So far, the one thing to excite me about CES has been Netgear's announcement of the EVA800.Unfortunately, its predecessor, the EVA700 never really hit the market in the way it was supposed to (I keep spotting it listed as available for sale all over the UK, but no-one ever has it in stock -- one supplier ran a whole feature in their annual catalogue, but never actually offered the item for sale).
As we already know from Brad's update and the Engadget gang, this device will plug directly into your TV like a DVD player or STB. It will have its own menu system, and will connect wirelessly to your PC, where it can scan for playable content (so far, we know that it supports MP3, WAV, WMA, FLAC, M4A, AAC, AC3, purchased music from iTunes on Windows (M4P), MPEG1/2/4, WMV, XviD, H.264, JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF) and has two USB 2.0 ports (front and rear) for playing content from flash memory, iPods or other portable music and video players.
It also has some other nice playback features too, such as being able to pause in one room and pick up in another.
Oh, and it streams in 1080p. However, for wireless HD streaming, you'll need a 802.11n router - but Netgear's clever PowerLine HD devices (which basically access the electrical wires in your house through an ordinary wall power socket) gives you those much-needed super-fast speeds.
I've been in the market for something like this for a long time, so I hope this hits the streets soon (although, the $349 price tag will need to drop slightly if it's to compete with Apple's thus-far unreleased offering).
1. My problem with all of these devices is the same- I want them to be able to read a DVD ISO, and have DVD menu support before I will even consider them. xBox Media Center already has these features and costs less than $100 used.
We can't even claim that DVD support would be illegal- people can create their own DVD's without encryption and then rip those to an ISO. The ability to view those should be an option.
Posted at 8:32PM on Jan 14th 2007 by Mark Richards