Prototype — not yet for sale. Prices are planned, buttons don’t check out, and nothing here is shipping yet.
Anemone

Your home’s media and assistant, private and ready.

Anemone keeps your own films, music, photos, and everyday help inside your house — no account to create, nothing to subscribe to, and an honest list of what it won’t do, printed before you buy.

Join the waitlist See the three boxes — $99 / $149 / $399
Illustrated living room with a large TV showing a sea anemone, bookshelves, and a small Anemone box on the media console
0Accounts
0Subscriptions
0Telemetry
Works with the internet unplugged
No account

Set it up in your living room, not on someone else’s website.

No telemetry

It doesn’t phone home with what you watch, ask, or store.

Works offline

Unplug the internet cable. Your library and assistant keep working.

Your files, untouched

Never modified, uploaded, or tracked. Prepared copies sit alongside originals.

The three boxes · Planned pricing

Pick the quiet that fits your home

Same promise in every box: private by design, honest about its limits. Pay once for the hardware — there is no Anemone subscription. The Assistant is the base Anemone, and its full functionality is included in both media boxes.

The base Anemone

Anemone Assistant

The base Anemone — included in every Anemone. For anyone who wants help at home without sending their life to the cloud.

$99planned · one-time
Photograph of the Anemone Assistant as it ships: a professionally refurbished matte black business thin client — compact square enclosure with visible vents, two front USB ports and a small plain white status light — on a kitchen counter beside a coffee mug and a paperback book, showing its small footprint
≈196 × 196 × 55 mm — the footprint of a small hardback book

Representative unit — every Anemone is professionally refurbished business hardware, cleaned and tested; yours will be this class of machine.

  • The base Anemone — everything on this card is included in every Anemone, including both media boxes
  • Chat from any screen in the house, or push-to-talk — voice is recognised on the box itself, never an always-listening mic
  • Everyday questions, writing help, reminders, timers, lists, recipe conversions, and homework help
  • Answers in seconds, from its own built-in knowledge — no account, no telemetry, works with the internet unplugged
  • Honest scope: a capable everyday assistant — not a genius in a box, and it will say so

Prototype — button reserves nothing and charges nothing.

For your library

Anemone Media

For households with a hard drive (or three) of films, music, and family media.

$149planned · one-time
Photograph of Anemone Media as it ships: a professionally refurbished matte black business thin client — compact square enclosure with visible side vents, front USB ports and a small plain green status light — on a TV console beneath a large television, with a TV remote lying beside it that is longer than the box is wide, and a portable hard drive plugged in at the back
≈196 × 196 × 55 mm — the footprint of a small hardback book, smaller than the remote is long

Representative unit — every Anemone is professionally refurbished business hardware, cleaned and tested; yours will be this class of machine.

  • Full Assistant included — the complete base Anemone is built in. Buying Media never means buying the assistant twice
  • Plug in your hard drive — it organises everything, and even badly named files stay browsable
  • Serves your library to TVs and devices through familiar apps
  • Foresight: overnight, it prepares what you’re likely to watch next, matched to each screen — play starts instantly
  • Older TVs that can’t handle modern 4K files get a version made for them
  • Loads the kids’ tablets before a trip, and gives each child a shelf behind gates you set
  • Family photos and home movies included, with timeline care

Prototype — button reserves nothing and charges nothing.

For serious collectors

Anemone Media Enthusiast

The Media box, scaled for the library that outgrew a single drive — and the big TV you bought it for. The full Assistant is included here too.

Photograph of Anemone Media Enthusiast as it ships: a professionally refurbished black small-form-factor business tower with a front grille, front ports and a small plain white status light — on a desk beside a neat stack of external hard drives and the edge of a monitor
≈292 × 96 × 292 mm — a compact office tower

Representative unit — every Anemone is professionally refurbished business hardware, cleaned and tested; yours will be this class of machine.

  • Full Assistant included — the complete base Anemone is built in. Buying Enthusiast never means buying the assistant twice
  • Built for libraries of 20+ TB
  • Pooled drives present as one library — add a drive, the shelves just get longer
  • Several screens served at once, including demanding conversions
  • The same tablet pre-loading and per-child gates, across every screen in the house
  • Drive-health monitoring, so a failing drive warns you before it takes films with it
  • AI upscaling of older, lower-resolution favourites toward the big TV
$399planned · one-time · no subscription

If you’re not sure you need this one, you probably want the $149 Media. We’d rather sell you the smaller box than the bigger regret.

20+ TB · Multi-screen · Drive health · Upscaling

Prototype — button reserves nothing and charges nothing.

The Assistant · The base Anemone

Ask it like you’d ask someone in the room

This is not a search box with a voice. It’s a conversational assistant that lives on the box in your house — you talk with it, follow up, change your mind mid-thought, and pick the conversation back up. And because it is the base Anemone, everything in this section comes with every box we make.

Plainly put: the Assistant is the base model. Buy the standalone Assistant and this is what you get. Buy Anemone Media or Anemone Media Enthusiast and you get all of this too, built in — the assistant is never an add-on, and you never pay for it twice.

How you talk to it

From any screen — by text or by voice

Open it from any screen in the house — a browser or app on your home network, on a phone, tablet, laptop, or TV. Type, or use push-to-talk: you hold, you speak, you let go.

Voice is recognised on the box itself. There is no always-listening microphone waiting for a wake word, and nothing you say is sent away to be transcribed.

  • Multi-turn conversation — it holds the conversation you’re in: follow-ups, “make that shorter,” “now do the same for Thursday.” It remembers the thread, not a dossier on your life.
  • Answers in seconds — everyday help at conversation speed, from knowledge built into the box.
  • Every profile, every person — a profile for everyone under your roof, each with their own conversations.
What it helps with

Everyday questions, writing, and desk work

The useful middle of a day: the question a child asks at breakfast, the letter you’ve been putting off, the list on the fridge that lives in three places at once.

  • Everyday questions — answered from its own built-in knowledge: facts, explanations, how things work, help thinking something through.
  • Writing help — drafts, letters, and messages; summaries of documents you hand it; turning rough notes into a clean list or a clear paragraph.
  • Household desk work — reminders, timers, shopping lists, recipe conversions, homework help, and the small calculations and conversions of a day.
  • Children included, on your terms — the per-child gates you set apply to the assistant too: a child’s profile governs what they can ask, just as it governs what they can watch.
The honest limits, beside the claims: the Assistant has no internet, so it cannot give you live news, weather, scores, prices, or anything that happened after it was built — and it won’t pretend it can. It is a capable everyday mind, not a genius for hire: it will sometimes be wrong, and when something is beyond it, it is designed to say so plainly rather than invent an answer.
The core idea · Foresight

It does the waiting overnight, so you don’t do it on the sofa

Most boxes make your TV do hard work the moment you press play. Anemone Media does that work quietly the night before — for the screens you actually own.

Illustrated cutaway of a house at night: the family asleep upstairs while the Anemone box downstairs prepares programmes for a TV, a tablet, and an older television
While the house sleeps, tonight’s likely watches get ready.Fig. 02 — Overnight preparation

  1. Plug in your drive

    Connect the hard drive you already have. Anemone organises films, shows, music, photos, and home movies — messy filenames included — without changing your original files.

  2. It learns your screens

    The big 4K TV, the tablet, the older TV in the spare room — each one can handle different files. Anemone notes what each screen can play well. That learning stays in the house.

  3. It prepares tonight’s likely watches

    Overnight, it quietly readies the next episodes and films your household is likely to watch, in versions matched to each screen. No fans spinning up in the middle of a film.

  4. Play starts instantly

    Press play and it just starts — because the right version was already waiting. Even an older TV gets a version made for it, instead of a spinner or an error.

The honest edge: foresight is a good guess, not a guarantee. Pick something unusual it hasn’t prepared, and an older TV may need time — Anemone tells you that up front, before the film, instead of stalling halfway through.
For families · Part of Anemone Media

Foresight, pointed at the school run

The same overnight preparation that readies the big TV also looks after the smallest screens in the house — and the parents decide what those screens are allowed to show.

Before the trip

Tablets loaded before anyone buckles up

Households run on rhythm: the Saturday drive, the Friday-night charge by the door. Anemone learns it. While the kids’ tablets sit charging at home, it prepares and loads them — the next episodes, the current favourites — in versions matched to each tablet.

So the car needs no streaming, no data plan, and no signal. Nothing buffers at the worst moment, because the watching was never coming from the internet in the first place — it was loaded at home, the night before.

0Data plan needed
0Streaming in the car
Parents decide

Content gates you set — not a platform

Each child gets a profile on the box, with gates the parents set: a rating limit, or something stronger — a shelf you’ve chosen yourselves. A child sees the library you approved for them, and nothing past it.

The gates are set locally, by you, and enforced by the box in your home. There are no child accounts in anyone’s cloud, and no platform quietly deciding what’s appropriate for your family.

EveryoneA profile for everyone under your roof
0Child accounts
The honest edge: rating gates follow the ratings carried in your media’s metadata — usually right, occasionally missing or wrong. That’s why the stronger option exists: parents can always hand-pick a child’s shelf outright, title by title, and skip ratings entirely.
Automatic updates · Your choice, on every box

Better in year three than on day one

Most gadgets depreciate from the day you unbox them — the software freezes, the world moves on, and the box gets slower and dumber by comparison. Anemone is built the other way. You can set any Anemone — Assistant, Media, or Enthusiast — to update itself automatically, so the box you own keeps getting better while it sits in your house.

Accuracy — a truer picture of the world

Updates carry a more accurate atlas of the world’s TVs, tablets, and file types — so foresight guesses better, matches each screen more precisely, and prepares the right version more often.

Speed — faster preparation

The overnight work gets quicker and smarter over time: titles prepared faster, with less wasted effort, so more of what you press play on is already waiting for you.

Functionality — new capabilities

Improvements aren’t only fixes. Updates can bring new capabilities and refinements to the assistant and the media box alike — features your hardware didn’t ship with, arriving on the hardware you already own.

One way only

Every update is signed, and every box receives the same one — like a broadcast, not a conversation. Updates flow in only: nothing about your household — what you watch, ask, or store — ever flows out to get them. Don’t want automatic updates? Leave them off and update manually, on your own schedule. It’s a setting you choose, not a condition of owning the box.

Privacy · Architecture, not a settings page

Privacy isn’t a toggle here. It’s the product.

Most home technology is private until you read the policy. Anemone is built the other way round: there is nowhere for your information to go, because the box was never designed to send it.

No account, ever

No sign-up, no email required to use the box, no profile of your household sitting on a server somewhere.

No telemetry

What you watch, ask, and store is not collected, counted, or reported. There is no dashboard of you.

Works offline

Your library, your photos, and your assistant live on your home network. An internet outage is an inconvenience for other people.

Your files never leave home

Never uploaded, never modified, never tracked. Preparation makes copies for your screens; originals stay exactly as you left them.

Try it:

Unplug the internet cable on day one. If Anemone notices at all, we’ve failed — your films, music, photos, and assistant should carry on as if nothing happened, because for them, nothing has.

Comparative honesty · Read this before the price

What Anemone won’t do

A media box that tells you the truth — including the parts that might talk you out of buying it. If any of these are what you need, buy the thing that does that instead.

It won’t stream Netflix

Anemone serves your library — the files you own, on your drives. It is not a streaming stick, and it won’t pretend your subscriptions live here.

It won’t rip discs

It prepares files you already have. It does not copy DVDs or Blu-rays, and it won’t help circumvent their protection. Bring files; it will handle the rest.

It won’t always be instant

Foresight covers what you’re likely to watch. An unusual title for an old TV can take time to prepare — and the box tells you up front, instead of stalling mid-film.

The assistant isn’t magic — and it isn’t live

It’s a capable everyday assistant that lives privately in your home, answering from its own built-in knowledge. With no internet, it can’t give you live news, weather, or scores. It will get things wrong sometimes, and it’s designed to say “I don’t know” rather than invent an answer.

It won’t organise your life in the cloud

Because there is no cloud copy. That’s the deal: what stays home can’t sync everywhere. For many households that’s a feature. If it isn’t for yours, that’s a fair reason to pass.

It looks like a computer — because it is one

Pilot units are built on professionally refurbished business hardware, and look like the capable little computers they are. There is no custom Anemone shell: what you see in the photos is the class of machine that arrives at your door — cleaned, tested, and ready, in its real business enclosure.

It isn’t for sale yet

This page is a prototype. Prices are planned, not final offers, and joining the waitlist below reserves nothing — it just tells us the idea is worth finishing.

Questions · Answered plainly

Asked often, answered honestly

Do I need an account or a subscription?

No. There is no Anemone account and no subscription for any of the three boxes. You pay once for the hardware — $99, $149, or $399 as planned — and it works in your home, on your network.

What happens if my internet goes down?

Your library and assistant keep working. Films, music, photos, and home movies are served from your own drives inside the house, and the Assistant doesn’t need the cloud to help you. Anything that genuinely needs the internet will simply wait until it’s back.

My files have terrible names. Will it still work?

That’s a case it’s designed for. Anemone Media organises what it finds and keeps even badly named files browsable — it identifies and tidies the presentation of your library without renaming or modifying your original files.

Will it play on my old TV?

That’s the point of foresight. If a screen can’t handle a modern 4K file, Anemone prepares a version that screen can play. For titles it has prepared overnight, play starts straight away; for an unusual title it hasn’t, it will tell you preparation is needed before you settle in.

Can I control what my kids can watch?

Yes — that’s a designed feature of Anemone Media, not an afterthought. Each child has a profile on the box with gates you set: a rating limit, or a hand-picked shelf of titles you’ve approved. The gates live on the box in your home and are enforced there — there are no child accounts in a cloud, and no platform deciding for your family. The same profile also governs what a child can ask the Assistant. One honest caveat: rating gates follow the ratings in your media’s metadata, which can occasionally be missing or wrong, so the hand-picked shelf is there when you want certainty. And before a trip, Anemone loads the kids’ tablets with their approved shows while the tablets charge at home — so in the car they’re watching what you chose, with no streaming and no data plan involved.

Is the Assistant included with the media boxes, or is it extra?

Included, in full. The Assistant is the base Anemone: the standalone $99 box is that base on its own, and both Anemone Media ($149) and Anemone Media Enthusiast ($399) have the complete Assistant functionality built in. You never buy it twice, and there is no assistant add-on or upgrade tier.

Do the boxes really get better over time?

They can — if you set them to. Automatic updates are your choice, on every model. Turn them on and the box quietly downloads signed improvements: a truer atlas of screens and file types (accuracy), faster overnight preparation (speed), and new capabilities (functionality). Updates flow in only, and the same update goes to every box, like a broadcast — nothing about your household flows out. Prefer to stay in control? Leave automatic updates off and update manually instead.

What can the Assistant actually do — and what can’t it?

Talk with it from any screen in the house, by text or push-to-talk, in a proper multi-turn conversation. It answers everyday questions from its own built-in knowledge, helps with writing — drafts, letters, summaries of documents you hand it — and handles household desk work: reminders, timers, lists, recipe conversions, and homework help, in seconds. What it can’t do follows from its privacy: with no internet, there’s no live news, weather, or scores, and it isn’t a genius for hire — when something is beyond it, it says so.

Does Anemone replace Netflix or other streaming services?

No — and it doesn’t try to. Streaming services serve their libraries; Anemone serves yours. Many households will keep both, on different inputs, for different things.

When can I buy one?

Not yet. This is a prototype page for a product still being finished. Joining the waitlist below is how you’ll hear if — and when — that changes. It creates no order, no charge, and no obligation on either side.

Waitlist · Prototype

Interested? Say so, simply.

Tell us which box you’d consider and where to write if there’s news worth sending. In this prototype the form doesn’t send or store anything — it shows you exactly what signing up will feel like.

No account created
No payment taken
No obligation

Prototype form: submitting shows a confirmation here only. Nothing is sent, saved, or shared — in the finished product, this address would be used only for Anemone launch news.