Smart Home Blog

Recently MediaGate announced MG-M²TV – non networked media player. Moreover it doesn’t have even internal storage like media HDD. In spite of supporting many well-known media formats, Full HD and price in $119 I don’t think that it’s better then any networked media tank like Xtreamer or media storage like WD TV HD Media Player. In my mind modern media player without Ethernet and HDMI is useless. Even it can play media content from USB flash or HDD.

It’s planning to add to MG-M²TV WiFi adapter for network connection. But it won’t happen tomorrow. So, I don’t see anything which can attracts attention of potential buyers. If I’m wrong, please, correct me.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

It seems that next generation of Logitech Squeezebox will have4.3-inch color touchscreen to control music playback. Not sure that this is a real device because there is no any word on the Logitech’s site about such product (remember, the same situation was with its Squeezebox Boom). But I like that conception. More over, according to tentative spec, Logitech Squeezebox Touch will support host USB to playback music directly from the flash-drive. The rest specification includes:

• Audio formats: MP3, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, Apple Lossless, WMA Lossless, APE, MPC and WavPack supported through transcoding
• Support for MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and WMA formatted Internet Radio streams Wireless interface
• True 802.11g wireless networking
• One-touch setup (with compatible WPS-supporting routers)
• Support WPA Personal, WPA-2AES, and 64/128-bit WEP encryption Ethernet interface
• Connects to any 100 Mbps or 10 Mbps network (with Auto MDX)
• USB host connector for accessing music and photos via USB drive or USB key
• SD card slot for music and photos
• Supports sampling rates up to 24 bit / 96 kHz
• Stereo analog (RCA), headphone jack, digital optical, and digital coax output
• 4.3-inch 24-bit color LCD with capacitive touch screen
• Ambient light sensor to adjust display brightness according to environment
• Infrared proximity sensor to detect presence

The price of Logitech Squeezebox Touch is about €330. Will wait for official Logitech announcement.

[via Zatz Not Funny]

Good news for all how like Popcorn Hour and want to watch TV on it. Using the latest version of VDR plugin streamdev-server the dream comes true . The previous version was needed a patch to bring the stream in the format understandable for the networked media tank.

You can stream to Popcorn Hour not only standard definition signal but HD as well (you should have VDR with HD support). To switch channels and retrieve channel info and EPG can be used a simple web interface – vdr-ui. It doesn’t offer a full set of streamdev-client features but at least makes process of managing of the stream much easily. Hope it’ll be extended soon.

Networked media players such as Popcorn Hour became very popular. But they still cannot replace DVD or Blu-ray player because they cannot play real disks. However Dune BD Prime can fill in that gap. It plays Blu-Ray (Profile 1.1/2.0) and DVD disks as well as media files from USB stick, shared resources in LAN (NFS and SMB), IPTV (free channels UDP/RTP MPEG-TS, H.264/MPEG-2) and Internet radio (HTTP/MP3). The player supports a bunch of A/V file formats and codecs. Additionally Dune BD Prime provides NAS functionality for attached external HDD via USB or eSATA, BitTorrent client and web browser to surf Internet (with limited possibilities and performance).

The Dune BD Prime is equiped by HDMI 1.3, Composite, component, S-Video video outputs, Optical and coaxial digital and 7.1 analogue audio outputs. To connect external storage three USB ports can be used. 100 MB/s Ethernet adapter can be upgrade to gigabyte one. Additionally WiFi 802.11n adaptor and two eSATA ports.

User interface of the Dune BD Prime is simple but functional. It’s no needed to have some special knowledge to configure and use the device. All operations are done using remote control.

The Dune BD Prime is not so cheap as ordinary media tanks or Blu-ray players. It costs €449.00. But it looks like a good value for money. At least theoretically

Seagate announced on CES 2009 its new product – FreeAgent Theater. It contains two parts – media player with dock for FreeAgent Go portable hard drive and dock to connect disk to PC.

Media player allows to playback media content from hard drive directly to TV using user friendly interface. It supports video – MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB/ISO), MPEG-4 (AVI/DivX /Xvid), subtles – SAMI(smi), SRT and SUB, audio – MP3, AC3 (5.1 audio – Dolby® Digital) WMA, WAV, OGG. Video resoluons can be NTSC 480i/480p; PAL 576i/576p and it supports video (HD and upscaling) up to 720p/1080i.

FreeAgent Theater can be connected to the TV using composite, component or S-Video outputs (HDMI is missed and it’s a biggest disadvantage of the device IMHO). Audio can be passed via stereo or co-axil S/PDIF.

Seagate FreeAgent Theater is very good solution for all how use FreeAgent Go HDDs to keep videos, music and photos. Nice design, user friendly software and remote control will make using that device easy for all family members.

It’ll be available on February with price ~ $220 including 500GB HDD.