It’s nice to have nice things, and these things are beautiful.
At first I thought they were a new stereo, but they’re actually a lot cooler than that. These cubes are a new cable box by French design firm fuseproject in association with Canal+, a French TV brand.
The box
Its monochrome skin ensures the box plays well with whatever color scheme you might have at home. Behind the matte black face of the cube is an incredibly high resolution digital display that will show you the logo of whatever channel you’re watching at the time.
Aesthetically speaking, these are incredible pieces of design. Technologically speaking, they’re just as impressive.
The Tech
The designers at fuseproject have done something very clever in order to keep the box as small as possible (8cm x 8cm); they’ve removed the DVR component of the box and put it into the white base of the unit.
Now, the base is not only serving an aesthetic function of showing off the cube, it is integral to the system’s function. Very clever integration of tradition (a work of art needs to be displayed on a pedestal) to facilitate a device’s function.
Conclusion
Cable TV might be on the way out, but this project proves it doesn’t need to look bad doing it.