Tech Bitch

With so many households now with HDTVs and home theatre systems, we are all looking for new ways to enjoy high-definition (HD) entertainment. Netgear’s Digital Entertainer HD (EVA8000) enables you to watch HD videos and photos, Internet videos from popular sites like YouTube, and digital video recordings on your HDTV streamed from a PC, as well as to listen to music in your iTunes library and iPod on your home theatre system.

Similar in size to a regular DVD player, the EVA8000 (£196) builds upon the EVA700 (£107), a first-generation product that performed well but was a little rough around the edges. While there’s still no LCD on the updated model for status and file information, nor is there an optical drive for upscaled DVD playback, there’s now an all-important HDMI-out port.

Netgear’s EVA8000 has been designed to bring the universe of digital content from your Windows or Mac computer, NAS or USB media device to your television set. After connecting the relatively sophisticated set-top digital media receiver to a TV and your wired/wireless network, as well as installing the supplied driver software, it automatically discovers movies (all non-HD content is automatically upscaled to HD), TV shows, music files, and personal photos across multiple PCs. Thankfully, it organises them into a single media library displayed on your TV without the need for media server software running on the computer.

Using the included remote control you can then search your entire media library by multiple criteria including title, actor, date, genre or thumbnail images (from photos, album art or DVD covers). Furthermore, the included Windows-based software enables you to listen to music from iTunes, view YouTube videos and access your PC desktop from your living room (or wherever the TV is located). If your PC has an optional TV tuner installed, you can schedule recordings and pause or rewind live broadcasts using the EVA8000 without the need for an additional DVR device. Of course, your PC will have to remain powered for this to happen.

A neat feature for power users is that multiple EVA8000 receivers can work in concert throughout a building. Using ‘Follow Me,’ you can pause a video in one room and resume it in another. And while in ‘Party Mode’ you can synchronise music playback for whole-home listening. You can also plug in your USB flash drive, iPod, or other USB storage device directly into the front of the EVA8000 to access and play high-resolution digital media independently of a network.

The EVA8000 can stream many unprotected file formats over a network. It supports Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) media servers, plays Internet radio directly and can access RSS news feeds. Connectivity options are plentiful, comprising a single HDMI port for digital AV connection, RCA connectors for composite and component video outputs, stereo RCA audio ports, coaxial and optical digital audio outputs, an S-video port, and a SCART connector for regions requiring it. The receiver decodes many leading audio formats (MP1/2/3, WMA, WMA-Pro, AAC, AC3, FLAC, AIFF, WAV, and PCM), purchased music from iTunes, video formats (AVI, DivX, Xvid WMV, MOV, M4V, VOB, and MPEG-1/2/4) and image formats (JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF).

Playlist formats supported include PLS, M3U, WPL, ASX, WAX, WVX, RMP, while tag formats (metadata) are ID3 v1, ID3 v2, WMA, WMV, AVI, DivX, Xvid, FLAC, EXIF, MOV, M4A, M4P, and M4V. The device also supports Dolby Surround playback for digital audio ports and down-mixes to stereo for analogue outputs. It integrates a single 10/100Base-T Ethernet controller, as well as 802.11g wireless. Unfortunately, there’s no Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n or Bluetooth.

Netgear’s EVA8000 is a great addition to the company’s growing family of innovative multimedia networking products because it offers the ability to watch almost any content (legal, illegal, high-quality), in any room, at any time, on a HDTV. Loaded with features, from HD video playback (480i to 1080p) to online access of YouTube and Flickr, the EVA8000 even plays iTunes DRM-protected files. But it’s not without its faults. Most noticeable is that it can be a bit of a pig to set up (firewalls can cause a problem) and you’ll encounter playback jittering running high-quality audio and video over a wireless network.

Another frustration is that, unlike Apple TV, it cannot automatically update its library - you have to ‘scan for new media’ every time you update your computer’s folders. We wouldn’t rate it as highly as a dedicated upconverting DVD player in terms of playback quality either, and anyone with a low tolerance for frustration might be better off with Apple’s TV. And unlike Apple TV, the EVA8000 has no hard disk drive, so you can’t revert to hard drive playback when there are streaming problems. But for technical Windows users who like to get their hands dirty, the EVA8000 is probably the most accomplished media streamer currently available - I just wish it looked more stylish and was easier to use… [7]

A staggering 33% of small- to medium-sized enterprises in the UK leave their backup tapes in the office at the end of the day, negating the benefit of backing up their servers, according to a new research report published today by Connect.

Two thirds of businesses (69%) had never tested whether they could retrieve all the information held on their backups. You naughty, naughty people …

The survey was conducted thanks to interviews with IT Managers and Directors at 151 UK companies in a range of industry sectors.

Tell me this. What kind on an idiot would store their backup tapes in their own offices? If there’s a fire, a flood or a burglary, they risk losing both the original data and the backups. Equally surprising is why so many organisations are using backup tapes at all. There are plenty of better and more up-to-date methods that can be used to protect their business critical data and at a similar cost. Stop me now, I could be here all day …

Does choosing the correct type of copper networking cabling for various home and commercial applications keep you up a night? After all, which is best? Is it Category 5 (Cat 5), Category 5e (Cat 5e) or Category 6 (Cat 6). Make yourself comfortable and let me demystify …

Organisations such as the Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA) and Electronic Industries Association (EIA) have set specific product standards, and these guidelines have resulted in cables being classified into various categories based on their performance levels.

The most basic of all three types, Cat 5 cable is available in two varieties: Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP), the type widely used in the U.S., and Screened Twisted Pair (SCTP), which has shielding to provide a measure of extra protection against interference but is rarely used outside of Europe.

Cables belonging to Category 5 are either solid or stranded: Solid Cat 5 is more rigid, and the better choice if data needs to be transmitted over a long distance, while Stranded Cat 5 is very flexible and most likely to be used as patch cable. Cat 5 cable can support 10- or 100Mbps Ethernet, and has a capability of up to 100MHz.

Cat 5e, which stands for Category 5, enhanced, cable goes along the same lines as basic Cat 5, except that it fulfills higher standards of data transmission. While Cat 5 is common in existing cabling systems, Category 5e has almost entirely replaced it in new installations. Cat 5e can handle data transfer at 1000Mbps, is suitable for Gigabit Ethernet, and experiences much lower levels of near-end crosstalk (NEXT) than Cat 5.

Of the three cable categories, Cat 6 is the most advanced and provides the best performance. Just like Cat 5 and Cat 5e, Category 6 cable is typically made up of four twisted pairs of copper wire, but its capabilities far exceed those of other cable types because of one particular structural difference: a longitudinal separator.

This separator isolates each of the four pairs of twisted wire from the others, which reduces crosstalk, allows for faster data transfer, and gives Category 6 cable twice the bandwidth of Cat 5! Cat 6 cable is ideal for supporting 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and is able to operate at up to 250MHz. Since technology and standards are constantly evolving, Cat 6 is the wisest choice of cable when taking any possible future updates to your network into consideration. Not only is Category 6 cable future-safe, it is also backward-compatible with any previously-existing Cat 5 and Cat 5e cabling found in older installations.

There, that wasn’t so bad …