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]

This online music thingy is really taking off. Apple said its iTunes software/service is now the number two music retailer in the U.S., behind only cheepo retailer Wal-Mart.

There is now an army of over 50 million iTunes Store customers, and iTunes has sold over four billion songs - with an incredible 20 million songs sold on Christmas Day 2007 alone. The ubiquitous service offers the world’s largest music catalogue of over six million songs from all of the major labels.

Last month Apple push ahead with its world domination plans by launching iTunes Movie Rentals, featuring movies from all of the major movie studios including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate and New Line Cinema.

You can rent movies and watch them on your PC or Macs, most new iPods, iPhone and on an Apple TV. iTunes Movie Rentals will offer over 1000 titles by the end of this month, including over 100 titles in high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound which you can rent directly from their widescreen TV using Apple TV.

Earlier this month Apple dropped the price of its smallest flash memory player to just £32. Wow! It also bumped its capacity to 2GB (around 500 songs in 128Kbps AAC format) and charges just £45 for the pleasure (1GB model still available). So I thought now was as good a time as any to get one in for review and see what I’ve been missing.

The immensely popular iPod Shuffle is a sight to believe - it’s just half a cubic inch in volume, weighs an unnoticeable 14g, features a minimalistic aluminium design with a built-in clip and comes in five metallic colours - silver, blue, green, purple and a (PRODUCT) RED special edition. There simply isn’t anything else on the market that’s as portable or as hard wearing.

The iPod Shuffle is also the world’s most wearable iPod - just take a look around the next time you’re in the gym! Now let’s not get carried away - the iPod Shuffle’s features list is almost non-existent and you have to use iTunes to get your music onto in. On the plus side there’s a vast ecosystem of accessories with over 4000 products made specifically for the iPod including cases, fitness accessories, and speaker systems. It should work with a lot of modern automobile stereo systems, too.

There’s no display on the iPod Shuffle, so it’s not great for discovering new artists, but using it is a snap. Tactile controls on the front let you alter volume levels and skip tracks, and there’s a dedicated on/off switch and shuffle switch - the latter either randomly mixes up the song order or resets back to the order in which the tracks were synced from iTunes. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the player actually outperformed Apple’s 12-hour battery life rating, and not by just a few minutes, but a few hours - I managed to get 15 hours!

The iPod Shuffle requires a Mac with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later and iTunes 7.4; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 2) or later and iTunes 7.4 or later (not supplied). The headphone jack doubles as a dock connector - simply flip the player upside-down and drop it into the included dock.

The iPod Shuffle isn’t about features or sound quality - it epitomises ease of use, portability and convenience. It’s time to join the revolution! [8]