NETGEAR is the latest company to attack the consumer/home network attached storage market with Monday’s introduction of the new NETGEAR Stora. This cube-shaped device with two drive bays allows users to easily centralized all of their digital content without dealing with complicated setup routines or complex user interfaces.

In addition, Stora makes Internet-based file sharing super-easy by providing users and friends remote-access to the device via the website www.MyStora.com. Through MyStora, users will be able to stream music to any Internet-connected device, watch whole movies from the NAS, and of course, retrieve stored digital files.

Here are the features and specs to the NETGEAR Stora:

• Compatible with Mac, PC, and Linux systems
• Centralize digital media in one location
• Share and stream music to friends and family with specific user access controls
• Watch movies directly streamed from home to any Internet-connected device
• DLNA certified
• Windows Media 7 compliance
• Two standard drive bays (SATA)
• Users can add second drive on the fly without any tools
• Gigabit Ethernet support
• USB 2.0 port
• RAID 1 support
• Comes with automatic backup utilities for PCs and Macs
• Integrates with Facebook, iTunes, Flickr and web-enabled phones
• Measures 175.25 x 150 x 146 mm and weighs 1.36kg

The NETGEAR Stora comes with a single 1TB disk although you can add additional storage via the second drive bay.  Available now in North America, the NETGEAR Stora is priced at $229.

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Technorati Tags: NETGEAR Stora, NAS

Netgear announced earlier this week that their new Home Theater Internet Connection Kit, model XAVB1004, is now available worldwide for a suggested retail price of $179.99. The kit comes with one Powerline AV Adapter with Ethernet switch (XAV1004), one Powerline AV Ethernet Adapter (XAV101), two Ethernet cables, one AC power cord, an installation guide, and a setup CD.  The XAVB1004 allows you to connect multiple Ethernet-enabled entertainment devices (game consoles, Blu-ray players, HDTVs, etc) to the Internet and to your home network using existing electrical wiring at home with support for speeds up to 200Mbps.

Other features found with the kit include:

• Advanced energy management capabilities for automatic port and device-level sleep modes and wake-on-activity functionality to reduce energy usage
• Port-based Quality of Service (QoS) to ensure highest priority applications are allocated more bandwidth
• Push-N-Secure to secure Powerline AV network with the push of a button
• Pick-a-Plug – multi-color LED to determine the strength of the powerline connection without looking at the computer
• 128 bit AES data encryption
• HomePlug AV compatible
• Connects up to 4 devices

You can also purchase additional accessories for your home networking including the Powerline AV Ethernet Adapter (XAV101) for $69.99, Powerline AV Adapter with Ethernet Switch (XAV1004) for $99.99, and Powerline AV Ethernet Adapter Kit (XAVB101) for $149.99.

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Technorati Tags: Netgear Home Theater Internet Connection Kit (XAVB1004)

One of the first things I do whenever I move into a new apartment is wire up all the rooms with some Cat 5 cabling. Yes.. I have to have wired networking in all the rooms – wireless just won’t do. Now of course, laying down your own Cat 5 cabling isn’t exactly a viable option for everyone so what can you do when you need some high speed networking? How about transforming that coaxial cabling that’s probably in your household into a high speed Ethernet network? Yes.. that’s right – you can do exactly that with the relatively inexpensive MoCA Coax-Ethernet Adapter Kit.

For $229, you get two MoCA Coax-Ethernet Adapters – one adapter that can be plugged into your home router and another that can be plugged into your Ethernet-ready device. The kit supports the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (hence, the MoCA) 1.1 certification which basically ensures compatibility with cable and DSL network, interference-free television viewing over existing cable services and interoperability with other MoCA 1.0 and 1.1 products.

Other cool features include:

• Up to 270 Mbps transfer speeds
• Data encryption for data privacy
• Measures 25.4 x 171.5 x 111.1 mm and weighs 0.28 kg
• One 10/100 Ethernet port
• One F-type MoCA 1.0 port
• One F-type out to TV tuner

The kit comes with two MoCA Coax-Ethernet Adapters, two RG-6 Coax cables with F-Type connectors, two Ethernet cables, two power cables, and documentation.

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Read this in Chinese Simplified and in French

Technorati Tags: Netgear, Netgear MoCA Coax-Ethernet Adapter Kit

Introduced back at CES 2009, Netgear announced today the worldwide availability of the Digital Entertainer Elite digital media player. The Digital Entertainer Elite (model EVA9150) has a built-in 500GB HDD, supports streaming of multimedia content from networked PCs and storage devices, and supports a wide variety of media file formats and online video providers.

The Digital Entertainer Elite isn’t tied to one specific platform as it works well with Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs as well as Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices.  The media player is also fully compatible with Netgear’s RangeMax family of wireless-N routers, Powerline and MoCA networking kits, as well as ReadyNAS storage solutions. Major features include the following:

• Support playback of video, audio, and digital images from your networked computers and storage devices onto your HDTV set
• Stream online media content directly to your HDTV
• 500GB HDD for additional content
• Supports USB flash drive, digital cameras, iPods and other USB storage deviecs
• Up-convert videos and photos to full 1080p via HDMI output
• Plays back unprotected DVD images stored on network and preserves menus, subtitles, and special features (big win here)
• Supports Windows Media DRM
• “Follow Me” feature allows you to pause a song or video from one room and continue from that point on in another room (assuming you had a Digital Entertainer Elite in both rooms)
• Push N Connect for easy Draft N wireless setup

The specs include:

• Wired LAN: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, RJ-45
• Wireless 802.11a/b/g/n dual-band (2.4 GHz or 5 GHz) at up to 300 Mbps‡
• Three internal dual-band meta-material antennas
• Hardware-based Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) 40/64-bit & 128-bit encryption
• Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA2-PSK, WPA-PSK)
• Windows Media Player 11 Media Sharing
• SMB networking (includes Macintosh)

Format support includes:

• MP3 up to 320 Kbps or variable bit rate (VBR)
• WMA8 and WMA9 files up to 192 Kbps or variable bit rate (VBR)
• WMV9 up to 1080p (to 40 Mbps)
• Internet radio (streaming MP3)
• Video codecs: MPEG 1/2/4 SD; MPEG-2 HD HP@HL to 40 Mbps; MPEG-4 Part 2 HP@HL to 10 Mbps (Xvid); H.264 HP@HL 4.1, VC1/WMV9HD to 1080p 40 Mbps
• Video file formats: AVI, DivX, Xvid, WMV9, MOV, M4V, VOB, MPG, MP1, MP2, MP4, ISO, IFO, MKV (with AC3 only), TS, M2TS, PS
• Audio formats: MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, FLAC, WMA-Pro, M4A, M4P, AC3, DTS Passthrough, PCM, LPCM, AIFF
• Photo formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF
• Playlist formats: WPL, ASX, WAX, WVX, PLS, M3U, RMP

Input/Output includes:

• HDMI for A/V output
• RCA connector for composite video output
• RCA connectors for component video output (high-definition support)
• Digital audio output S/PDIF (coaxial/optical)
• Stereo RCA audio ports
• USB 2.0 mass storage interface
• 2x USB 2.0 port
• Ethernet port
• S-Video port
• SCART composite and RGB for regions that require it

The ability to play back DVD ISOs stored on a network drive is perhaps the single largest selling point for me. I currently store hundreds of MPEG2 movie files on the network and stream the content to a Windows Media Center Extender. However, in doing so, I lose menus and chapters etc. Streaming DVD ISOs would thereby eliminate this problem altogether (and create a new problem – the need for many more terabytes of network disk space).

You can pre-order the Netgear Digital Entertainer Elite now at Netgear’s website for $399.99.

Make sure to also check out our original CES 2009 coverage on the Elite.

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Read this in Chinese Simplified and in French

Technorati Tags: Netgear Digital Entertainer Elite, Digital Media Player

Looking to expand their presence in the digital media player market, Netgear demonstrated two new players at CES 2009 – the Netgear Internet TV Player (model ITV2000) and the Netgear Digital Entertainer Elite (model EVA9150). The Internet TV Player is a small compact device focused on delivering Internet content directly to the home big screen TV while the larger Digital Entertainer Elite caters the advanced media enthusiasts with large collections of digital content at home.

Here’s what you need to know about Netgear Internet TV Player.  Using the form factor of a small Netgear switch, the ITV2000 has the following features and specs:

• Ideal for individuals who enjoy online video
• Streams content from popular sites such as BBC.com, CNN.com, ESPN.com, EuroSport.com, NBC.com, PGATour, TMZ.com, YouTube, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos and MetaCafe
• Supports streaming of live TV broadcasts from Internet sites around the world
• Supports premium, paid movies delivered on-demand from sites such as CinemaNow.com
• Supports downloaded videos using BitTorrent
• VTap video search for intelligent search of Internet videos – target video sites by country, topic of interest, person, or popular website
• Supports playback of video, music, and photos through a connected USB flash drive or through Netgear ReadyNAS storage solutions
• Expected during the summer of 2009 for a price of $199

Below are pictures of the device. Note the demo uses a prototype unit on the right to power the display. The final form factor for the ITV2000 will be in the middle (or left in the second picture).

For those of you with large collections of digital content at home, Netgear will be rolling out the Digital Entertainer Elite (EVA9150). This component styled device features a built-in, user-upgradeable 500GB hard drive, playback support for a wide variety of digital file formats, support for 1080p video playback, and support for Internet delivered content.

First, here are the supported file formats (and it’s an impressive list):

• Video formats: AVI, DivX, Xvid WMV, MOV, M4V, MP4, VOB, MPG, MP1, MP2, MP4, ISO, IFO, MKV, TS and M2TS;
• Audio formats: MP1, MP2, MP3, WMA, WMA-Pro, AAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV, LPCM, Dolby AC3 5.1 stereo downmix, Dolby AC3 5.1 passthrough, DTS 5.1 passthrough, Dolby TrueHD Downmix, Dolby+ Passthrough and DTS-HD Master Audio passthrough;
• Subtitle formats: SUB, SRT, SMI, SAMI, TXT and DVD Subpicture; and,
• Video codecs: MP1, MP2, MP4, Xvid, VC-1/WMV-9, H.264 and OpenDivX.

Yes – the player will indeed play back full ISO images of DVDs – AND preserve the menus, chapters, and subtitles. Awesome stuff! AND yes, it supports MKV files too.

Other features and specs include:

• Two USB ports allowing you to connect USB flash drives, digital cameras, iPod, or other USB storage device
• Play files stored on PC, Mac, or from Network Attached Storage device
• Streams media directly from Internet sites
• Upconverts video to full 1080p HD via HDMI
• Three Netgear RangeMax internal metamaterial antennas and Dual-Band wireless 802.11n
• Sigma Designs 8635 processor
• Several Digital Entertainer Elites can work in the same home – pause video in one room allows you to pick it up in the same location in another room
• Support for Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS)
• Energy efficient power supply and automatic power saving mode consumes as little as 0.01 watts
• Expected in February for a price of $399

Technorati Tags: Netgear, Internet TV Player, ITV2000, Digitial Entertainer Elite, EVA9150, CES 2009

It looks like Netgear has a new digital media player up its sleeves. Submitted for approval by the FCC, Netgear is expected to announce the Digital Entertainer Elite media player at the upcoming CES 2009 in Las Vegas. Judging from the specs alone, the Digital Entertainer Elite looks to have it all. Not only does this unit decode practically every format known to man, the media player also supports DRM protected Apple content via iTunes on the PC!

You can stream content from PCs or Macs via wired or wireless networking (it even supports Draft-N Wi-Fi), or you can slide in a 3.5 inch SATA HDD for local playback of media files.

While the specs and instruction manual sure look promising, one has to wonder whether the user interface will be ..well usable. A GUI can make or break the entire product so here’s hoping that Netgear got it right with the Digital Entertainer Elite.

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Technorati Tags: Netgear Digital Entertainer Elite media player