The US$47,000 ContentCube sports a 6-drive RAID level 5 array, a removable hard drive, a CD-RW and DVD-RAM. It also incorporates interfaces it calls the VideoPortal, AudioPortal and NetworkPortal, to enable users to input video and audio source material directly to the ContentCube and to share ContentCube assets on the network.
When Turquoise released the ContentCube in October, the storage product shipped with a Windows client and an HTML-based interface only. Turquoise software development director Tim Cross said that the new Mac interface would provide much better support for Mac users. “This new desktop application delivers much richer functionality than the browser interface, including a true Mac look and feel, significantly faster performance and more robust file transfer capabilities,” said Cross.
The ContentCube is accessed using the proprietary ContentManager software. It’s a Java-based application that incorporates a metadata-based search engine, file and project management and archiving capabilities, and conversion and transformation functions for multimedia assets stored in the ContentCube. Although ContentManager’s initial release for Macintosh is compatible with Mac OS 8 and 9 only, Turquoise said that it would likely announce Mac OS X compatibility soon.
“As Macintosh OS X gains more acceptance in the market, and as more Mac users upgrade to the latest operating system, we will extend the reach of our product for the Mac community to keep pace with key operating system and other technological developments,” said Turquoise vice president of marketing Cary Tengler.