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]

The home theatre environment has certainly come a long way over the past 60 years. Back then, the typical home theatre experience involved the entire family huddled around a black and white analogue set in the living room, watching the same TV programme as every other person in the country. It certainly is an archaic concept to most of us nowadays when, thanks to recent technological advancements, we can enthusiastically devour cinema theatre-quality experiences in the comfort of our own private spaces.

The advent of HD technology has resulted in HD TVs becoming a feature of our domestic spaces. Some 15 per cent of homes in the US already have a HDTV, with numbers growing steadily both there and here in the UK. As the insatiable appetite for the HD experience grows, the consumer market is expanding from niche to mainstream. But misconceptions surrounding the technology and capabilities of the product still abound.

The Helios H4000HD (£65) reviewed here won’t win any design awards - plus it’s build quality is pretty shocking - but it’s a relatively feature-packed upscaling DVD player for those on a budget. The slimline (1.5kg) black player has a very appealing feature too - it can upscale standard DVDs to as high as 1080p resolution through component or HDMI. The player also has the capacity to upscale to 1080i resolution via HDMI output, and 1280×1024-pixel resolution via VGA output.

To cater to Helio’s (once NeoDigits) growing European market, the player also supports 480i and 576i resolutions. With 11 different resolutions to choose from, you have an even greater chance of getting the right match with your high-definition television for quality images with smoother and more pronounced details. What more, the player is region-free out-of-the-box. This means that it can play all your DVDs regardless of which part of the world you copied bought them.

The Helios H4000HD has upgraded power and audio capacitors, and better high-quality components than the older HVD2085 . The player now comes with a full-featured illuminated remote control with a newly-designed easy-to-use layout, a far greater range capacity, and a UOP-off function which lets you bypass all those annoying trailers and copyright notices.

To reap all the benefits of your HDTV’s promise, you need to understand what resolution to choose from the DVD player that is best suited to your LCD TV. For instance, will 1080p work on your TV? Do you know how to get the best high definition resolution from your TV? One common mistake is to wrongly interpret HDTV specifications - your TV may support 720p and 1080p high definition video input, but that doesn’t mean your HDTV will support 720p and 1080p resolutions. The truth is, very few HDTV screens have a ‘native’ resolution that can match 1080p.

The thing to note is that each LCD, plasma and DLP TV has its own native resolution. You must first find out what the native resolution of your TV is. Older-generation plasma TV screens, for example, only have a resolution of 852×480 pixels, while the new generation plasma TV screens have a higher resolution of 1024×1024 pixels. If you don’t have a HD DVD player, or other form of HD video source, the video output will be scaled to match your HDTV display resolution. This could make it look bad, as the video source will output a resolution signal that is different to the HDTV’s native resolution.

When content from a video source, such as a DVD player, is output to a scaler (processing chipset that upscales or downscales the received video signal to match the native resolution of the HDTV’s screen), the original digital format is decoded first by the player, then sent in an analogue format that can be read by the scaler. With that already decoded information, the scaler ‘upscales’ or ‘downscales’ the signal and then outputs it to the HDTV, based on the screen’s resolution.

While many HDTVs now on the market claim to support 1080i resolution (and the most expensive 1080p), you will not be able to play your DVD titles in 1080i resolution on these TVs. The key to getting the best images possible out of your HDTV is to choose the right video source - one that can output the exact same digital signal as the resolution of your HDTV’s screen, direct from the video source into the HDTV, bypassing the ‘scaler’.

Skipping the scaler step is one way of getting a sharper, crisper image from your HDTV. By removing this one step, the digital video signal, in its original format, is sent directly from your video source into your HDTV. DVD players that are able to do so are those equipped with HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface). It is this HDMI feature that takes advantage of a DVD player’s ability to upscale or downscale the DVD title according to the HDTV’s native resolution.

HDMI is the new standard for ‘pure digital’ connection, and was designed as a common interface for devices from set-top boxes to digital TVs. Currently, HDMI offers the best video quality on the market - far better than if an analogue scaler were used to process the signal.

Thus, the key to getting the most out of your HDTV is finding out your display panel’s native resolution, then matching your video source’s HDMI output to this specific resolution. DVD players with the HDMI function, such as the H4000HD, allow you to choose from a number of resolutions for matching purposes. Not all DVD players on the market, however, offer a wide range of choices. So if the native resolution of your particular screen is not available from the list of choices on the DVD player, the best thing to do is opt for the next nearest resolution, whether it is slightly higher of lower, and then test by trial and error to see which of the two images appears sharper.

The H4000HD offers no less than 11 output options. Indeed, owners of DVD players that offer a large choice such as this, have a higher chance of getting the right match for their HDTVs, and are able to reap the benefits from a larger pool of HDTVs available, no matter what the brand, model or resolution.

The player supports pretty much every type of format including DVD, SVCD, VCD, CD, HDCD, MP3, WMA, Photo-CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW. It upscales standard DVD titles up to 1080p via component or HDMi connectors, and also supports 720p, 1080i, 480i and 576i output options. Output options via the VGA interface include 640×480, 800×600, 10247×68 and 1280×1024 pixels. It also has a built-in Dolby 5.1 and DTS decoder, as well as a 16-bit 149MHz Video DAC and 192kHz 24-bit Audio DAC (32-bit/133MHz Audio DSP). Connectors are plentiful and comprise component, S-Video, VGA, HDMI and composite video output. There’s also optical, coaxial (S/PDIF) and RCA audio outputs.

I tested the player on a Sharp Aquous HDTV running at a resolution of 1080p and the picture looked really good (I also tried 720p and was equally impressed). Compared to a regular (say 480p) player the detail levels were noticeably increased, as was general brightness. Even lesser DVD Movies looked better, with the exception of a few titles which showed up their inadequacies more predominantly. You’re not getting true HD, but the Helios H4000HD is a reasonable player for DVD buffs who want to get the most from their HDTV without spending hundreds on a ‘true HD’ DVD player.

The major criticism I had with the player was its build quality - the buttons on the unit itself are very noisy when clicked, DVDs frequently stuck (requiring me to force open the drive bay), and the remote control looks like an afterthought. Plus, the on-screen menu is painfully slow and subtitles keep appearing every time you pause a movie - how annoying! But, for the price it’s a steal. [6]

Last year, global TV shipments rose 4% to almost 200 million units, worth over £50bn, and growth will accelerate to reach 280 million units, worth £80bn, by 2012, according to a new consumer electronics industry report from Understanding & Solutions.

The global TV boom is being powered by our desire for flat panel TVs, which are rapidly replacing CRT sets, plus growth in emerging markets, which are also trending away from CRT to flat panels. Emerging markets accounted for over 50% of global TV shipments in 2007 and will rise to more than 65% by 2012.

LCD is rapidly growing to become the dominant display technology for television, and accounted for 40% of shipments in 2007 and 64% of market value. By 2012, LCD will account for over 80% of the market.

Strategic supply of LCD panels has become a critical competitive issue, with huge concentrations of volume under the control of major producers, including manufacturing joint ventures between TV brand leaders Samsung-Sony and LG-Philips.

Following significant price decline in 2006, the rising cost of raw materials and strong demand for LCD in TVs and laptop computers meant prices were relatively stable in 2007. TV manufacturers are also having to add cost with new features like digital tuners and high definition connectivity (HDMI), while at the same time introducing fire retardant and recyclable materials.

Bigger is better for most, too. The flat panel trend is fuelling consumer appetite for larger TV screens worldwide, not just for the living room but in bedrooms, playrooms and other locations around the home. For example, shipments of TVs with screens larger than 37 inches in Europe have risen from just 4% of total in 2004 to 23% in 2007, and are set to rise to over 40% by 2012, according to the report.

Average prices have been moving up as consumers opt for larger screens. Average selling prices in the UK rose 5% in 2007, for example. The larger screen trend is in turn driving rollout of High Definition TV and will also boost demand for a new generation of Blu-ray high definition video.

Over the next four years, TV market growth will be strengthened by major sporting events, with purchase spikes occurring around the Olympics, the Football World Cup and the UEFA championships. These events are likely to offset near-term economic uncertainties. Flat panel TV is a must for the modern home, and global sports events normally trigger high acquisition rates, especially as all of these upcoming events will be broadcast in High Definition. Time to get the chequebook out …