Roku recently updated their line of streaming media players, and they sent Julie their high-end Roku 2 XS with gaming remote to review.  I had been in the market for a Roku for my living room TV so I could watch Hulu Plus on my big screen TV, so I bought myself a Roku 2.  I only wanted the ability to stream in full 1080p HD, so I opted for the Roku 2 XD model.  When I mentioned my new Roku 2 to Julie, she suggested we do another tag-team review so you can compare and contrast the two models to make your shopping easier.  My comments will be in black; Julie’s will be in blue italics.

Note: Click the images in this review to see a larger view.

Janet wanted the Roku to watch Hulu Plus on her TV. I wanted the Roku XS to play Angry Birds on my big screen TV and to see if it was a viable alternative to the Boxee Box, which I mainly use to stream video that I’ve obtained and saved to a flash drive.

Technical specification of both devices

Networking

• 802.11n Wi-Fi (b/g/n compatible) with WEP, WPA and WPA2 support
• 10/100 Base-T Ethernet (XS model only)
• Bluetooth version 3.0 (currently enabled for use with Roku game remote only)

Video Outputs

• 480i (over composite video)
• 480p (over HDMI)
• 720p (over HDMI)
• 1080p (over HDMI)

Video Modes

• 1080p High Definition (HD)
• 720p High Definition (HD)
• 16:9 anamorphic / 4:3 standard

Audio Output

• Analog stereo (mini-jack to left/right/composite video RCA)
• Digital over HDMI (5.1 surround sound pass-through)

Storage Expansion

• microSD card slot for additional game and channel storage
• USB slot (XS model only)

Remote Control

• Roku Bluetooth game remote (with motion sensing for playing games) with XS model only.  Standard Roku infrared remote with XD model.
• Streaming player includes IR. Compatible with various universal remotes

Power

• 5.2V – 1.5A power adapter for XS; 5.2V – 1.0A power adapter for XD model.
• Consumes less than 2W (typical) when streaming HD video

USB Media Formats (for Roku 2 XS only)

• Video: MP4 (H.264)
• Audio: AAC, MP3
• Image: JPG, PNG

Size

• 3.3 x 3.3 x 0.9 inches; weighs 3 oz

Contents of the XD box

The XD comes with an AC power supply, the standard IR Roku 2 remote (non-gaming), a proprietary A/V composite cable, and a booklet.

The XS comes with the power supply, Roku 2 gaming remote, batteries, A/V composite cable, and a quick start guide.

The Roku 2 boxes are much smaller than previous models.  In fact, they are smaller than the 2nd gen Apple TV.  The boxes are shiny black, with a matte model ID embossed on the top.  Again, Roku has used the grosgrain ribbon labels on these models.  I don’t mind these labels on the boxes themselves, but I don’t like having them on the remote because they are scratchy.

Janet, does your XD have shiny letters on top or is that just the way it photographed? The XS embossed on the top of mine is barely noticeable.

The XS is the same size as the XD, which is perfect because it doesn’t need much room at all in your entertainment setup. The XS is almost identical to the XD except for two extra ports.

The box is shiny, but the XD letters aren’t shiny; it just caught the light from the fixture over my kitchen table in a funny way.  I decided to use that photo because you could see the branding so well, but my XD actually looks more like your XS.

The front has the Roku 2 designation and an LED indicator light.  There’s no power switch for the Roku 2; it’s always on and connected to the internet so that you can start streaming videos instantly.  The LED goes off when the Roku 2 is in standby mode.  The bottom has a big rubber pad to prevent scratches on your furniture.  You’ll notice it’s also a handy dust magnet.

Inputs for XD model

The back panels for the XS and the XD models are different.  My XD has the power connector and a reset button.  There are HDMI and a single-plug A/V outputs; the proprietary A/V cable is included, but you’ll have to supply your own HDMI cable.  There’s also a microSD card slot to expand storage for games and channels.  If you have installed a lot of channels and games, older ones will be deleted from internal memory to make room for new ones.  Adding a microSD card (not included) will prevent channels being deleted from memory, so all your channels and games will launch without needing to be re-downloaded.

You’ll notice there is no Ethernet connector on the XD model.  You must connect wirelessly to your network with the XD.

Here we see the back of the XS, with the included Ethernet jack. It seems interesting that an Ethernet jack is included on the high end model but not the low end. You would think that the wireless connectivity option would be the premium feature, not the wired option.

Can I take a sec to complain about the lack of an included HDMI cable? What’s up with that? I don’t understand why almost every HDMI enabled video device on the market pretty much never comes with one. I’d much rather have the included cable instead of included batteries for the remote.

I agree about the lack of an HDMI cable. I could understand supplying only the composite cable with the lowest level Roku boxes.  But if you buy a higher level box because it has 1080p capabilities, you should get the HDMI cable necessary to best get that signal to your TV.

The XS model also has a USB slot so that you can stream video from a USB flash drive or hard drive. The only caveat is that the supported video formats are limited to MP4 (H.264), JPG, PNG, MP3, AAC. It does not recognize .AVI or .MOV files (from the iPhone).

Standard IR remote with XD model

The standard IR remote comes with the XD.  It has the standard media playback buttons, the 5-way navigation buttons to maneuver around menus and on-screen keyboards, a home button, a back button, and a special options button marked with an asterisk.  (Special options let you leave ratings and see channel descriptions.)  You cannot play games on the Roku 2 XD with this standard remote.  However, the Roku 2 XD and even the Roku 2 HD are equipped with Bluetooth, so they can be paired with the RF gaming remote.  I could purchase the gaming remote with a 2GB microSD card for $30 from Roku and pair it with my XD box if I decide I want to play games in the future.

This is the special gaming remote that comes with the XS model. It’s made of the same shiny Black plastic as the main device and has several extra buttons and a lanyard strap so that you won’t throw the remote across the room when you’re trying to kill pigs while playing Angry Birds. The main gee whiz feature of the remote is that it’s similar to a Wii remote because you can wave it around to move a cursor and interact with characters in games. Since it’s Bluetooth, you don’t have to worry about line of sight like regular IR remotes.

That’s a long wrist strap!  It looks too long to keep it on your wrist while you’re flinging your hands around.  Can you cinch it tight on your wrist?

Yes, if you notice in the picture above, there is a hard plastic piece at the end of the thin thread that holds the lanyard to the remote. There are actually two pieces there. The larger one has a little lift up latch that allows it slide down the strap and then lock in place.

XD sitting on top of a 2nd generation Apple TV

To get started with setup, you must create a Roku account if you don’t already have one.  The account itself is free, but you’ll have to enter credit card or Paypal information so that you can be charged for any optional channels you may purchase.  The account also stores information about your device(s) and how they are set up.  I already had an older Roku with my 2nd TV, so I already had a Roku account.

This was my first Roku device, so I had to create an account. It was painless though and only took a minute.

I connected my Roku 2 to my living room TV using an HDMI cable I already had.  You can see how small the Roku 2 is compared to the 2nd gen Apple TV it’s sitting on.

I also used an HDMI cable to connect to my Samsung LED TV. Instead of connecting via Ethernet, I opted for Wifi.

As soon as the Roku 2 was powered up, it found several networks.  (My setup screen photos were taken at an angle, but they are readable.)  I selected mine, entered my password, and I was connected in seconds.  You can see that you have to use one of those on-screen alphanumeric matrices that you navigate with the remote.  It took a while to get my long password entered, but I could unhide the password to be sure that I had typed it correctly before I entered it.

As soon as I was connected, the Roku 2 found and installed a firmware update.  I was then ready to setup the box and connect to my Roku account.

I chose the proper display resolution for my HD TV, then I linked my Roku account to the Roku 2 box.  You’ll notice that the Roku box can stream full 1080p signals.  Not all media boxes can stream full HD; the 2nd gen Apple TV box does only 720p.  Because the Roku 2 is capable of streaming 1080p from Netflix (when available), I’m using the XD box for my Netflix downloads and using the Apple TV only for the iTunes store.

I had a similar experience setting up the XS version of this player. I didn’t capture any screenshots as I was doing the setup, so I don’t know if the screens are exactly the same on both devices, but I found the process to be fast and easy.

As I remember, these screens seem to be the same ones I used when I set up my old Roku, too. Did you have a step to pair your gaming remote to your box, or did it automatically do it?

It automatically found it when I put the batteries in and started working right away.

Once linked to my account, I selected channels.  Some channels are third-party subscription services, like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Instant Video.  I subscribe to all of those, so I added those channels by logging into my accounts through the Roku 2 box.  There are some free Roku channels, like the Crackle movie channel.  I also added that.  There are a variety of pay channels through Roku, but I didn’t purchase any of those.  You can also purchase games here.  There are several games available now.  I couldn’t add games because I didn’t have a gaming remote.  It took only a couple of minutes to get everything set up and ready to watch.

Some of the channels do require you to go to a special site on the web, to type in a code so that you link the channel to your specific account / Roku box.

I do wish that you could customize the channel view. I’m not a fan of the horizontal scroll method. I’d rather have a grid or list so I could see all my channels at once.

A grid arrangement would be really nice. I only have a few channels, but it takes a while to scroll to the one I want. Imagine how long it would take to scroll through them all if you had dozens of channels…

I mentioned earlier that I could pair a gaming remote to my XD box.  This is accomplished in the setup options.

I have watched several movies and TV shows using my Roku 2 XD box.  Playback always starts quickly, and I haven’t had any glitches during playback.  It works equally well with all my subscription channels.  The remote works well to control the box.

The XS works well too. I have watched a bunch of segments on the Tested gadget review channel, shows through Hulu Plus (BTW, I think it sucks to have commercials for a premium service… but that’s not Roku’s fault) and movies through the Epix channel. The only issue I can complain about is that I have to crank up the volume on some channels and not on others. I’m guessing that this isn’t the fault of Roku though. I didn’t have any problems with video. Playback was smooth, with no hiccups once it was buffered.

The XD box that I have doesn’t allow me play my own files.  The XD doesn’t have a USB port, so I can’t connect a flash drive or an external drive.  It doesn’t support networked drives, either.  That’s not a problem for me, because I just don’t have many files that I want to stream to my TV.  I can use the Apple TV to serve personal files to my TV should I ever want to do that.

These are important features to me and the Roku does not shine in this area because it only supports MP4 format video files and does not allow streaming from networked drives. It works fine for watching content supplied by the channels, but if you want to watch your existing content, you’re out of luck unless you don’t mind converting your files to MP4s.

It’s not something that interests me, but you can create private channels with the Roku service.  Some third parties have created channels that they make available to others, but I think their quality varies.  Other private channels could be used by businesses for training or sales videos, for example.

I really like the Roku 2 XD.  It does everything my old Roku did, but it adds full 1080p HD, which is very nice on my 65″ HDTV.  It’s convenient to have a single box for Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu Plus.  I like that I can add other channels directly from Roku, especially the free ones.  I also think it’s nice you can add simple gaming features for little cost; this won’t satisfy hard-core gamers, but it might be nice for grandparents to have a couple of games for when the grandkids come to visit.  I find that I get a lot of entertainment for my $80 investment.  If Hulu Plus could only add CBS programming, I could use the Roku 2 and my Apple TV instead of cable programming.

Unfortunately, the Roku XS won’t replace my Boxee Box since it can’t play all my own video content…  But playing Angry birds is a blast on my 55 inch TV and $99.99 is a fair price for the XS model considering all the free content that is available via the wide variety of channels. Roku even offers a 30 day money back guarantee, so it’s definitely worth checking out for yourself or gifting.

It would make a great gift, even for people who don’t have subscriptions to Netflix or Hulu Plus, because there are several free channels through Roku, including free movie channels and HBO Go.  They have a lot of channels available to choose from, and you can see a list here.

Update 12/03/11
On the advice of one of our readers (see comments below), I installed the PLEX media server on my iMac (which is located in the room behind the TV you see in the image above)  and then installed the PLEX channel on the Roku XS. I’ve only played with this setup briefly, but I have been able to stream video (in .AVI, .MOV and .MKV formats) via WiFi from the iMac to the Roku pretty easily. The default video quality setting for the PLEX channel is 720 kbps 320p (ick) and when I set it to the highest setting of 8 Mbps 1080p, I had problems with the video continually buffering. Setting it back to the next to best quality setting of >4Mbps 720p worked much better for me with no buffering issues once the initial buffering completed. I’m not a big fan of the PLEX channel interface on the Roku as it feels kind of slow and clunky. But it does work.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Reviews

Tagged: HD TV, Streaming, Video game accessory

Roku 2 XS and XD Streaming Media Players Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 28, 2011 at 11:00 am.

Have you ever wished you could project whatever you did or watched on your MacBook to your TV? I know I have and now it’s possible with a device called McTiVia. While there have been various ways to do this in the past, now I can just boot up the mac, start the McTiVia app, change one video setting on the TV using my remote and voila! I am surfing, watching video, checking email, and even writing this review with my TV as a second monitor – only much bigger.

So think about that… anything you see on your laptop is projected on the TV. Family movies and photos, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube – all of that can be shared with the whole family or friends. Simply and wirelessly. And you can connect up to 8 Macs although I’ve never, ever had 8 Macs at the same time.

But there’s a catch – isn’t there always a catch? For one, when my MacBook Pro is streaming to the TV wirelessly, it runs hot. Very hot. I have to prop it up in my lap to avoid burning my legs. Oh, and it’s a battery killer. After 30 minutes, my battery was down to 67%. Ouch. This is a new MacBook with the all the latest stuff, not some outdated G4 model. Which brings up another quibble. The McTiVia does not like older macs. My son had an older MacBook and it was not easy to set up. Heck, come to think of it, this MacBook wasn’t much easier to set up either. After many failures, I had to use McTiVia’s tech support to literally walk me through the process on the phone. It turns out I had missed a couple of steps not clearly explained on their web site. Maybe a techie geek could have figured it out, but McTiVia is supposedly designed for normal people who just want an extension to their laptop.

Build quality is solid. All the ports and connections on the McTiVia are tight and secure. It looks and feels like it will last a long time. It works on both Mac and Windows. McTiVia does not yet work with the iPad. I am told that Apple is the cause and that the people at McTiVia are working on getting approval.

When I contacted tech support, the person at McTiVia could not have been nicer or more helpful. He was amazing. If every other tech company did customer service like McTiVia, there would be no more jokes about them. He patiently guided me through the steps and after downloading the latest update to the software, I was up and running.

Viewing apps and other static stuff is a breeze – like writing this review. The resolution is good – not great, but at a normal TV viewing distance, it looks quite nice. After all, TVs are not computer monitors. There is a slight delay between the laptop and the TV, but it is no big deal. Also, the video on your monitor changes size when McTiVia is turned on, but returns to normal when switched off. Videos look good, however the delay becomes more pronounced. How long the delay is depends on the WiFi signal strength. My WiFi was just in the next room in line of sight and the video delay was about 1-2 seconds.

While trying YouTube video I discovered that it does not like the 480 (or higher) setting. The video gets very jumpy and there are audio syncing issues. At 320 or less, all is fine if you can put up with the lower video quality. On a HDTV, the lowered quality was very noticeable.

Keep in mind, everything I am doing is wireless. The McTiVia allows for a wired ethernet connection to your router which DOES equal better video and speed. However, my router is in the other room and well, that kind of defeats the whole purpose of a device like McTiVia. Also, who wants wires stretching from the TV to the couch or from the couch to another room? If you have to do that, why not just make a direct connection and save money?

If you can wire your mac via ethernet to your router without creating a tripping hazard, then you can put the MacBook back in its place and use a wireless keyboard and mouse to do whatever it is you do on your laptop. Video, apps, surfing, all of that can be done without even going to the MacBook. McTiVia comes with five different plug adapters for international accessibility.

The McTiVia will not replace hard wiring if you want an optimal viewing experience. But as a wireless solution, it’s not bad and it gives you much more freedom and flexibility than the AppleTV. Remember, anything you can do on your MacBook, McTiVia can show it to you on your TV.

Hey, if you lie awake nights jonesing to put OS X on that enormous flat screen tax-refund toy of yours and have $200 left over, then McTiVia could make you smile.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Reviews

Tagged: OS X, Streaming

McTiVia Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 29, 2011 at 11:00 am.

I used to think my cable box offered all the programming I needed.  As cable prices keep rising, I’ve come to the conclusion that those multi-media boxes and an $8/month subscription to Netflix are a better deal.  While I haven’t gotten rid of cable yet, I have pared down some of the programming from Time Warner.  I’m using the Logitech Revue with Google TV in my living room for watching Netflix, but I wanted a smaller box to put with my second TV.  I decided the second generation Apple TV had the features I wanted, so I bought one from my local Apple store.

In the Box

• Apple TV
• Apple Remote
• Power cable
• Documentation

Specifications

• Dimensions:  3.9” wide X 3.9” deep X 0.9” tall; 0.6 pounds
• Processor:  Apple A4 chip
• Video formats:  H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats. MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.  Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
• Audio formats: HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV; Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound pass-through
• Photo formats: JPEG, GIF, TIFF
• Compatibility: Compatible with high-definition TVs with HDMI and capable of 720p 60/50Hz
• Ports and interfaces: HDMI, Optical audio, 10/100BASE-T Ethernet, Built-in IR receiver, Micro-USB for service and support
• Wireless:  802.11a/b/g/n
• See the Apple website for more details

When I opened the box, I was disappointed to see that there was no HDMI cable.  This device requires an HDMI cable, so I think Apple should have included one.  I used the one from my cable box to hook up the Apple TV while I waited for a $10 cable from Amazon.  I don’t have any external speakers or a home theater system with the second TV (Vizio 32” Razor 720p, 60Hz LED, model E320VP), so I didn’t need an optical cable to hook up a sound source.  You should know that you’ll have to supply your own optical cable, too.

Front with power light on

Top

Bottom

Back

As you can tell from the dimensions shown above, the 2^nd generation Apple TV is tiny.  It’s a very plain black box with shiny sides and absolutely no buttons.  Hidden on the front is an IR receiver for the remote and a white LED that only lights up when you are using the box.  The back has all the connections.  The top is matte with a shiny Apple logo and the letters “tv”.  The bottom has a rubbery base.

The included remote is the standard tiny aluminum, 3-button remote you can buy separately from Apple to control multimedia functions on Apple computers, iPods, iPads, and iPhones.  The remote came with a coin-style battery already installed.  Be aware that surfing on a MacBook and using the Apple TV in the same room can be a pain.  My computer received and responded to all the commands I sent to the Apple TV box.

Hooking up the Apple TV was a snap.  I plugged in the HDMI cable to the back of the Apple TV; it was already attached to my TV since I had been using it for the cable box.  I already mentioned that I don’t have any speakers to connect.  I have a good, strong WiFi signal in my house, so I decided to use the device’s built-in wireless connectivity instead of an Ethernet cable.  The only other thing left was to connect the power cable and plug it in.

A note about using wireless:  Apple recommends a sustained 2.5Mbit/s or faster Internet connection for standard-definition programming and 6Mbit/s or faster connection for high-def programming.

I powered on the Apple TV and my television and began the process of connecting to my network.  Entering the password was a pain because I had to scroll around a matrix of alphanumeric characters with the navigation buttons on the remote.  I tried connecting an Apple Bluetooth keyboard, but it didn’t work.  Luckily, it only took two tries to enter my long password correctly.

Almost immediately after the network connection was established, I was notified an update was available.  I installed the update before continuing.

Here’s a photo of the menu on my television screen.  The first two options, “Movies” and “TV Shows”, are for watching video content from iTunes.  You can search easily through movies and TV shows available to buy or rent.  Of course, you’ll need an iTunes account for these functions.  I’ve watched a couple of movies and a few episodes from the sixth season of the Bones television show from iTunes now.  Even though we have an Internet connection that’s at least double the recommendation for high-def, we’ve always had a delay while the program caches.  Once I saw that it would take 2 hours for my program to be ready to watch, but it never actually takes that long – 5-10 minutes at most.  I just need to remember to rent my movie then go take a bathroom break and get a soda before I settle in to watch my program in the future.  Once the program was buffered and ready to begin, playback was smooth and uninterrupted.  The remote works well to control playback; you can pause/resume, fast-forward, and reverse.

The menu button on the remote has one function – to return you to the previous menu.  You have to back your way out through a tier of submenus to get to the home menu.  It would be nice to have one button that takes you all the way out.  There’s no power button on the remote, and the Apple TV doesn’t need one because you can’t turn it off.  I did find a “Sleep Now” option in the settings.  I suppose it is always powered on to preserve the Internet connection to shorten the time required to start watching programming.

My Flickr pictures

YouTube menu

Internet Radio menu

NBA menu

The third option on the home menu is “Internet.”  Here you can connect to Netflix, MLB.TV, NBA, YouTube, Podcasts, MobileMe, Flickr, and Radio.  You’ll need a paid subscription to watch programming on Netflix, MLB.TV, and NBA.  With YouTube, you can search for and watch videos; you can sign in to your account if you have one.  Podcasts and Radio give you access to programming available from the Internet.  Flickr lets you view pictures; you can log in to your account if you have one.  I don’t have a MobileMe account, so I couldn’t try this feature at all.  I’m sure it will be disappearing from the menu in the near future anyway.

Entering account information for Netflix setup

Netflix home menu

I do have a Netflix account.  I could connect to their programming by either registering the device with my account or by logging in to my account through Apple TV.  I decided to log in, so I had to use that matrix to enter my account information.  Luckily I only had to sign in once; the device remembered my login information.

Netflix Instant Queue

Netflix is where I have really put Apple TV to the test.  I probably have watched some other shows, too, but I watched the first five seasons of Bones in less than a month.  All those episodes of Bones were in HD.  There is only a few seconds delay before Netflix programming begins playing.  I had one episode freeze for a second or two, but everything else from Netflix played smoothly and with no glitches.

Menu for a Home Sharing computer

Music playback screen for a Home Sharing computer

The fourth option, “Computers”, shows a list of all the computers on your network that have shared their iTunes content through Home Sharing.  They all have to use the same iTunes accounts, too.  I only have one computer with iTunes on it, but I can connect to it through the Apple TV and access anything in my iTunes library.  I can play any home video files or those I bought from iTunes (and have stored on my computer) on my TV.  Buffering takes only a second or two and playback is smooth with the videos I’ve tried.  When I play back music, a progress bar and the album cover displays on my TV screen.  I can listen to audio books and podcasts or watch iTunes U programming stored on my computer.  I can also look at pictures that I have made available through iTunes.

Apple TV Settings options

Screen Saver setup

The fifth and final option, “Settings”, lets you set up functions of Apple TV – how it displays information on the screen, menu language, turn on subtitles, and select an output type for HDMI, etc.  You can make changes to your network settings, check for software updates, and pair up a new remote.  Here you can turn on Airplay and Home Sharing.  You can also set up a screen saver.  Finally, this is where you can put the Apple TV into sleep mode.  (Note:  the white LED on the front of Apple TV is off when the device is in sleep mode.)

Choosing Apple TV for Airplay on an iPad 2

We’ve discussed a lot of ways that you can get content on your TV using Apple TV, but we have one more to discuss.  With the Airplay function, you can play content from your iPod, iPhone, or iPad on your TV.  Turn on Airplay in setup to make the Apple TV available.  When you start playing content on your mobile device, you’ll see something that looks like a pyramid in front of a box.  Tap that and select that you want the content played through the Apple TV instead of the mobile device.  I was able to play music and videos from my iPad 2 on my television.  My photo app was able to display a slideshow on the television.  Airplay is not the same thing as mirroring.  Mirroring requires a special connector, and it displays everything from the iPad 2’s screen on the television.  Airplay turns off the playback on your mobile device and streams it wirelessly to the television through Apple TV.  You can multitask on your mobile device while you stream audio or video content to your television.

I couldn’t find anything in the documentation that said how much internal storage the Apple TV has.  There is no way to copy over content, so you can’t use the device for mass storage of your files.  There are no USB ports to connect an external drive for media storage, either.  Everything is either streamed from iTunes on your computer using Home Sharing, from your mobile devices using Airplay, or from the Internet.  There does seem to be some internal storage that’s used as a cache for streaming files.

All in all, I really enjoy the Apple TV.  I’ve had to restart it a couple of times in the past month, but it reboots very quickly and it remembers all my passwords when it reconnects.  It offers programming from iTunes, and no other multimedia box I know offers that.  I wish that it also offered Hulu+; maybe that will come with a future upgrade.  I guess it’s not that important because I’ve only had to enter data during setup, but it would have been nice to have a keyboard to enter account names and passwords.  I like that it’s a tiny box that fits easily on my cramped TV stand.  I think the Apple TV was $99 well spent.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Streaming, TV, Video

Apple TV (2nd Generation) Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 3, 2011 at 7:00 am.

From the land down under (OK, now I’ll be thinking of that song all day…) comes the Kogan Agora Internet TV Portal” which promotes the invention I dreamed up (OK wished for in an inebriated state) ten years ago:  Easy Internet connection to your television.

“Yah, I can do that with my WII”; or “Yah I can do that with my PC”, or “Yah I can do that with my Hulu” you may proclaim.  But the previously mentioned YahDah YadDah YahDahs do not take into consideration the complete laziness and disenchantment (not to mention cheapness) I have with techno gizmos.  (I am still steamed with my  digital cable and the lack of an easy and free way to record shows.)

But something about this Kogan device looks worth-while.  It’s a simple-looking box with one input (your home network cable) and one output (an HDMI cable to your TV).  And the price is nifty: from $99 to $150, depending on where you search.

Granted, I don’t really expect streaming video to work (although it claims that it does for those who have fast enough connections and service providers that don’t limit your bandwidth) but using this for email or bringing up photos from Picasa or Flickr seems inviting.  I need to go have another drink and think up the next invention for 2021.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, News

Tagged: Streaming

Keep it simple with the Kogan Agora Internet Portal originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 20, 2011 at 4:00 pm.

In my never ending quest to divorce myself from Comcast and their overpriced cable service, I have been searching for alternate methods for the family to watch our shows. The Mvix Ultio media device was an effort in frustration, that fell well short of my needs and expectations. Fortunately, there are many other options in the media streaming world these days. The Roku XD|S is one of the most popular media streaming device around the Net. The XD|S is Roku’s latest, flagship device. It has been receiving rave commentary across the Net as a cost-effective, well done, easy to use streaming media device/player. The Roku XD|S is very capable; can stream up to full 1080p, built-in ethernet and wireless N dual-band connectivity, plays content from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video On Demand (VOD), Pandora, and a multitude of other services that only continues to grow.

Package Contents:

• Roku XD|S streaming media player
• Remote control
• Two AAA batteries
• Composite (red/white/yellow) A/V cable
• Power adapter
• Getting Started guide
• One year warranty

My only negative with the package contents is that Roku did not include a HDMI cable with their flagship player. Anymore, you can find decent HDMI cables for well under $10 (much less, if bought in bulk). A minor detail.

The Roku XD|S is a small, light and very simple to use (everything the Mvix Ultio was not) streaming media player. Basically, its a tiny black plastic box with many output connections/ports/pathways that brings you content from a large multitude of internet sources.

The purple Roku tab on the left hand side is very similar to a tag you would find on a garment, bag, etc. There is a matching purple tab on the remote as well.

One of the features the XD|S has the Roku HD and XD players do not is the USB 2.0 port that, as of the writing of this review (early Jan 2011), was not yet enabled. On the Roku website, they promise that it will be ‘enabled via free software upgrade expected Dec 2010′….for what that is worth. From the little bit of research I have done, there are free hacks out there to enable this function now. When enabled, it should support the following file formats: Video support: MP4, M4V (H.264), audio support: MP3, AAC, M4A, image support: JPG, PNG.

The Roku XD|S has nearly every video output option possible; enabling you to connect the device to any TV or media receiver. Video outputs include: composite video (480i), component video (720p/480p), requires Roku XDS component cable (sold separately), and HDMI (1080p/720p/480p). Digital 5.1 surround sound pass-through is available via HDMI and optical cables. Analog stereo is available via left/right RCA.

Technical Specifications:

Networking

• 802.11n Wi-Fi (b/g/n compatible) with WEP, WPA and WPA2 support
• Dual-band 802.11n (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz)
• 10/100 Base-T Ethernet

Video Outputs

• Composite video (480i)
• Component video (720p/480p). Requires Roku XDS component cable (sold separately)
• HDMI (1080p/720p/480p)

Video Modes

• 1080p High Definition (HD)
• 720p High Definition (HD)
• 16:9 anamorphic / 4:3 standard

Audio Output

• Analog stereo (left/right RCA)
• Optical digital audio (5.1 surround sound pass-through and stereo)
• Digital over HDMI (5.1 surround sound pass-through)

Remote Control

• Roku enhanced remote (with Instant Replay, Back and Options buttons)
• Compatible with various universal remotes

Power Input

• External AC adapter (5V, 2.5A)

Other Ports

• USB 2.0 port (enabled via free software upgrade expected Dec 2010).
• Video support: MP4, M4V (H.264).
• Audio support: MP3, AAC, M4A.
• Image support: JPG, PNG

Power Consumption

• 6 watts peak, 4 watts in standby

Size

• 4.9 x 4.9 x 1.2 inches (125 x 125 x 30 mm)

Weight

• 7.2 oz (203 grams)

Plugging in the power, Ethernet, and HDMI cables was quick and easy….mere seconds.

After start up, the device welcomes you and lets you know that connecting should take just a few minutes.

Since I have our media room wired with Ethernet and a cable laying right there to plug into the back, I chose the wired option. For those of you who do not have this option, the XD|S has built-in wireless N dual-band connection for zippy wireless connectivity. The less expensive HD and XD players have G and N wireless connection protocols, respectively.

Connecting to the internet was painless….quick and easy.

First thing the Roku does is update its software and then resets itself.

Next it asks you to set the time and time zone.

The XD|S’ screen resolution initially comes set at 4:3 standard definition. Once I set it’s output to HDTV (1080p), the video went from fair to stellar, as you would expect.

The Roku interface is simple and easy to use. It comes preloaded with their ‘Channel Store’, NetFlix, Amazon VOD, and Hulu Plus.

The Channel Store enables you to install other video and music channels to your main Roku interface.

Setting up NetFlix, HuluPlus, and Amazon VOD was quick and easy as well…..literally minutes.

Viewing Experience:

Even though the Roku devices can play 1080p videos, most content providers only stream @ 720p. That may change as throughput and technologies improve. Either way, the video playback is excellent. All three of the major content providers, NetFlix, Amazon, and Hulu+, look great and provide a very pleasant viewing experience. There were little to no bumps or hiccups in the playback.

Wanted Features:

• USB and codec support (hopefully very soon )
• Home network streaming from NAS or other computers
• Additional network channels (abc/nbc/cbs/bbc)

Without a doubt, I like the Roku XD|S. I find the Roku a pleasure to use and with just a few improvements it could be THE streaming media device to beat. The device excels at pushing Web-based content to your TV without hassle or issues. Its codec support for local media is a bit limited, but since most of my video is h.264 it does not bother me at all. The Roku XD|S retails for $99 but was (occasionally) on sale, here and there on the Net, this holiday season for $80. Considering the competition, the XD|S is a great bang for the buck. When you consider the relatively small capital investment and $16/month for NetFlix and Hulu Plus, the Roku XD|S is a strong contender in my vigilant quest in eliminating cable TV from our monthly Comcast bill.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Home Tech, Reviews, Wireless

Tagged: Streaming, Video

Roku XD|S Media Player Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 24, 2011 at 11:09 am.

For over 5 months last year, I used my iMac as my TV while my basement was being remodeled. During that time, I was able to keep up on all my favorite shows using Hulu and ‘other methods’. Although I did miss not having live TV, it wasn’t that bad and I really didn’t miss having to pay $90 to DirecTV for each of those 5 months. Once the remodel was completed, I turned DirecTV back on,  but have continued to keep an eye out for an easy to use, low cost alternative that will allow me to watch my favorite content on my big screen TV. The latest solution that I’m trying out is the Boxee Box from D-Link. Boxee software has been around for PCs, Macs and Linux machines for quite awhile, but the Boxee Box is the first all-in-one hardware / software solution that connects to your TV. Let’s check it out.

Hardware Specifications

Dimensions (LxWxH): 4.5″ x 4.5″ x 4.6″
Language Support: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Network Protocol Support: IPV4, ARP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, DHCP Client, DNS Client, DDNS Client, HTTP Server, Samba Client, RTP/RTMP, VPN: PPTP, DLNA 1.5 (DMP)
Wireless: 802.11n/g/b
Ports: HDMI 1.3, 10/100 Fast Ethernet, 2x USB 2.0, Optical Audio (S/PDIF), Analog Audio (RCA L/R)
Memory Card Support: SD, SDHC up to 32GB, MMC
Audio Formats: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AIF/AIFF, AC3/AAC, OGG, FLAC, Dolby Digital/Dolby True HD
Video Formats: Adobe Flash 10.1, FLV/On2 VP6 (FLV/FV4/M4V), H.264 AVC (TS/AVI/MKV/MOV/M2TS/MP4), VC-1 (TS/AVI/MKV/WMV), MPEG-1 (DAT/MPG/MPEG), MPEG-2 (MPG/MPEG/VOB/TS/TP/ISO/IFO), MPEG-4 (MP4/AVI/MOV), DivX 3/4/5/6 (AVI/MKV), Xvid (AVI/MKV), WMV9 (WMV/ASF/DVR-MS)
Image Formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF
Playlist Formats: M3U, PLS, WPL
Subtitle Formats: SRT, SUB, SSA, SMI, ASS
Supported Resolutions: H.264: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps; WMV9/VC-1: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps; MPEG4: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps; MPEG2: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps

Package Contents

Boxee Box
HDMI Cable
AC Power Adapter
Remote Control with Full QWERTY keypad
Install Guide

The physical design of the Boxee is unique. It looks like a cube that is sinking into the surface below it. The box is made of Black plastic, with one shiny side and the rest matte. The shiny side has the Boxee logo, which glows a Greenish Yellow when powered on and Red when in sleep mode. The bottom of the Boxee has a neon Green rubber non-slip surface.

The Boxee has excellent expansion options, including an SD card slot on the Right side.

The power button is located on top.

All the connections are located on the back. There are 2 USB ports, that you can use to connect USB hard drives and/or flash drives to play your existing content. You can also connect to your network via Ethernet or WiFi. To connect to your TV, you will need to use the included HDMI cable and if needed, the optical or RCA audio jacks. Most video streaming devices include component or composite video connections, I think the Boxee is the first one I’ve seen that only offers HDMI. I’m perfectly ok with that as I like just using one cable to connect to my AV receiver for both video and audio.

You also get a small RF remote control. The top surface of the control has a 4-way directional pad with an enter button in the center. There are two other buttons for play/pause and menu.

But flip the remote over and you will find a full QWERTY keyboard. Instead of using an onscreen cursor to type in search critera, you get a regular keyboard. The rubber keys are small, but they have good tactile feedback and get the job done. My only wish is that the remote was lighted. In a dim room, it’s hard to see the letters on the keys.

Connecting the Boxee to my home theater setup took me a total of 10 minutes, with the majority of that time being devoted to fishing the AC adapter and HDMI wires around and through various openings in my custom enclosure. I only connected two wires – the included HDMI cable from the Boxee to my Onkyo AV receiver and the AC adapter to a power outlet. I’m not sure you can get any simpler than that.

Once connected, I pressed the power button on the Boxee and switched to that input on my receiver. When the Boxee finished booting, it immediately found my WiFi network and asked if I wanted to connect. A simple button press for Yes, and it then let me optimize my screen size. The last step asked me to either setup a Boxee account or login with an existing account. That’s all there is to the setup. It’s fast, it’s easy and painless.

The Home screen is an uncluttered view of the 6 main ways to watch content and a scrolling thumbnail view of featured videos.

Friends is the social part of Boxee. It allows you to watch stuff that your Facebook and Twitter friends are sharing.
Watch Later is exactly what it sounds like.  You can install a bookmarklet in the web browser of your desktop or laptop and mark videos to watch at a later time on your TV.
Shows and Movies should be easy enough to figure out… They are local and internet TV shows and Movie content.
Apps are special interfaces to popular content like Pandora, YouTube, TED, etc.
Files is a file browser for attached (USB, SD) or networked content.

There’s no shortage of things to watch on Boxee, but of course, the question is, is that content ‘good’ content? One of my criteria is the ability to find the latest episodes of my favorite shows, like I can with Hulu. Choosing the Shows option, you’re greeted with a scrollable thumbnail view of the latest TV shows. You can sort this list alphabetically if you like. You can also flip your remote over and start typing the name of a show to search for that show.

Clicking on a show’s thumbnail will then display the available episodes for that show. As you scroll the list, you will see the title, description and run time for the show. If you want to watch it, you just click Play on the remote.

Depending on where the show is coming from, the resulting video might start playing in a web browser interface like you see here. When this happens, you have two options. Sometimes you can press the menu button on the remote and then press the enter button to go to full screen mode. When that doesn’t work, you’ll have to move the onscreen cursor (see the arrow on Mayhem’s left arm in the image above?).

You’ll need to use the arrow keys on the remote to move the cursor to the appropriate onscreen button to change the video to full screen mode. This can be an annoyingly slow operation.

Once in full screen mode, the video (depending on the source) looks pretty darn good on my 55 inch TV.

But again, depending on the source and if you’re connected via hardwire Ethernet or wifi, you may encounter problems with buffering. That’s where the video will play for a few minutes and then pause as it loads more of the currently playing video.

But like I mentioned above, the whole thing is finding the stuff you want to watch. For me that’s current and semi current TV shows. I had problems finding full episodes of most of my favorite shows. For example, searching American Idol only showed snippets and clips of old stuff. Same for Grey’s Anatomy, Biggest Loser, Worst Cooks in America, and more. Yes, there are lots of shows that are available, but don’t think you’re going to be able to watch every show on TV for free on your Boxee. It’s not going to happen. Sometimes you’ll see a list of episodes on Boxee and when you choose one, you’ll be prompted to buy/rent it. I’ve seen this with Vudu.

It’s really a shame that Hulu isn’t available for Boxee…

Watching and finding movies is comparable to watching and finding TV shows. There are a lot of free movies, but you get what you pay for.

At this time Netflix is not available for Boxee. But Vudu is available for Boxee and it might be even better than Netflix because there’s no monthly subscription fee and they get movies the day the DVD is released. The video and audio quality is fantastic.

Vudu is one of the many free apps that you can install. There are apps for all sorts of content that you would typically visit a website to view. There are apps for Flickr, YouTube, DiggNation, and many more.

One of my favorite features of the Boxee Box is the ability to mark videos on my desktop and laptop for viewing later through the Boxee on my big screen TV. All you have to do is install the Watch Later bookmarklet in your web browser. Then as you surf and find a video that you want to watch later, just click the bookmarklet button.

Then when you check your Watch Later list on the Boxee, the marked videos will appear there.

Just click and watch. The only thing I wish it would do would be to automatically remove the videos once you’ve watched them. Instead, you have to manually remove them.

It’s important to note that you won’t be able to resume playback of online video if you stop playing and exit out of the video. If you come back to the video, it will restart it from the beginning. This isn’t a problem with local (USB, SD, networked file shares) content though. Those files can be resumed.

The Boxee Box is all about watching video content from the Internet, but don’t forget that it’s also a very capable viewer of your local content too. You can attach a USB hard drive, USB thumb drives or SD cards with video, music and pictures and the Boxee will show the media on your big screen TV.

I tested streaming video from another computer in my house via WiFi and had no problems with pausing or buffering even when I streamed a 4GB 720p movie. I had the same experience playing video on attached USB hard drives and SD cards. The best part is that you tell Boxee to keep an eye on certain networked folders or attached storage and it will automatically scan those places for new content and will present the found video and music files with the same type of thumbnail images and descriptions that it does the online TV shows and movies.

I’ve been using the Boxee Box for a few weeks now and have enjoyed testing it. The ability to explore lots of online content is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s easy to get distracted by all the content just like we do when we’re surfing web pages. I’ve found the Boxee lacking when it comes to having the ability to find and play the full episodes of all my favorite shows. When Hulu becomes available, that should be less of an issue. For movies, Boxee really shines when used with the Vulu application. Netflix fans are upset that the Netflix app hasn’t been launched yet, but for me, Vudu is a better choice. Boxee also shines for playing your local video files. It had no problems playing all the video formats I could through at it.

All in all, I like the Boxee quite a bit, but I think it still needs some work as far as providing the apps that a lot of people really want (Hulu and Netflix) so that they can dump their cable or satellite box. For me, it is a very nice alternative to the Popcorn Hour C-200, which takes a up a lot more space. For playing movies and local content, it’s my new best friend. But for playing TV shows, it doesn’t quite cut it and I won’t be cutting the cord to my DirecTV. At least anytime soon.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Streaming, TV, Video

D-Link Boxee Box Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 24, 2011 at 3:00 pm.

Elgato has just debuted a new device for the European market; the EyeTV Netstream is a network tuner for free-to-view satellite TV. EyeTV Netstream Sat streams the signal, live and in HD, from a satellite dish to any computer in the house. iPad users can take advantage of this gadget as well, with a special EyeTV app. And if one TV channel isn’t enough, you can stream a second TV channel to computers in the home network using the EyeTV Sat Free USB Tuner which plugs into the back of the Netstream turning it into a dual-tuner. The EyeTV Netstream Sat ships on November 22 at a price of 199,95 Euro. The EyeTV Sat Free ships in January 2011 at a suggested retail price of 99,95 Euro. Full press release after the jump.

Satellite TV on any Mac, PC or iPad in your Home Network

San Francisco, Calif. – November 15, 2010 – Elgato announced today the new EyeTV Netstream Sat, a network tuner for free-to-view satellite TV. EyeTV Netstream Sat streams the signal, live and in HD, from a satellite dish to any computer in the house. It connects to your existing satellite feed and sends the TV signal through your router. If you have a Wi-Fi Network, even iPads can access standard definition channels from EyeTV Netstream Sat. This direct connection between the network tuner and an iOS4 device requires iOS 4.2 and the new version of the EyeTV app, (version 1.2, available in the App Store). This EyeTV app feature also works with the hugely successful DVB-T version of the network tuner, EyeTV Netstream DTT. EyeTV Netstream Sat ships on November 22 at a price of 199,95 Euro. A dual-tuner add-on is sold separately.

Live satellite TV on the iPad
The newly announced version 1.2 of the EyeTV App enables both EyeTV Netstream Sat and EyeTV Netstream DTT to stream SD channels over the local Wi-Fi network directly to iOS 4 devices (requires iOS4.2). DVB-S2 HDTV channels can be streamed via Wi-Fi or 3G/UMTS Internet connection provided a Mac with Elgato’s EyeTV 3 TV software is running as a local streaming server.

Easy to set-up and use
EyeTV Netstream Sat integrates well with your existing network. You can stream live TV, surf the web, and send email all at the same time. An intelligent device, EyeTV Netstream Sat offers centralized configuration via web browser and auto-discovery via UPnP & Bonjour.

Works great on Macs and PCs
Included is EyeTV 3, Elgato’s award-winning TV software for the Mac. Watch, record, edit and enjoy live television on your Mac. Search two weeks of Program Guide listings, and export recordings automatically to iTunes to sync with Apple devices. EyeTV Netstream DTT works with Windows 7 Media Center and also includes THC software for Windows, which offers many of the same features as EyeTV 3.

Turn EyeTV Netstream Sat into a dual-tuner
Elgato’s new EyeTV Sat Free, a great value USB 2.0 TV tuner for DVB-S2, has the unique ability to turn EyeTV Netstream Sat into a dual-tuner. EyeTV Sat Free connects to the USB port on the back of EyeTV Netstream Sat, enabling it to stream a second TV channel to computers in the home network.

System requirements
EyeTV Netstream Sat requires a Macintosh Computer with an Intel Core CPU and Mac OS X v10.5.8 or newer. On PCs, EyeTV Netstream Sat requires Windows 7 and a 2.0 GHz Intel/AMD CPU or better. Network bandwidth must be high enough to allow for streaming of television signals (100Base-T Ethernet, 802.11n for wireless). Direct streaming to EyeTV for iPhone requires an iPad, an iPhone 4 or an iPod touch (4th generation.) A Mac or a PC is required for initial setup of EyeTV Netstream tuners.

Pricing & Availability
EyeTV Netstream Sat ships on November 22nd at a suggested retail price of 199,95 Euro  including VAT. EyeTV Sat Free ships in January 2011 at a suggested retail price of 99,95 Euro including VAT. You can buy direct from Elgato at www.elgato.com or most Mac retailers. The EyeTV app version 1.2 is available at the App Store for 3,99 Euro. The app update is free of charge.

Download high-resolution images here: www.elgato.com/elgato/int/footermenu/press-room.en.html

About Elgato

Elgato produces award-winning TV software together with a complete range of TV tuners and capture devices to watch, record, and edit TV and HDTV on Macs and PCs. Elgato is the home of EyeTV, the world’s leading television solution for Mac computers. Elgato also produces a variety of world-class H.264 video conversion and streaming products. Elgato is privately held with offices in Munich, Germany and San Francisco, California.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, iPhone, iPad, iPod related, News

Tagged: Satellite, Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming

Elgato EyeTV Netstream – Satellite Streaming Device for European Gadgeteers originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 16, 2010 at 2:00 pm.

Featured in the ‘Top 10 for the year’s coolest gadgets’ from CNN, The Sonos S5 is an all-in-one music system that brings unlimited wifi-based streaming into the home that is controlled from an app on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Play music from your iTunes library, internet radio stations, music from Pandora, Last.FM and Napster. The iPhone app can control multiple S5′s that you may have in your home. Adjust the volume on the living room set, while leaving the one in your bedroom as it is. Play different music on each S5 or link them all together.  Price: $399

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, iPhone, iPad, iPod related, News

Tagged: iPhone, Speaker, Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming

Stream music around your house with a Sonos ZonePlayer S5 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 12, 2010 at 4:46 pm.

Being able to keep an eye on our pets and home when we’re not there can be very useful for those of us that tend to worry. For those of us that don’t have a worrying bone in our body (me most of the time), it’s just fun to be able to check in and see if the cat is on the kitchen table or there’s a package waiting at the front door. The Vue Personal Video Network can be used by those that worry and those that don’t. It is probably the easiest remote video system that I’ve ever set up or reviewed. Keep reading to learn more.

Hardware Specifications

Camera
Video Format: FLV (Flash Live Video)
Video Resolutions: VGA (640 x 480 pixels), QVGA (320 x 240 pixels), QQVGA (160 x 120 pixels)
Focus range: Fixed focus (60 cm to infinity)
Light sensitivity: High sensitivity (>2.0/lux-sec) Automatically adapts to changing light conditions
Battery: Lithium Ion CR123 Photo
Dimensions: 2.9 x 1.0 x 2.1 in.
Weight: 28 g (0.98 oz)

Gateway
Gateway processor and memory: XSCALE, 32MB Flash, 16MB RAM
Interface ports: Ethernet, USB (WiFi)
DHCP: Enabled
WiFi support: Yes – optional accessory required
Antenna: Internal
Wireless range: 300+ feet LOS1
Network data rate: 2MB/Sec
Number of camera supported: Up to 50
Power adapter: 110V-240V, 50-60 Hz, input
Dimensions: 5.0 x 2.9 x 4.4 in.
Weight: 12 g (4.5 oz)

Package Contents

2 Vue wireless cameras
4 camera mounts with hardware
Network gateway
AC power adapter
Ethernet cable
4 CR123 Lithium batteries
Quick start guide

Setting up the Vue system is extremely easy and anyone can do it even if you have no prior networking or video hardware skills. There are 2 basic components to the system. The gateway and the camera or cameras.

The gateway is the only part of this video viewing system that is not wireless (although it apparently can be wireless with an optional USB Wifi accessory that is yet to be offered for sale). All you have to do is plug in the included AC adapter and plug it into an open port on your router. They even provided you with an Ethernet cable.

Two wireless cameras are included with the system. Additional cameras can be purchased for $99 each, which is very expensive in my opinion… The cameras have a White plastic body and are very tiny.

They are powered by 1 lithium battery (4 are included with the system) that should last for a full year when viewing is limited to 10 minutes a day. Unfortunately there isn’t a way to power the cameras with an AC adapter. I’m wondering if someone with a little tech savvy could rig something though…

The curved fin on the back of the camera is magnetic. Using the included metal dome mounts, you can either stick the mounts on a wall…

Or use the included hardware to mount them with a screw. The base of the camera is flat, so you can also just sit them on a shelf or any other flat surface. I do wish there was a mounting option for a window. Unless you have a sill, there’s really no easy way to point a camera out a window.

After you have the batteries installed in the cameras and the gateway powered up and connected to your router, you just need to make sure you have an active internet connection and then you can press the sync button on the gateway. Doing so will communicate with the cameras and will then allow you to view them through the Vue website.

That’s right, you are not able to view the cameras locally. You have to create an account on the Vue website. With the purchase of a Vue Personal Video Network System, you are entitled to a 1yr free subscription which allows you to view live streams, record up to 2GB of content and share the live and recorded content with your friends and family. The cost for the service after the 1st year is $19.95 per year.

The web interface for your cameras looks nice, but it’s sluggish and kind of flaky. You can click on the screen shots to see full sized versions. The first thing I noticed was that you can only view one camera at a time even though both cameras are shown in the web view window. As soon as you click Play on a second camera, the other camera feed is stopped.

You can view the cameras in 3 different sized windows, but switching sizes is hit or miss. Sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn’t.

Viewing the video feed is a manual process. You have to press the Play button to initiate it. I started getting excited when I looked at the settings screen and saw a scheduling option. But then I was disappointed to learn that this feature is not available yet. I wish the cameras had a motion sensor and audio capabilities too.

You can view live streaming video from your web browser, you can snap a live picture and you can record live video. You can then share those pictures  and videos with Flickr, YouTube and via email. Sending your friends pictures and vids through email just gives them a link that they have to access with their browser though. It doesn’t email them the actual picture of video file. I should also mention that at the moment, there’s no mobile version of the website to view your camera feeds from your phone…

The Vue Personal Video Network System has some good things going for it. For one, it’s so easy to setup that anyone could do it. The video quality is good and the ability to easily add more cameras is also good. What’s not so good is that there isn’t a way view feeds locally, power the cameras with an AC adapter, view multiple feeds at one time or schedule automated recordings. Out of that list of issues, the one I’d most like to see fixed is the scheduling issue. Having that capability along with motion sensor activated cameras would really take the Vue system from fun to play with, to really useful.

Filed in categories: Home Tech, Reviews, Wireless

Tagged: Streaming, Surveillance, Video

Vue Personal Video Network Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 18, 2009 at 4:10 pm.

Boxee fans have been using the free open source software on their Macs, PCs and Linux machines for a long time, now Boxee gets physical with the new D-Link Boxee Box. Enjoy all the same digital content from YouTube, MLB, Netflix, Pandora, Last.fm, Flickr and more. It won’t be available until the first half of 2010 and the manufacturer’s suggested retail price is still undetermined. Full press release after the jump.

D-Link/Boxee Partnership Statement

In front of a packed house at their Boxee Beta Unveiling event in Brooklyn this evening, Boxee revealed that D-Link has been named first choice as the hardware partner to release a Boxee branded device for the living room.

Boxee is the best way to enjoy content from the Internet or a computer on a TV screen. With the Boxee Box™ by D-Link®, the two companies have created the easiest way to bring this experience into the living room, allowing people to watch tens of thousands of movies & TV Shows, organize and play their favorite home movies and photos, and play great music from their home network or from Internet sources like Pandora.

“By pairing Boxee’s innovative social entertainment platform with D-Link’s technology we’re able to create a solution that introduces people to what TV should be.  Additionally we’re bringing a new level of social interaction to the living room,” said Daniel Kelley, senior director of marketing, D-Link Systems, Inc. “We can’t wait to bring this product to market and are looking forward to demonstrate the Boxee Box by D-Link at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in January.”

“We are happy to be working with D-Link as a hardware partner because we share the same vision for creating solutions to help anyone get the most out of technology,” said Andrew Kippen, vice president of marketing for Boxee. “D-Link has great reach and together we are able to offer consumers an attractive inexpensive solution to bring the Boxee experience directly onto the TV.”

The Boxee Box by D-Link, which has already won a Best of Innovations award from the Computer Electronics Association, reinterprets what TV should be, delivering all the movies, TV shows, music and photos from a user’s computer, home network and Internet to their HDTV with no PC needed.  Additionally, Boxee’s core social features make it easy for friends to discover new content from each other through social networks like Facebook, Twitter and more.

In addition to its many software features, The Boxee Box by D-Link makes it easy for consumers to connect the device via HDMI, SPDIF, RCA Audio.  The box has 2 USB for expansion and can quickly connect to a home network using both Wi-Fi (802.11n) and wired ethernet.

The Boxee Box will be available through D-Link’s network of etail and retail outlets in the first half of 2010.  The manufacturer’s suggested retail price is still undetermined.

Useful Links
The Boxee Box by D-Link Product Images & Screenshots will be available at both of the links below.

Boxee: http://www.boxee.tv
Boxee Beta & Box Press Kit: http://drop.io/boxeebeta
Online Press Kit: http://drop.io/iloveboxee

DLink: http://www.dlink.com
Boxee Box Product Page: http://www.dlink.com/boxeebox

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, News

Tagged: Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming

Boxee gets boxed originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 7, 2009 at 9:45 pm.

From the company that brought us the Livio Pandora Radio, comes the Livio NPR Radio. It’s the first internet radio with an exclusive menu dedicated to NPR stations and programs. NPR stands for National Public Radio. It’s a a privately supported, not-for-profit membership organization that produces noncommercial news, talk, and entertainment programming. Now, with one device, NPR fans can now personalize their NPR experience, and easily switch back and forth between the local NPR Member station they know and love, and on-demand content and programs from NPR.org and stations across the US.

Filed in categories: News

Tagged: Radio, Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming

Get your NPR fix with the Livio NPR Radio originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 19, 2009 at 1:25 pm.

HP takes the digital picture frame and morphs it into a wireless social and streaming media device. People can stay current with Facebook friends and photos, listen to Pandora Internet Radio, share Snapfish personal photos and enjoy their music and pictures from home networked PCs. There is a 10.2 and 13.3 inch version of the Dreamscreen. Both have 2GB of built in memory and have USB and a 6-in-1 card reader to load content. Photos and music can be streamed wirelessly or moved to the HP DreamScreen by “drag and drop” from a networked PC with included software. They are available now for $249.99 – $299.99.

Filed in categories: Wireless

Tagged: Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming

HP Announces New Line of Wireless Connected Screens with HP DreamScreen originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 17, 2009 at 6:48 am.

I’m a big fan of the Logitech Squeezebox devices. Earlier this the year, we reviewed the Squeezebox Boom, which I really enjoyed. Now there’s even more to like with two new devices: the Logitech Squeezebox Touch (pictured on the Left) and the Logitech Squeezebox Radio (on the Right). The Touch features a 4.3-inch color touch screen that lets you select and play music from touch menus, and view album art or photos. The Radio features a color screen that displays album art, track and station information and photo screen savers. It also has an auto-dimming display that adjusts brightness based on room lighting. Six preset buttons allow one touch access to favorite radio stations and playlists. Both devices allow you to play internet radio, DRM-free iTunes Plus downloads, and subscription music services like Rhapsody, Napster, Pandora, Slacker, Sirius, and more. The Touch will be available in December for $299.99 and the Squeezebox Radio will be available in late September for $199.99.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear

Tagged: Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming, WiFi

Logitech unveils two new Squeezebox Wi-Fi music players originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 3, 2009 at 3:43 pm.

Let’s get right to the nitty-gritty.  The Slingbox Solo lets you watch TV on your computer when you are not at your home.  (For a few bucks more you can watch on your cell phone.)  Why in the heck would anyone ever want to do that?  Well there are those who would love to do that.  I’m one of those.  And the Slingbox – well, it just works.  When I’m at work, trapped in an interminable meeting, waiting during a doctor’s appointment, on a lay-over at an airport, or working away from the office, having CNN show up on my laptop just appeals to me.  Of course, you require an internet connection to receive the stream, but I’d still rather watch Wolf Blitzer on the internet during a waiting game than browse through idiotic bloopers on YouTube.

The Slingbox Solo sells for $140 and requires a broadband internet connection at your home.  The box can then control your VCR or DVR (and, hence, video stream) over that connection.

Slingbox in action

The Slingbox comes with a power wart, Ethernet cable, one (yellow) composite video cable, two (red and white) audio cables, and a set of infrared controllers.  Everything except the instructions and set-up software came with my kit.  I had to go to the web site to download the instructions and download the controller software.  Given how smoothly the thing works and installed and other high marks for this product, I thought it odd and annoying that they did not include these items in the box.  In fact that is one of the reasons that I imagined that the setup of the thing would be a challenge (I set aside my weekend for the project).

However the technical setup was very straight-forward, if you are used to setting up VCR’s, or game consoles, you’ll know instinctively what to do and the instructions (printed from the Web site) simply underscore the simplicity.  In fact the rear of the Slingbox itself is also fairly simple.  I had a few problems with the particular brand of internet router that I have  –the Actiontec M1000 with a wireless W1000 module but somehow the system connected itself up properly with the help of the installation software which was as simple as TurboTax to use.  (By the way, I had to connect a hub in order to have a Cat5 connection from the Actiontec to both my PC and to the Slingbox, yet another gadget and yet another needed power source.)  Slingbox also has a chat line which worked well when I had a question about he installation with that particular router.  This makes be think that they are serious about the product.

Rear of the Slingbox Solo

Probably the most interesting piece of the Slingbox is the manner in which it controls your DVR: through a set of infrared modules (see figure below) attached to the Slingbox.  These must be attached to or point to the infrared receiver of your DVR unit.  Again I thought that this would be the downfall of the product, but they work just fine too.  In the photo below the modules are merely placed atop the DVR and are hanging by gravity – I didn’t even attach them with the sticky tape backing.

Slingbox Solo Infrared Control Modules

Finally you are required to set up an account in order to login to a web site that will connect you to your Slingbox and your video stream.  This was all accomplished without incident and it was extremely gratifying to see CNN and live video especially on my computer at work.  Finally connection to the outside world!  The resulting view includes the video stream, a mock up of your DVR remote control, and an optional TV guide listing.

As mentioned, the technical set up went fairly well.  As for logistics, however, you will need some planning for this contraption because it needs a (potentially long-haul) Ethernet Cat5 connection and poses as yet-another-box to connect to your probably-overloaded and over crowded video cabinet.  Be aware that extra video, audio, power, infrared, and now an Ethernet cable must all be contended with.  And the 800 pound gorilla in the room will still be the need for that long-distance Ethernet cable, one that reaches from your internet connection to the Slingbox.  Now you can get around this gorilla in a few ways.  First, Slingbox sells the SlingLink – a product that can route your Ethernet connection through the power lines in your home and you could tap into the connection there.  You could also get and connect a wireless bridge to the Slingbox (yet another gadget) to allow for a true wireless connection.  These require more cables and more power.  So, for the most part, you are potentially stuck with a long cable running from your internet connection to the Slingbox.  That, however, doesn’t deter me; I still like this thing even though right now I have to walk over the Ethernet cable.  I may breakdown for a wireless bridge in the future, but right now this works for me.

A Slingbox Solo Set Up

The biggest down side to my particular set-up is that my DVR is about two years old and the Slingbox only supports a certain number of units.  I never did find a list of compatible DVRs on the Slingbox web site.  Although my DVR was not one of the supported DVRs, the Slingbox can mimic the basic controls such as channel up/down; record and play.  I cannot, however, program the unit over the internet.  For that I’d need a newer model DVR.  That is not likely to happen for a while but the mere fact that I can have access to TV over the internet right now compensates for that.

Something else that is not apparent from the various hype pages about the Slingbox is the fact that the computer you want to view your video stream on will require either a thick-client stand-alone program or a plug-in download for your browser.  Not a huge problem for most of us but if your computer is locked from downloading new software you may have an issue there.

A couple of other things that could be considered by the company:  showing the channel up and down buttons on the main viewing page (currently only the volume up and down are shown and you need to go to the remote control mock up to change channels); more information on the web site about compatible DVR units; an option to turn off the video and just stream the audio (to save bandwidth); and an option to tune the quality (again in an effort to control bandwidth).

In summary, this is a product for a certain type of person and if you are that type I think you will enjoy it.  If, however, you are on the border about its utility, you may become very annoyed at the Ethernet connection issue raised above.  Given the quality I’ve seen in the product, service, and software implementation, my guess is that the company will be solving this issue before too long: there are simply too many people with wireless internet and not enough patience to architect a Rube Goldberg approach to getting it connected.  Now if you’ll excuse me,  I think Oprah’s on.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Desktop Computer Gear, Travel Gear

Tagged: Streaming, Video

More Enjoyment From Your Talking Toaster: The Slingbox Solo Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 24, 2009 at 5:16 pm.

I recently moved to a new home that is in a communications dead zone.  There’s no cell access, OTA TV and most troublesome, I cannot receive antenna born FM radio.  Thankfully, VTECH, the cordless phone people have introduced the IS9181 Wi-Fi Internet Radio which gives me a choice of over 11,000 Internet radio stations, plus the ability to stream my PC music files to most of my property.

Features

• Stream music across the 802.11 b/g WiFi network. Broadband Internet service and a home WiFi network router are required
• Listen to Internet radio from the available 11,000 stations with no monthly fee
• Access Internet radio stations from our user-friendly online site or on the device itself
• Play music from any audio device (i.e. CD player, MP3 player, etc)
• Connect to any stereo system or powered speakers to access streaming Internet radio or music files stored on a PC or Mac
• Built-in FM radio tuner for local FM broadcast service. Preset your favorite stations
• Hi-Fidelity built-in 3W tuned stereo speakers and a 10W sub-woofer with class D amplifier for each speaker that can fill any room with dynamic sound
• Digital alarm clock radio-wake up to your favorite Internet or FM radio station or the internal buzzer.
• Automatic clock set and adjustment via the Internet.
• Battery-operated option allows you to take the device outside the home or office.
• Convenient remote-browse, select and control your music from across the room using the remote control
• Access local weather and 5-day forecast

Included in the box are:

• IS9181 radio
• User’s manual
• Quick start guide
• Power Adapter
• Remote control
• Auxiliary audio cable ( to connect Ipod/MP3 player)

When the radio arrived I immediately set it up using the quick start guide.  I was impressed with simplicity of installation.  It’s a matter of plugging the unit in and pressing the standby button.  From there the display will guide you through the screens to set up the wireless connection, the clock and weather settings.

To connect to your wireless network, you will have to know your SSID and password for any encryption you may be using.  It will automatically search for available networks or you can enter the SSID manually.   Next, you’ll want to set the clock, which can be done manually or it can be set via the Internet.  I chose the latter because if you’re running on batteries you will lose your time setting if the clock is set manually.  Lastly, you set your zip code to get the 5 day weather forecasts for your area.  That’s all there’s to it.

After initial setup, you can make changes to the settings from the main menu.  This is also where you setup the alarm and store your favorites.

The radio can be operated using the controls on top of the unit or via the included remote.  I found the controls to be intuitive and easy to operate.  The remote has all the features of the on-board controls, except that the rotary dial is replace by up/down arrow keys.

To select from the included list of Internet radio stations, you press the source button and get the above screen.  From here you can select the different sources and drill down through the menus using the select button.

The station list seems unlimited, but if you can’t find something, you can subscribe to a free account at Vtech and search the Internet for other radio stations.  These will be loaded down to your radio and are found under the My Stations folder.

Because the station listing is so large, you have the option of saving your stations to a favorites folders for faster access in the future.  There is a separate favorites folder for both Internet and over the air FM stations.  You must be in the selected mode to access the correct one.

If you can’t find enough to satisfy you on the Internet, the IS9181 can connect to your local network and play music files from your PCs or Macs.  This takes a little more effort to setup and it’s not as sophisticated as some streaming devices.  You’ll need to create a user account and password on your computer and may have to play with firewall settings.  However, I found that if I turned off my firewall while the IS9181 initially accessed the PC, it would see all my shared drives.  I then turned the firewall back on.

When the source is My Music to play computer files, you are limited to MP3, WMA, RA, RM, RMVB and ACC files that are NOT copy protected.  The only problem I had with this, is if there is a copy protected file in the folder you have selected to play, the IS9181 stops with a display annoncing the error.  You must reply by selecting OK before play will resume.  Also, files will play within a folder, but nested folders will not be selected.

To eliminate issues, I created a folder to play tracks I want to hear (like a playlist), minus any protected or non-conforming file types.

As mentoned, the IS9181 is also an FM radio, but because of where I live, I didn’t get much opportunity to check that feature out.  I was able to pull in the local NPR station and it seemed OK.

You can plug your MP3 player into the unit using the supplied cable.  This worked fine for me, but I rarely use the feature.  There are RCA jacks that allow you to hook the radio to a more substantial sound system.

The system can be run using 6 AA batteries, which makes it truly portable.  I find myself carrying the unit around the house to listen to PODcasts I have recorded, while working in the basement.  My wife and I listen to music in the kitchen family area and at night we plug it in by our dresser and use the alarm function to wake in the morning to internet radio.  The major down side to using battery power, is that the alarm function is disabled at that time.

The weather function displays 5 days of forecasts from weather.com.  It’s a nice feature to have, but isn’t what makes me like this radio.  What I appeciate is the ability to receive radio in my locally deprived area.  I realize that I could do the same thing using a PC and a service like Slacker or Radiotime, but I don’t want to be tethered to a computer all the time.  And while I’m far from being an audiophile, I find the sound from the IS9181 to be just as good as some much higher priced units I’ve listened to.  Lastly, it’s a good looking unit that blends in with the decor in my home.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Wireless

Tagged: Entertainment, Internet Radio, Streaming

Vtech IS9181 Wi-Fi Internet Radio Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 14, 2009 at 8:11 am.

The IS9181 is Vtech’s wireless music hub and is their first home audio device. Compatible with PCs and Macs, this device will allow you to listen to internet radio stations and stream digital audio content from your desktop computers via WiFi. It has the ability to run from batteries or an AC adapter.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear

Tagged: Internet Radio, Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming, Vtech

Vtech introduces their first home audio device originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on May 13, 2009 at 1:22 pm.

Which would you rather watch?

I’m a big fan of the “what we want, when we want it” model of media. I’m an even bigger fan of the “where we want it” addendum to that model. I’ve spent a good deal of time, effort, and sadly money crafting a decent home theater setup, which delivers a great viewing experience in my living room. That’s fine if the content is coming from what is increasingly being called old media – pretty much any and everything that isn’t the Internet. But what about all that new media? How do I share the love (or more accurately, share the pile of home theater stuff) with the new media?

What’s the Problem? We can solve it with more STUFF!

Traditionally (meaning last year) making this bridge to tomorrow meant building or buying a Home Theater PC (HTPC). Yes, the dreaded HTPC grail, sought after by many, including the giants Microsoft and Apple, as well as a host of companies large and small. The HTPC idea is simple: you’ve got your PC, you’ve got your TV, plug the two of them together and tada! you’ve bridged the two worlds. Ok, so it’s not quite that simple – it never is – but that’s the dream. The reality is that you’re facing several interesting hurdles before you even get to the real problem, that of the viewing experience. You’ve got your video, your audio, your Internet (which is way over there, not over here…)

The current thinking, judging from the crop of new gadgets popping up like spamvertising windows, is that the whole HTPC idea might have been too complicated so what’s needed are small single purpose devices you add to a home theater like a DVD player. A good example is the WD TV HD Media Player Julie reviewed in December, 2008. Great, so instead of one complicated HTPC, we now have one, two, or three little black boxes to integrate into our home theater. Progress!

New Media – What exactly do I want on my Home Theater anyway?

At my core, I’m a Trinitarian – when faced with a huge unorganized mass of information, I’ll nearly always put it into three bins. So, here are my three bins for New Media: Internet Video, Self-Generated Media, and The Home Box Office.

Internet Video: Let’s face it, there is a torrent of content available on the Internet. I mean that in the literal sense, not the bittorrent sense. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve no doubt noticed the exponential growth of  content “networks” like Revision3 and Next New Networks. Increasingly this content is as good as, or better then the stuff you get from old media channels. If you’re a total propeller head like me for example, you can spend a year or so catching up on your TED Talks. Not to be outdone, the old media even has content available for you via Hulu, or a network portal site (CBS, NBC, etc…) I’m not going to give you an exhaustive list, because it would be obsolete before I finished typing it up! You get the idea – there’s a ton of stuff out there to watch, and that’s not even counting readily available torrents of broadcast TV shows (a gray area for me copyright-infringment-wise, or flat-out illegal, in either case its another big pile of content.)

Self-Generated Media: I’ve ridden the wave of consumer photography from film SLRs and Camcorders the size of toasters to mexapixel DSLRs and tiny HD mpg4 digital camcorders. My current pile of gear is actually dated a bit (meaning I bought it more then a week ago!) but is still pretty powerful – a Nikon D70 for stills, and an Aipkek Action-HD camcorder that shoots very good HD 720p or 1080p mpeg4 video. I had both with me on a month-long business/pleasure stay in the UK last year, and that generated about 250GB of material. In the past I would have said “that generated 20 hours of video, and 10 rolls of pictures” but that would date me. Anyway, here’s a pile of new media I’ve generated myself. Let’s get that stuff on the big screen!

The Home Box Office: Hollywood, Bollywood, perhaps Hong Kong cinema? You can get it streamed to you off the internet. Legally, or not. If you’re a legal-type, there’s iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix – all let you purchase downloadable movies, or stream movies, or both. On the fringe of legal are the ‘buy it and rip it” folks – I’m in this camp – who like the whole DVD experience but prefer to free the content from its physical delivery system. Honestly, I’d rather select a movie from an on-screen menu then paw through a pile of DVD cases!  We’ll all agree to admit that there are also readily available rips of movies on the internet. That said,  its very easy to be legal and still have a pile of locally or remotely hosted movies you’d rather watch on the big screen!

That’s my “short list” of stuff, and it’s not even close to all-encompassing. So, how do we get it all over to the home theater?

The Two Ways

As I said a few hundred words ago, you have two choices for getting all this stuff off the small screen and onto the large one (or at least onto the large one with the couch and remote.) The first (and I still think, the best) way is to add a PC to your home theater. This actually has a lot of advantages – with the right hardware – over the single-purpose boxorama we seem to be heading towards. The second way is the way of many boxes – you gots your “netflix ready” box, your media-on-a-card-or-disk box, your media-from-the-internet box, Apple TV box, and maybe toss in a TiVO for good measure. That’s a lot of boxes.

Let’s go back to the first way for a moment. Remember I said “with the right hardware”? You’re looking at needing a few key things for this to be a win: a decent graphics card with HDMI or DVI out, and S/PDIF (coax or optical) audio out. Graphics to the flat screen, audio to the receiver, and all your media is connected. Yep, as I said, that’s the dream. You might want to add a digital capture device as well, and plug your incoming source into that – yes, that means splitters, cable cards (oh, wait, no cable cards for PCs!) and more wires – so your HTPC can also be your PVR.

Assume you’ve got the thing connected correctly, and it actually works right as a Home Theater component – hey, it could happen – what you’ll need next is a big fat network connection. Preferably a gigabit wired connection, to your nice home LAN, where you have a massive storage appliance humming away – far away – from your nice quiet living room. What about wireless, you ask? Too slow. Even 802.11n is too slow. Well, that’s not exactly true, 802.11n is almost not too slow for everything except for ripped DVDs, most of the time. Go ahead, try wireless, and when that doesn’t work then start pulling Ethernet cables.

Still with me? Great! Now you have the hardware and the network and the storage. Your garage or basement looks like a data center, and your family is pretty sure you’ve lost your mind. You’ve learned a lot about your attic or basement. Now, grab the remote (you did remember to get some kind of remote on your HTPC, right?)  and have a ball. Only now you need software! Here at last there is very good news, as boxee does a lot of what you want and even has a passable interface that’s not too geeky. Boxee runs on top of something – MacOS X (so, all the above stuff about hardware is replaced with, mostly, “buy an Apple TV or Mac mini”), Windows (not quite yet), or Linux. You can also go with GBPVR, or some other home theater software. Whatever you do, it’s all on you to make it all work. Think of it as a hobby, and you’ll feel better about the amount of time you spend getting it to work.

Ok, stop laughing. You’re either laughing at me, or with me at this point, but you should be laughing either way. If you’ve done the HTPC thing yourself – successfully or not – you’re laughing with me. You know it works. You also know its the elegant solution, for once it does work it is a thing of beauty. All your stuff is there, all that other stuff on the Internet is there, and it doesn’t even feel too much like a computer while you use it. Assuming your time is worth about $0.05/hour you even saved a few bucks! If you’ve never done the HTPC thing, you’re laughing at me as you watch your stuff on one (or maybe two, or three) of those little single-purpose boxes, having invested a few hours and a couple inputs on the Home Theater to get them hooked up.

You’re Soaking In It

These are your choices for alternate universes in the future. One future can be set up today without calling in the Nerd Herd, but leads to  a pile of single-purpose boxes that do one thing reasonably well. Another future has a single converged device, just maybe a boxee appliance, that finally gets the HTPC right. I’m hoping for the latter future because convergence is inevitable, even if it takes a few trys to get right.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Do-It-Yourself

Tagged: Streaming, Video

Streaming Media: Not Just For Computers originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on May 10, 2009 at 9:53 am.

The callpod Drone is a plug and play solution to add streaming Bluetooth audio and VoIP to your desktop or laptop. The USB dongle is made of die-cast zinc and contains all the software needed to immediately pair to your Bluetooth headsets and headphones. It will seamlessly switch between music and VoIP calls.

Filed in categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: A2DP, Bluetooth Gear, Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming, VoIP

Plug & Play Streaming Bluetooth Audio with the Drone originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 15, 2009 at 11:34 am.

The Ira from Myine brings wireless internet radio to your home entertainment system by way of a 2 x 6 x 3 inch module. They claim that it takes only 3 minutes to set it up. Anyone else out there in gadget land enjoy listening to streaming radio? Would you buy the Ira for $149.99?

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear

Tagged: Internet Radio, Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming, WiFi

Myine Ira Wireless Internet Radio originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 24, 2009 at 7:06 pm.

Due in April at Target stores, the DRA107 from Dexim is an AV dock for iPods and the iPhone. Stream your audio and video content to your TV while your charge the batteries on the device. It also comes with an IR remote. The price doesn’t seem bad either at $69.95.

Filed in categories: iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: iPhone, iPod, Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming

Spotlight Gadget – Dexim iPhone AV Dock Station originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 17, 2009 at 10:49 am.

equinux, has just released two free iPhone Apps: Live TV and TubeToGo as companions for its TV receiver TubeStick. Mac users can turn their iPhone into a TV with a mobile video library. With Live TV, users can stream live TV programs directly to their iPhone from their Mac with The Tube. With TubeToGo, they can access TV recordings on their iPhone whenever and wherever. They can even program recordings in The Tube on the go.

Filed in categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: iPhone, Spotlight Gadgets, Streaming, TV

Spotlight Gadget – iPhone Live TV originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 4, 2009 at 7:56 am.

Back when Judie was a fixture here on The Gadgeteer, she and I would occasionally write dually reviews. This was a term we coined that basically consisted of a review where we would chat back and forth about the product in question. Today we’re going to revive that fun format, with a review of the Squeezebox Boom Network Music Player from Logitech.

My comments will be in regular Black text, while Judie’s will be in Blue italics.

I have a bit of experience with the Squeezebox as I had the opportunity to review the previous two versions of this device. The first one was the SLIMP3 Network MP3 player and the newer one was also named the Squeezebox. This was before Logitech bought the company Slim Devices. The main difference between the new Squeezebox Boom and the older units is that this new one has built in speakers, making it way more convenient.

Unlike Julie, I had not used a previous Squeezebox incarnation, and the whole “network music player” genre was slightly foreign to me – unless you count streaming iTunes from one laptop to another over a home network. I guess it’s all basically the same principle though, right? Except doing things this way doesn’t require you to have two laptops, and it sounds much better; but I digress…

Specifications

¾-inch (1.9 cm) high-definition, soft-dome tweeters and 3-inch (7.6 cm) high-power, long-throw woofers
30-watt digital amplifier and speakers
Bi-amplified design with high performance signal processor, class D amplifiers and digital crossovers
Stereo XL technology widens the sound stage beyond the physical boundaries of the speaker
Plays MP3, AAC, WMA, Ogg, FLAC, Apple lossless, WMA lossless, WAV, and AIFF music files
6-button presets allow one touch access to favorite radio stations and playlists
7-day alarm clock
Infrared remote control
Bright, high-contrast VFD display with ambient light sensor and automatic dimming
Built-in 802.11g wireless with dual internal antennas
10/100Base-T Ethernet port
Line-in via 3.5 mm stereo jack
Headphone/Subwoofer out via 3.5 mm connector

Package Contents

Squeezebox Boom
AC adapter
Remote
Quick Start Guide
3.5mm to 3.5mm patch cable

Don’t forget the microfiber drawstring bag; that was a nice touch!

Out of the box, the Squeezebox Boom really lives up to its name. It looks like a typical boom box, with Black mesh stereo speakers on either side of an LCD and panel of buttons.

It doesn’t have a flashy design, which is just fine in my opinion. This way it blends in well in an office, living room, kitchen or bedroom. No worries about clashing colors huh?

No, none at all. Unless the plaid in the above photograph doesn’t go well with someone’s decor. Oh wait…

I knew I should have re-shot that picture Ha!

The buttons on the front are pretty self explanatory. Included are all the normal buttons that you would expect on an audio player, such as Power, Volume, Play, Rew, Pause and FWD.

There is also a preset button bar that you can use to save up to six of your favorite Internet Radio channels. The large knob in the center operates as both a volume adjuster and a menu navigation tool.

The Squeezbox Boom’s case is shiny Black plastic. That means dust and fingerprints. Get out your swiffer!

That’s something that all of the digital music player docks I have reviewed lately have in common – they all use loads of shiny black plastic which looks absolutely gorgeous out of the box, but quickly becomes a swirly mess of dust and fingertips – especially in West Texas.

This boom box uses WiFi to connect to your computer or the internet, but if you are so inclined you can hard wire it using the Ethernet jack on the back. There’s also a line-in jack, powered sub woofer / headphone hookup and an AC adapter jack.

The inline jack should come in handy when you want to enjoy music from another hard-wired music player through the Squeezebox’s speaker system.

The Squeezebox only has a 13.0 x 3.75 x 5.25 inch footprint, so you shouldn’t have problems finding space for it.

No, you’ll just want to make sure that you have a stable place to put it; the Squeezebox is surprisingly heavy.

On the top there is a rubber surface with a little indentation for the included IR remote.

The cool thing is that it’s magnetic, so it holds the remote in place when you’re not using it.

You’ll also notice a long bar next to the remote. It’s a snooze / sleep bar. Press it quickly to see the time and date. Press and hold it to set the sleep feature. You can have the Squeezebox automatically power down in 15, 30, 45, 60, or 90 minutes.

The remote has a corresponding sleep button, which allows you to manually set the power down in the same increments. It’s a nice feature for those who like falling asleep to music.

The remote has real buttons, not a cheesy membrane. Yay! It will let you do almost everything that the buttons on the Boom will do.

This is easily the best remote I’ve found included with any of the systems I’ve reviewed lately. It’s funny how you don’t realize how finicky a membrane remote is, until you have a quality remote – with real buttons – in hand.

To begin using the Squeezebox, you have to connect it to your WiFi access point, or plug it in to your network with an Ethernet cable.

Setting up the music player is simply a matter of following a series of onscreen questions, and pressing the center of the large knob. You’ll need to make note of your player’s PIN number, because it is required during the computer based portion of the setup.

Next you have to decide if you want to use the SqueezeNetwork or the SqueezeCenter as your music source for this networked player.

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SqueezeNetwork is a free internet based service provided by Logitech that you sign up for. It will allow you to connect to services such as Pandora, Slacker, Rhapsody, etc.

I was really impressed by the selection of streaming services offered by SqueezeNetwork; they have Last.fm, Live365, MP3Tunes, Pandora, RadioIO, RadioTime, Rhapsody, Sirius and Slacker. Since I already have a Sirius account I had the option of upgrading to their Premium audio offering for an additional $2.99 a month. Of course there were free options, too – such as Slacker; I set up an account with them in no time, and was able to confirm that  just as I suspected – for me at least, internet radio streaming was not really going to be a viable option.

You can also store your music library in an online MP3tunes Music Locker (free 60 day trial) so that you’ll have access to your tunes  even when your computer is turned off.

I think that this is a pretty neat service for people who don’t necessarily want to leave their laptop on all the time, or who want to use the Squeezebox Boom in a location other than where their main music computer resides.

If you mostly want to use the Squeezebox Boom to listen to internet radio service, then the SqueezeNetwork is probably the way to go.

If you want to listen to your own tunes and not have to pay to keep them stored in the cloud, then you’ll want to go with the next option -  SqueezeCenter.

SqueezeCenter will allow you to also listen to internet radio and your own music collection. But, your computer has to be turned on in order for the Squeezebox Boom to have access to these services and your music. It also requires that you install a web based app on your Windows, Mac or Linux machine.

To download, you simply go to www.squeezenetwork.com and follow the sign-up wizard. During the setup you’ll need the PIN number from your player that I mentioned earlier.

This application runs in your regular web browser. For me, that’s Firefox.

As it is for me.

When you first start SqueezeCenter, it will scan your machine for music. It will imports iTunes artwork and scan for user added artwork. Depending on how large your music collection is, this can take awhile…

The interface is pretty basic, but it gets the job done.

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From within this interface you can do everything from select the music you want to stream to create random song playlists based on genre. The SqueezeCenter will also import and recognize playlists you have setup in iTunes, which was an unexpected and very cool feature.

For this review, I didn’t test the SqueezeNetwork option of copying my music collection into the MusicLocker service. So, whenever my computer was turned off, I could only listen to internet radio by connecting to the SqueezeNetwork. Then I would try to look at my music library, it would be empty. Since I was testing both services, this got a little confusing… Most people probably won’t run into this problem though.

I didn’t copy my music either, mainly because living in the country my internet connection is only one step above dial-up…on a good day.

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The Squeezebox Boom sounds really good in my opinion. Even without an optional sub woofer, it has some real thump to it. I was honestly really surprised at how good it sounds. What did you think Judie?

I agree that the sound produced is very good. The bass result isn’t quite as thumpy as the Kicker iKICK iK500 I reviewed (and am still using), but it is still quite rich and seems to be even deeper than the Altec Lansing inMotion MAX I recently reviewed and liked.

I was really surprised how well it works for streaming internet radio. I’ve used several internet radio devices in the past and they always seem to have issues with connecting to the stations, or buffering data. I didn’t notice any issues like that with the Squeezebox.

That’s because you have the world’s greatest internet connection, my dear. Oh, how I fondly remember the broadband cable connection I enjoyed (and more or less took for granted) when living in San Angelo, but I wouldn’t give up living in BFE to have it again.

I tried a bunch of different stations and only 2 or 3 times in the last couple of weeks has the player paused to buffer data. Granted, I have a decent broadband connection (T1 line). How well did it work with your connection?

I’ll admit it – it was a disaster! This is the one of the few times where living in the country has produced a major con. Streaming music from my laptop to the player is absolutely fabulous; streaming over the internet? Not so much. But I can’t complain, because I honestly expected that. My main interest in the player was – and is – its ability to stream my music collection from a computer. Bear in mind that there are no desktops in my home – we are all on laptops, so built-in speaker systems are only adequate on a good day. Using this system allows us to have rich stereo sound without hooking up a set of wired speakers; in other words, it is pretty darn awesome!

I tried Squeezebox in several locations around my house. My WiFi router is located in the basement, the Squeezebox works perfect there… but when I took it upstairs on the opposite end of the house, it had some trouble streaming my music and playing internet radio stations. It would sometimes lose connection. I’m not sure I can complain about that since it is going through a floor and a couple walls. I also tried it directly above my office and had no problems.

Our house is not as large as yours, and it is only one story, so there really wasn’t anywhere I could go that would be out of the Squeezebox’s range. So people considering using one of these might want to take into consideration whether they need it to work across the house, or just through a wall or two, so they can place their router accordingly.

The only real issue that I found when using the Squeezebox to stream music I owned was that it would not play certain albums and songs I had purchased from iTunes. Bear in mind that none of my iTunes music was purchased DRM free, so I didn’t know what to expect, but my results were very inconsistent. For instance it would see and play certain albums that I had purchased through iTunes, but it would not see or play others. I thought at first that this limitation was only occurring to albums showing in my purchased list, but lo and behold – one of the CDs Kevin had bought was not only showing in the purchased list, it also played over the network. I honestly have no idea what the deal is, and am puzzled by it.

Update: Reader Daniel Stahl had the answer!

I was unable to get any of my DRM music from iTunes to show up in the music list on the Squeezebox application. So I’m not really sure how it is deciding what it will and will not play. I specifically authorized some music for my iMac (where the SqueezeCenter software is installed) tonight and then did a rescan in the SqueezeCenter application. After it was completed, the music did NOT show up in the music list for the Squeezebox. Color me confused too…

While music is playing, the song title will scroll across the LCD display. When the Squeezebox Boom is not playing music and powered off, it will display the time of day on the LCD. One cool thing about the display that I discovered is that it has an ambient light sensor that can be set to dim the display or even turn it completely off. This is a nice feature for people that want to locate the Boom in their bedroom. Speaking of the bedroom, the Squeezebox Boom can function as a decent alarm clock.

Absolutely correct! The clock operates on network time – in other words, you don’t have to set it, and alarms can be set from the home screen. If the network isn’t working, instead of streaming music you will get an alarm tone.

I have really enjoyed reviewing this device. I like the Squeezebox Boom a lot! It sounds great, works very well for listening to internet radio stations, is very easy to setup, is wireless and doesn’t take up a lot of room on a table or shelf. I’m impressed and will continue to use it.

Even though I can’t utilize the streaming internet features of the player, I am definitely impressed by the way the Squeezebox handled my network music stream. As expected, the sound produced blows away the speakers on my computer, and it is a definite improvement when listening to music. Kevin and I usually have our computers set up on the dining room table, and we listen to our combined music stored on his MacBook Pro through its built in speakers. It would be impractical to put a set of speakers on the table with us, so streaming to the Squeezebox Boom located across the room is the perfect solution.

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Wireless

Tagged: Internet Radio, MP3, Streaming, Wireless

Logitech Squeezebox Boom Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 30, 2009 at 11:18 pm.

Hot on the heels of the Slacker app for BlackBerry announcement the other day, comes a Slacker Radio application for the iPhone. I love my Slacker G2 Personal Radio, so I was anxious to check out how this free application on the iPhone compared to it.

To use this app, you’ll need a Slacker Radio account. Don’t worry, it’s free. If you happen to already have a premium account, you can use it to login to the iPhone app. Here are some of the features:

• Free music library featuring millions of songs
• High-quality stereo playback from any wireless connection
• Over 100 professionally programmed genre stations
• Create custom artist stations
• Fine tune stations to play more of the music you like
• View artist biographies and photos
• View album art and reviews
• “Peek Ahead” artist and album preview
• Pause and skip songs
• Rate songs as favorites
• Ban the songs and artists you don’t like

When you first launch it, there is a 30-40 second wait while the application boots up and loads the first song. The bad part is that if you exit the app to do something else and come right back in, you still have to sit through that wait again. If your the impatient type, this will probably drive you nuts.

The first time you launch the Slacker player, you’ll be in your station listing screen.  Your favorite and custom stations are shown at the top. Custom channels are created on the Slacker website. As far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to create one through the iPhone app.

When you scroll the station screen, you will see a list of different genres of music. Tapping the genre name will take you to another screen…

With individual stations for that genre. Tapping a station will let you listen to music in that station. To add that station to your favorites, you tap the station title bar at the top of the display.

From there you can add it to your favorites. It doesn’t look like there is a way to remove favorites through the app… Yes folks, there is a Jack Bauer Slacker station…

You can also search for specific songs and stations using the search feature.

The now playing screen shows the album art for the currently playing song, along with the title and artist’s name. On the Slacker G2 Personal Radio, the now playing screen shows the name of the next song to play. The iPhone app doesn’t do this, but it does give you a ‘peek’ at the next song. Check out the image above. See the album art sliver on the right side?

It’s the album art for the next song to play. You can drag the top album to the Left to see more of the bottom album. If you drag it too far, it is like pressing the skip button and will load and play that track. Kind of cool.

Skipping to the next song with this app works the same as on the personal radio. If you don’t have a premium account, you can skip 6 songs per hour, per station. Premium users can skip as many times as they like.

You can read more info about the artist and album. If you like what you hear, there’s a link to launch iTunes to display the artist’s albums and songs for purchase.

The main difference between using your iPhone to listen to Slacker Radio and having an actual Slacker G2 device, is that you can’t copy a song to your library by pressing the heart button. Pressing this button or the ban button will just cause the song to either play more often, or not at all.

I still have the original (non 3G) iPhone, so I was curious as to how well this streaming application would perform on AT&T’s EDGE network. So far so good… I’ve been listening to it for several hours today. The audio quality is really good. I can’t tell an obvious difference between listening to my regular tracks through the iPod app with the streaming songs through Slacker. No clipping, hissing, or anything like that.

At one point this morning, it quit playing and was having troubles loading music. Yay EDGE! But so far this afternoon that hasn’t happened again. There is a lag when you skip a song and it has to load a new one. It can take 15-20 seconds to start playing the new song after pressing skip. If you’re listening regularly though, the next song will queue up normally, without a noticeable lag.

I’m not ditching my Slacker G2 radio anytime soon, but this free iPhone app is an easy way for people to check out Slacker’s service if they’ve not yet tried it. Good stuff, I’m a big fan.

The Slacker Radio application for iPhone and Touch can be found here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=298307011&mt=8

Filed in categories: iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: iPhone, Slacker Radio, Software, Streaming

Slacker Radio iPhone Application Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 13, 2009 at 1:50 pm.