Looking for a Linux-based media center, but don’t want to deal with setting up your own?

Well, enter Fiire and their Fiire Engine media center and it’s satellites, the Fiire Stations. The Fiire Engine is set up to be the hub of your digital lifestyle and is based around an AMD Athlon64 X2 processor, nVidia graphics, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive and RAID support for up to six eSATA hard disks (that’s up to 6TB of storage for people with the scratch to buy six Toshiba 1TB disks). The system doesn’t have HDMI out, but it’s got every other input including composite (yuck), SVideo (ugh) and component (yay). The Fiire Engine will retail for around $799, bring your own eSATA disks for media storage.

The Fiire Stations are set-top boxes based around low-voltage processors that tie into the Fiire Engine to get their media. They’re set to retail between $499 and $899 depending on specs.

Finally, the Fiire Chief is a roving remote control that will tie the whole thing together for $149.

Definitely an interesting package, though we’re holding out judgment until the interface can be seen in more detail, because the interface of a media center can make or break it.

Alright, I’m practically begging you to give me a shot and not dismiss this post altogether simply because of the title. But here’s the concept, work with me if you will:

• At the theater and at home, we have elaborate surround sound audio systems that do their very best to put us right in the middle of our entertainment action.
• Bass subwoofers or mechanical “rumbler systems” are further used to enhance the physical feeling of being immersed in the action.
• We’re watching shows and movies on bigger and bigger displays with increasing qualities of resolution – again, getting closer to real life.

Taking these commonplace technologies into consideration, my big question remains…

Why don’t we have standard Smell-o-Vision?

Say the scene in the movie you’re watching happens to be at the beach. You hear the beach. You see the beach. But why shouldn’t you be able to smell the beach? Well, if it’s a rotten smelling beach, like some are, fine, I understand.

But to share the ultimate ambiance of the salty sea breeze, I know aromatherapy-based technology exists to dial up a scent on the fly. In fact, I’m pretty sure I even recall reading about someone working on this idea a couple of years ago. But what happened and why hasn’t it taken off yet?

Not every single scent would need to be coded into a movie’s “smelltrack,” just the most important and influential smells. A large mister could expel highly concentrated food grade scent particulates much the same as a projector expels light beams. I’m certainly not an expert of olfaction, but couldn’t a large variety of recognizable smells be mixed up from a sampling of just few vials of odorant, much like the color palate?

I’m sure increased concession food sales at theaters alone would pay for the perfection of such a technology over time. They could even subliminally pump out the aroma of fresh hot buttered popcorn during the previews to further boost their sales.

Going beyond scentology, another sense would be really easy to cover at the movies and would be incredibly simple to encode into the source.

Can you guess what I’m thinking?

How about air movement? A couple of large but quiet fans could simply be placed strategically in the theater and used variably during the right moments of the show.

Driving down the two lane with the top down in a classic convertible? The fans accelerate and you feel the wind in your hair instead of just seeing it affect the actors’ hair. Just add temperature control to the breeze to take it to the next step.

Well ultimately, for most cinema buffs, these ideas are probably a worst nightmare come true. But for the rest of us, I know it could work!

If you’re the ultimate Transformers fan and have many thousands of dollars burning a hole in your pocket, you may be interested in buying the actual 1977 Chevy Camaro used to play Bumblebee in the movie.  It doesn’t transform, but it has that nifty Autobot logo steering wheel.  The disco ball, “Bee-otch” air freshener, mini-dog  and license plate are sold separately.

No word on whether the radio switches stations randomly or if it can shatter the glass of other cars in the parking lot, but we’re pretty sure Megan Fox is not included.

On a positive note, all proceeds from the auctions of Transformers items go to Fisher House Foundation, an organization that allows military families to be with their serving loved ones while hospitalized and recovering.

In what will surely be heralded as the new current future death knell to HD-DVD (and to the Blu-Ray crowd, what isn’t heralded as a death knell to HD-DVD) Blockbuster is expected to only stock Blu-Ray titles on the shelves of their retail stores.

Honestly, with the struggles Blockbuster’s had in the recent past competing with online rentals from Netflix I’m not sure how relevant they remain to be. While a lot of consumers still use the brick and mortar Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos of the world, most of the home theater buffs I know use Netflix for their rentals. These are the same consumers who’ll be more likely to have an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.