NETGEAR Digital Entertainer Express (EVA9100)

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Price: $320.00    

Product Feature

• Plays video, MP3s and digital photos from your PC, Mac or network attached storage device (NAS) to your HDTV
• Browse and play popular movies and TV shows from Hulu, Netflix, CBS, and more using PlayOn on your PC (free trial and special discount� )
• Automatically finds all digital media files on your home network and organizes them into an easily accessible library
• Includes one HDMI port, HD upconversion up to 1080p, and two USB ports for iPod and USB drives
• Easily add a NETGEAR Wireless USB Adapter (EVAW111) to connect wirelessly

Product Description

Why NETGEAR’s Digital Entertainer Express (EVA9100)? Plays video, MP3s and digital photos from your PC, Mac or network attached storage device (NAS) to your HDTV, Browse and play popular movies and TV shows from Hulu, Netflix, CBS, and more using PlayOn on your PC (free trial and special discount), Automatically finds all digital media files on your home network and organizes them into an easily accessible library, Includes one HDMI port, HD upconversion up to 1080p, and two USB ports for iPod and USB drives, Easily add a NETGEAR Wireless USB Adapter (EVAW111) to connect wirelessly

NETGEAR Digital Entertainer Express (EVA9100) Review

When I talk of mass market, I'm talking about the media players for the average consumer; not, for example, those that can only be obtained from specialty retailers and custom electronics pros, e.g. Kaleidescape, etc.

Anyway, I own two other media players (D-Link DSM520 and Seagate FreeAgent+) and have extensively researched others (e.g. WD Live, Asus, Zinwell/Briteview, etc.), and while that does not qualify me as an expert, I can still confidently make the claim in my review title. None of the other players deliver the kind of experience the Netgear does. It is quite obvious that Netgear is serious is about the media server/player market. There are so many features that differentiates this player from the others, that I cannot do it justice. Anyway, I will list a few.

First, it is standard sized, so it fits nicely with other standard gear, e.g. blu-ray player, receiver, etc., especially handy for stacking in a cabinet or rack mounting. All of the other players mentioned, except for two D-Link models, are smaller. This makes them more portable, but in most cases, these players will sit in one position and never move, I'd bet.

Second, media on the network is treated as part of your library (as if they resided locally on an attached drive). This is a big deal, since it allows you to view your movie folders as cover art and you don't have to browse the network for them every time. The other players do not support this.

Third, movies can be automatically categorised, based on genre, rating, production year, etc. This is accomplished by a very cool method of importing this information from the internet movie database. There is an application to facilitate this. While it is true that each movie's data must be imported individually, making it a fairly tedious task to setup initially - especially if you have hundreds of movies already - this is typical of high end gear. Sony's flagship 400-disc blu-ray changer, for example is similar, as you load each disc individually and have the player download the information from Grace Notes. However, the benefits to be derived after this initial load cannot be overstated. You can then browse your movies by high definition cover art (you can always save a higher definition poster to the movie folder at any time). This browsing can be done by all movies, or filtered by various categories. Once this information is downloaded, pressing info on the remote when a movie is playing, reveals all the information for that movie; similar to info on DirecTV or Dish Network, etc.

Fourth, access to movies can be restricted (e.g. password protected for children), based on rating (previously downloaded) or location in your folder paths.

Fifth, you can manage the player remotely via your PC and even send messages to the player, e.g. to let the kids know it's time for bed after the movie they are currently viewing!

Sixth, if you have multiple of these players, you can use the "follow me" feature, and have any player remember the settings of the other player when you last left it, so that you can resume watching a movie in, say, the living room, at the same point you would have left it, when viewing in the bedroom.

Seventh, there is a digital entertainer forum where you can download third party skins for the player. I have already tried some of them and they do enhance your experience of the player. Of course, this is done at your own risk, as an improperly created skin can render the player unusable, forcing you to reset to factory (this is taken from the manual, so I don't know that it would completely destroy the player).

There are some other very nice features that may or may not be present in some of the other players, e,g. the ability to adjust the size/colour of the subtitles.

Couple negatives so far:

One, is that it sometimes loses connectivity with the network. This has not happened while watching a movie (so far), but while the player is "at rest". I've seen this mentioned in another forum, as well. I've raised it with Netgear, and they have raised it with their level 2 support, but, as expected, I suppose, no definitive answer.

Two, is that the movie cover art sometimes becomes corrupted (when you change cover art). I've had this problem and tried removing the tags, re-adding tags, replacing the cover art image, rescanning the directories, resetting the player to default settings - all without success. Eventually, I created new directories for the movies and copied the movie files and new cover art to these directories, deleted the old directories and rescanned. This finally solved the problem.

Of course, I still highly recommend this player.

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