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Philips Cinema One Squeezes Home Theatre System into Tiny Round Box
Posted by Kit Eaton at 11:59 PM on August 28, 2008
As mentioned in the liveblog, Philips has stumped up a new home theatre system that's as small, and almost as round as, a soccer ball—for those of us bored of boring, standard rectangular entertainment gadgets. Though it's tiny, it fits in an iPod dock, a five-channel amp, six speakers and a subwoofer built into the base. It must be pretty cramped inside, since it's just 27cm across, and only 17cm high. The DVD player can cope with DivX, MPEG-4 and WMV, and upscales to 1080p over HDMI and the CD player can read MP3 discs, and it's got USB-in. If that's whetted your appetite, you'll have to wait as there's no info yet on timing or price. But the press release is below.
If you're looking for a sign that we live in a digital world that cares not for the physical manifestations of our analogue past, you need only look at 
Ooooh. Shelves. And red LEDs. They tell time. They store CDs. Who has CDs? Not me. But I don't care. It's a giant digital clock. Red over black, baby. 1980s, here I come again. Now I just need to rescue my white suit, tight pink T-shirt, and 
Los Angeles mail order catalog Pack Central may have found the last untapped pocket of consumers willing to pay retail for their music on physical formats--the cellblocks of our great nation's prisons. And not just any format--turns out, music on cassette is the only way to get tunes that isn't screened out as a potential deadly weapon. Wait, they still sell new music on cassettes?
CDs and DVDs tend not to last long in my house... but since I just fling them in a pile in the cupboard, that's entirely my fault. The Sanwa CD-RE1AT might be just the ticket, though: it works on 8cm or 12cm CDs, DVDs and BDs. With a push of a button it removes dust, fingerprints and "oily spots" from discs, and with the "repair" button it solves skipping problems and coats the discs with a protective layer, without grinding. Available now for US$79. If only it found missing CD case inserts too, it'd be perfect. [
Forget the boringly-plastic 
The Digitable coffee table was designed by Peter Lea as a functional piece of furniture that can play your CDs / DVDs while maintaining a cool contemporary look. It also features a sleek control panel integrated right into the frame and a disc storage carousel located in the base of the table. Let's face it, large disc collections can be hard to maintain, and they become an eyesore if stored out in the open. However, placing your discs within this coffee table would actually add to the decor—so your wife won't feel the need to 
So, here's the thing. My stereo components have been in boxes gathering dust ever since I became a fully fledged member of the iPosse. Ditto for my CDs, cherished cassette tapes and even a few essential vinyl record. Since Jesus and I are relocating to London, and I've ripped everything I really listen to, you might say it's a no-brainer to throw it all out. But it's not that easy to do, is it?
The origins of this CD Drive salami slicer are unknown, so there are no details on the build itself. However, it seems that adding a decent blade to an old CD drive could score you a salami slicer that fits in with your geeky lifestyle. You could probably even rig it so that operates automatically off a power supply. Now that is what I call recycling. [
We haven't nuked a CD since the 90s either, but maybe that's only because we didn't have the right camera setup to capture the digital destruction in all of its glory. The Wacky Archives features a few remarkable shots of our ex-favourite pastime and we strongly recommend it as an opulently wasteful way to burn 3 minutes of your precious Saturday. To see the price a microwave pays for its art, hit the jump. 
