Atlantic Omega Multi Media Tower: Poor Priorities in DVD and CD Storage

When your DVD collection grows too large for its first home – don’t laugh, you know it happens – you may find yourself rushing out to buy some sort of rack or cabinet or storage unit or something to keep those movies in. One company catering to just such a media maven’s need is Atlantic, which offers all sorts of productions. Their Omega Multi Media Tower, OME250C23, is just one such product. And not their best.

First of all, is there really a reason to buy any DVD rack to hold CDs? You’re just going to end up with air space, given the height differences. You’re paying for material that isn’t doing anything but filling air space. But never mind.

“Some assembly required” is by now a familiar phrase in most American households. Putting the Omega together is a little harder than you might expect; the dowels don’t squeeze into the holes quite as smoothly or snappily as you feel they should, and there is a distinct impression in setting up the unit that you might break something irreplacable at any moment. Once your correspondent’s construction was in place, it stayed in place; other customers have not been so lucky.

Once your tower is set up and you are loading discs in, you notice the first odd design flaw in the tower. Your DVDs are held up only by dowels, with no solid shelf floor to boost them. This makes it easy for a disc on the end of a pile to slip and fall behind. It’s not an issue when your entire DVD collection is firmly packed in, but if you’ve got breakable CD jewel cases or slimline DVD boxes to hold, don’t be surprised if you end up retrieving something from the floor with each clumsy touch.

Atlantic thoughtfully offers you dividers to stick on your dowels, just in case you wanted to keep your Fellini separate from your Spielberg. The dividers snap on easily enough, but slide rather hesitantly. More distressing, though, is that there isn’t enough room between shelves to accomodate the dividers, and as you slide a divider along, it will clatter along the tops of the DVDs on the shelf below, potentially knocking something over. Hardly the smooth way to do things.

In the end, for this kind of money, get something with shelves. Something a little more solid. Why pay for faux maple finishing when you could get a cheaper plastic shelf that actually worked? Even Atlantic’s other DVD rack have something better than this; show your collection with pride.