Fluffy Spider Technologies, providers of the FancyPants UI which is used in CE devices announced today that SpeakerCraft, a developer of high quality home audio and video equipment, has chosen FST FancyPants for its new line of home media products. Since the FancyPants UI can be used it differing devices across the CE spectrum, that’s not really that big of a deal. What is however, is the wording in the release:
SpeakerCraft media center products employ FancyPants as the central element in the user experience. Displaying on the home TV and remote control, FancyPants, seamlessly ties together multiple sources of audio, video and distributing multimedia throughout the home.
“Audio, video and distributing multimedia throughout the home” sound an awful lot like Media Center or SageTV to me. While this doesn’t seem like huge news, it is interesting to see a company like SpeakerCraft entering the space.
CEPro was able to locate a demo of the FancyPants UI in action and though the SpeakerCraft UI may not end up looking anything like this, it does show the types of capabilities the software could handle.
Considering that a quick look at the SpeakerCraft website shows pretty much only audio products, you have to wonder their motivation for entering the “media center” market. It’s not as though Media Center or SageTV are everywhere. If I had to guess, I’d say that this is a product that will remain in the custom integration space.
via CEPro
