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Imerge Marks 10th Anniversary and Unveils New Servers at CEDIA Expo (23/5/2007)

Stand B12, CEDIA UK Expo 2007

Imerge - the renowned pioneer of hard disk media servers - will be unveiling its most important new products for many years at the CEDIA Expo (Stand B12). Coinciding with Imerge's 10th anniversary, Imerge is now shipping the new MediaServer MS5000 flagship multi-room hard disk-based, high-definition video and music server and a fully updated SoundServer model, the S3000. MS5000 and S3000 set new benchmarks in multi-room home servers.

At 2006 CEDIA Expo, Imerge gave a sneak preview of its MS5000 in early prototype form, together with its new S3000 in pre-production form. At this year's Expo, Imerge is showing both products in full production form. For the first time, visitors to the stand will be able to try out the full capabilities of these ground-breaking new products, and learn about the main aspects of installation and set-up with our technical experts.

Imerge founder, and Head of Marketing, Adrian Lucas, commented, "We've received overwhelming interest in our new products and the back-order book is groaning. MS5000 has been years in the making and takes into account market research with our dealers. Imerge pioneered what has become the most famous and popular custom install music server, the SoundServer. We asked our customers what they wanted from video to make sure our video products continued in this tradition. What's more, there are other features and expansion products in the pipeline, so it will become even better".

MediaServer MS5000 uniquely combines a high-end single-source hard disk video server, a 5-source fully-specified audiophile-grade hard disk audio SoundServer, multi-terabyte removable-drive professional RAID hard disk storage and video up-scaling hardware in one device.

MS5000, starting at around £7,000 UK retail price (including VAT) for the 1.5TB version, cleverly provides high-end functionality and refinement at a price-point that is less than could be achieved by integrating separate comparable component parts. It is positioned to provide the refinement of alternative approaches, costing much more, and the A/V audiophile/videophile performance and technical support back-up that cannot be rivalled by the unrefined options and US-biased imports currently on the market.

With seven 500GB drives fitted, MS5000 provides 3TB of internal media storage - that's over 700 hours of video storage capacity and an enormous music collection. Impressively at the MS5000's price-point, it has a built-in 7-drive professional RAID subsystem offering 24-hour protection of entertainment content with removable hard drives. This provides easy drive replacement without ever needing to de-install the device - an aspect that Imerge believes installers will love.

As they share Imerge's all-new, industry-leading XiVA(tm) software, MS5000 boasts all the features of the new S3000 SoundServer, including improved interfacing to a home network of PCs, Macs and iPods, plus serving and media management for Sonos and Roku network audio players. In addition, Imerge has extended its well-respected, clean, Euro/UK-friendly TV user interface design to seamlessly playback video as well as music from the same device, now with wide-screen and colour-customisable options. Both MS5000 and S3000 can also be remotely controlled and managed via a built-in web browser interface.

All Imerge products are refined pieces of premium A/V equipment designed from the ground up for multi-room custom installation. For example, MS5000 has dual on-board video user interface outputs mean that one person can be watching video while others are browsing and playing music independently. And, naturally, all Imerge servers integrate with a wide range of the leading multi-room controllers and universal remote handsets.

Like the legendary SoundServer, the MS5000 MediaServer excels in its AV output quality. Both use Imerge's renowned custom-designed, audiophile-grade electronics, long respected in the SoundServer. In MS5000, Imerge has extended its reputation for quality into the video domain. Consequently, the device contains video up-scaling and de-interlacing hardware to 1080p HD resolution (1080 lines, progressive scan).

Speaking about the technology inside S3000 and MS5000, Adrian added "They both share a brand new version of Imerge's own dedicated in-house XiVA(tm) software, licensed by some of the most respected manufacturers in the industry. By choosing an Imerge branded product you know you are getting the best, straight from the people that design it.

"MS5000 and S3000 are top-specification dedicated pieces of equipment, designed for the job, in-house, by our experienced team. As a result, operation is coherent and straightforward, and installations are free of nasty ongoing support issues, commonplace with alternative approaches that may use disjointed collections of standard PC software or inferior mass-market PC hardware. Anyone who has experienced the difference knows why an Imerge makes sense".

Adrian concluded, "Imerge is well known for providing superb technical telephone support that is so important to the custom installation industry. So, even though media access technology becomes ever more sophisticated, installers can rest assured that we'll offer top-class help if they need it to complete a professional installation of MS5000 or S3000".

www.imerge.co.uk