If you thought servers were nothing more than monstrous machines housed within cold corporate data centres, think again. Living Control has taken the wraps off Studio6, a prototype multi-room media server capable of pumping HD signals and music around the home.

Living Control's Studio6 HDMI-equipped media server

Although Living Control is still tinkering around with Studio6's final design and connections, it told Register Hardware that Studio6 will eventually be capable of simultaneously streaming 1080p fully HD video into two separate rooms.

The device will incorporate a 1.5TB of hot-swappable SATA storage hard drive, with RAID 5 back-up, which can be connected up to your PC to drag and drop content onto, such as films, music and photos.

Living Control recommends using Studio6 with one of its wall units, which allows you to select and watch content directly through. But thanks to two HDMI connections, it can also be connected to compatible TVs in up to two rooms around your home.

The snag is that it doesn't do this wirelessly, so two cables are provided to run from the box and into two disparate rooms. So it's not ideal if the two rooms aren't next door to one another - unless you relish ripping up your floorboards, of course.

Studio6 supports a wide variety of video formats, including YouTube and standard DVD, and Living Control even claimed the box will be easily upgradable to support next-gen formats, such as Blu-Ray and HD DVD.

The server also carries four independent audio-only outputs for music, and packs in configuration to keep all that content safe.

The box itself is quite sexy. With touch-sensitive buttons on its front panel and specialist internal venting to ensure the unit remains cool but doesn't make too much noise. Unfortunately, Living Control hasn't decided what the back will look like yet, so we can't tell you what the Studio6's connectivity choices will be.

Living Control's Studio6 is set to go on sale in the UK in October. Pricing has not yet been set.