New HP MediaSmart Home Media Server and Backup System

The main strength of the HP MediaSmart Server is central storage and media streaming for music and photos over your home network. Special iTunes support allows iTunes playback on connected computers that use iTunes.

You can serve photos directly from the MediaSmart server or upload photos to Facebook, Picasa or Snapfish. I do not see Flickr support in the announcement though.

In addition to media center type serving of music, videos, and photos the server also performs a network backup for Windows and Mac computers on a home network. To add additional redundancy you can add Amazon S3 for offsite storage. The HP Media Collector can schedule centralizing files from the other computers on the home network.

The HP MediaSmart Server ex485 will have 750 GB of hard drive space at $599 and the ex487 will double the hard drive storage to 1.5 TB and a price of $749. Storage can be expanded to 9 TB later. They both contain a 64-bit 2.0 GHz Intel Celeron processor and 2 GB of RAM.

Starting January 5, 2009 the server can be pre-ordered from Amazon, BestBuy, Buy.com, Fry's, and NewEgg. Expected shipping date is in February. It will also be available from hpshopping.com. The first 200 who order there between January 5-11, 2009 and use the coupon code "AC5674" will get a $50 discount.