100 offers MP3 and WMA compression, Denon shows its high-end pedigree by making uncompressed PCM audio the default setting.) Also included are two FM tuners and all the connections needed to integrate the server into your entertainment system and home network. And it's compatible with whole-house control systems from companies like AMX and Crestron.

Since Denon plans to sell the NS-S100 primarily through custom installers, its innards won't matter as much to most users as how they interact with it. All that slick engineering would be for naught if the server's interface wasn't intuitive and seamless. Fortunately, the large, easy-to-read onscreen menus are excellently designed, keeping the options simple and the structure logical. I had no trouble finding the videos, photos, and songs I wanted - not only on the server, but also on a networked Sony Vaio laptop PC in the next room. The learning remote was equally headache-free. Every necessary control - and there are a lot of them - was easy to locate and every command easy to execute.

The NS-S100 (shown below, rear)is scheduled to be available by fall, priced at $4,000. The NS-C200 client (below, front), which allows you to extend the server's many features to far-flung areas of the house, is due at the same time for $1,000.

- Michael Gaughn