Sooloos Greatly Expands Capabilities Of Its Home Digital Media System With New Hardware And Software

With new features, new options and new pricing, the industry’s most powerful and fun-to-use home entertainment system just got a lot more accessible and even more convenient for users and installers alike. A leading product in its class is now a lead

July 23, 2008

Sooloos LLC, a leader in premium digital media systems for the home, announced new hardware and software today that significantly enhances the functionality and accessibility of its groundbreaking digital home entertainment experience. With today’s announcement, Sooloos, which defined the high-end media server arena, now offers dealers a complete set of solutions for all customer classes with its new, full line of products. Its new hardware products lower the cost of entry to the Sooloos universe and expand the options for building a Sooloos system. Its software upgrades enable much greater integration for Sooloos with Apple and other third-party systems, as well as more control options for users of Sooloos’ PC-based Control:PC application. “Today, Sooloos has turned a major corner as a company and as a home entertainment system provider. Today, we have transformed an industry-leading product into an industry-leading product line,” said Rob Darling, vice president of strategy for Sooloos. “Sooloos users and dealers now have more choices for setting up and interacting with our system than ever before. We’ve opened up our one-of-a-kind, landmark Sooloos media playback and management system to a wealth of new options for user experience and user control, as well as a wider range of price points, starting as low as $3,500.” Today’s announcement bolsters the Sooloos value proposition to dealers and users in numerous compelling ways. New hardware: Sooloos now offers more hardware options for dealers and users than ever before. The new Sooloos Ensemble ($3,500 MSRP) allows entry-level users to enter the Sooloos universe at the lowest cost to date. Ensemble offers four stereo unbalanced RCA outputs and one S/PDIF digital out, providing users the ability to listen to multiple Sooloos feeds in different rooms simultaneously. Ensemble’s removable drive bay can accommodate up to a terabyte of storage. Ensemble users have unprecedented user interface options: they can enjoy the full Sooloos experience by adding Sooloos’ stunning Control:One 17-inch touch panel, or they can interact with Ensemble through numerous third-party control and PC-based solutions. The new Sooloos Twinstore ($2,500 MSRP) is a single chassis with two removable drive mechanisms that can accommodate up to a terabyte of storage each. With Twinstore, primary and backup drives for Sooloos can reside in a single enclosure. Addressing a large consumer concern with the server market, Sooloos now offers hard drive purchase options. Ensemble, Twinstore and all other Sooloos storage components are now priced without drives, enabling dealers and customers to add whatever storage fits their needs. Sooloos offers drives at commodity prices ($350 MSRP for a 1TB drive, $175 MSRP for a 500GB drive), or the dealer/customer can install their own, from any source. Another new device, Sooloos Import:One ($800 MSRP), makes importing CD collections to Sooloos even more of a snap than before. Import:One is a 25-disc autoloader that connects via USB to any computer sharing a network with Sooloos. Users simply load the tray with 25 discs, hit “import” and return when it’s done. Sooloos’ Control:PC software handles the technicalities of the import process. Bulk-loading content has never been simpler or more economical. Tighter integration with the Apple universe: Users now can control Sooloos from any iPhone or iPod Touch portable media player that is wirelessly accessing the same network as Sooloos. Tighter third-party control integration: Sooloos’ Control:One touch panel can now be set to access a URL in order to integrate with browser-enabled control systems like Vantage Controls’ Webpoint 2.0. In addition, for those who would prefer to control Sooloos through Crestron and related third-party touch panels and screens, Sooloos now offers all-new Crestron Text and Overlay Modules with templates and the elegant Sooloos interface for all screen resolutions. Major enhancements to Control:PC software: Control:PC is a PC-based application that can control Sooloos, import files to Sooloos, export Sooloos files to portable players, edit metadata and provide manual backup and restore. Control:PC can now facilitate CD importing to Sooloos from other computers on the home network, as well as from the Import:One 25-disc autoloader. In addition, the Control:PC user interface has been significantly improved and enhanced to provide the experience of a feature-rich media-management PC application. Sooloos’ groundbreaking digital media system for the home has received rave reviews for its extremely intuitive, easy-to-use, touch-sensitive user interface, its creative and comprehensive use of metadata, and its incredibly fast operation. Sooloos is a fun-to-use, completely approachable home media appliance that people of any age and any level of technical fluency can easily enjoy. Sooloos installers and dealers laud the system’s reliability, ease of setup and flexibility.

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