Smart Home Blog

Lately we can observe a boom of networked media tanks – devices which allow to playback movies, music or show pictures from the different types of storage. It isn’t surprised. More and more media content is available on the hard drives or online. So, Xtreamer joins to the big family of such devices. It understand all imaginable media formats and containers, contains the latest codecs, allows playback media files from the internal 2.5″ HDD, NAS or network shares, supports YouTube, Picasa, Yahoo Video, CNN, NBC Today, CBS Face the Nation. That list will be expanded soon. To get it the consumer will have to upgrade the device’s firmware.

The player can be connected to the LAN via Ehternet port or external USB 802.11. It’s already available at the price €99! The worldwide shipping is €20. The same amount should be paid to get USB WiFi adaptor.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

Amex Digital has introduced a HD networked media player Venice-V38HD with built-in optical driver. It allows to playback AVI, WMV, MPG, VOB, MP4, MKV, XviD files and rip CD and DVD to internal 2TB storage. The player provides HDMI, S-Video, Component and Composite video output as well as Coaxial, Optical and Stereo audio outputs to connect to TV and amplifier. It also can be used as NAS, NFS, UPnP and FTP server.

There is no any word about availability and price of the Venice-V38HD.

[via Tech Gadgets]

Networked media players like Popcorn Hour or ZyXEL DMA-2500 are good get media content from HDD, NAS or PCs. But they lack for possibility to play CD/DVD or Blu-ray disks. Sure it isn’t so necessary now (I played DVD a few monthes last time) but it can be important for owners of huge collection of DVDs, for example. The company Syabas, producer of Popcorn Hour, filled that gap. Its networked DVD player offers the same functionality as networked media tank except torrent client (it doesn’t have internal HDD). Additionally you may play CD, DVD and even HDNet discs (HD Disc with HTML navigation). The player sports Composite/S-Video, Component Video (Progressive and Interlace) / D4, HDMI video and SPDIF, Coaxial and Analog Stereo audio outputs, 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, WiFi 802.11a/b/g adaptor, USB port.

No any information about the player’s price and shops where it can be bought.

A new MSI product – MS-9A08 looks very interesting. It’s a compact (just 18×18×4.4cm) but really power. The MS-9A08 supports Intel Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad or Core 2 Duo processors. It’s equiped by integrated Intel GMAX4500 HD graphics to provide even Full HD playback with hardware acceleration. HDMI or DVI outputs can be used to connect device to TV, projector or monitor. Also the MS-9A08 supports both IDE and SATA II interfaces for storage and provides one PCI and one PCIe expansion slots for Mini Card. Additionally it sports 4 COM ports, 6 USB ports, two gigabite Ethernet adaptors, analog audio output.

As I can see the MS-9A08 is good candidate for home automation controller or LInuxMCE core/hybrid. It supports Full HD playback, provides enough communication interfaces – COM and USB ports and has two network adapters. Two expansion slots can be use to add TV tuner or DVB card. Also tt’s quiet and compact. So, it’d be interesting to know its price and date of availability.

Two new NVIDIA Ion nettops was announced last week – ASRock ION 330 and Pegatron Cape 7. ASRock ION 330 (picture above) doesn’t look like Acer AspireRevo. It’s a bit bigger but it sports a dual-core Atom 330 and an integrated DVD optical drive.

Pegatron Cape 7 looks similar to Acer AspireRevo and there is no any information about its spec except HDMI and USB ports showed on the picture below. The price and date of availability are not known for both.
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