Digital video player news - WD TV Live Hub. Roku and Netflix, VUDU and the Boxee Box

Last week was a busy week in the digital video player market, with product introductions or extensions made from Western Digital, Roku and NETGEAR, and the Boxee Box and VUDU.

• Western Digital introduced the WD TV® Live Hub™ media center a 1080p media player with a 1 terabyte (TB) built-in network hard drive that gives users the freedom to play all their personal media on any screen in the home. The WD TV Live Hub media center brings new experiences to the WD TV family, including instantly renting or purchasing the newest releases through the Blockbuster On Demand® service, the same day as DVD/Blu-ray release, as well as interacting with personal Facebook® communities.
• Roku announced that is was licensing its Streaming Media Player Platform, and further announced NETGEAR as its first OEM Partner. The NETGEAR Roku Player - priced at $89.99 - will provide access to more than 100,000 movies and TV shows, live sporting events, music, online content from providers such as Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, Vimeo, Pandora, MP3tunes, SmugMug, Flickr, MLB.TV ,and UFC.
• VUDU will be available via Boxee, including the Boxee Box. VUDU will be available as a Boxee App on Windows and Mac computers, as well as the Boxee Box by D-Link this November
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Quantenna gets a design win with Swisscom and NETGEAR

The expanded role of wireless networks in a managed video realm (that is, distributed video from a pay-TV provider) has been an area of speculation, but not a whole lot of action. We've seen consumer electronics manufacturers willing to experiment with next-gen wireless solutions in devices such as digital video players (Roku, etc.) and even connected TVs, but we haven't really seen many operators going the wireless route whole-home DVR features or even bridging between a residential gateway and one or more set-top boxes.

Which makes the announcement from Quantenna today a potential harbinger.
Quantenna announced that its full-11n™ 4x4 MIMO 802.11n chipset has been selected by NETGEAR® for a video-bridge solution that Swisscom has used to complete field trials of the first high-definition (HD) video-over-Wi-Fi service.

In 2008, Swisscom began working with Quantenna to define and develop video service-delivery technology that provides whole-home coverage at very high data rates, which is mandatory for services and applications such as HDTV. NETGEAR, whose first video bridge was introduced in January 2008 at CES, joined the partnership in 2009 to deliver a video bridge that uses Quantenna’s Full-11n product to transport multiple HD video streams from residential gateways to multiple set-top boxes around the home

Wireless PC-to-TV product market is heating up

During last week's Webcast - Connected TV Outlook - I had looked at PC-to-TV connections as one iteration of a "connected TV" experience. The number of U.S. households making connections between a computer and their high-definition display to watch online video is not insignificant - it was nearly six million households at the end of last year and it's expected to exceed ten million households this year.

This could spell an opportunity for developers of wireless PC-to-TV links. We've seen reference designs from companies such as Alereon and icron, and now we're seeing end-user products from the likes of IOGEAR, NETGEAR, and Wisair. The latest entrant is ASUS, which will use AMIMON's wireless technology for its upcoming WiCast EW2000 PC to TV connectivity kit.

NETGEAR's ReadyNAS product moves into full-blown home media server mode

NETGEAR has unveiled new products in the ReadyNAS family - the ReadyNAS® Ultra family of 2-Bay, 4-Bay and 6-Bay network storage systems. They incorporate some features that are very media server-centric, particularly the place-shifting capabilities with Orb Networks,compatibility with TiVo PVRs to stream HD programming content, and Skifta media-shifting capabilities so users can access their media from any DLNA certified device.

NETGEAR upgrading its networked entertainment products

NETGEAR announced a couple of new products, aimed at providing a more expansive Internet video experience at the TV.

The Internet TV Player (ITV2000) is a compact, easy-to-use, “plug in and go” Internet set-top device with a simple remote control that enables viewers to catch up on the world of Internet videos including YouTube™, live Internet TV, popular Internet video websites, premium video-on-demand and online video searches.

The Digital Entertainer Elite (EVA9150) includes a 500GB hard drive and allows consumers to play on their TVs Blu-ray quality up to 1080p digital video, high-resolution digital photos, MP3s and recorded television shows from their PCs or storage on their network. They can also enjoy Internet content, such as YouTube, Internet radio, Flickr™, RSS feeds, and videos from popular websites.

Entropic showing MoCA-to-Ethernet adapter from NETGEAR with MoCA

This is a practical application. Entropic was showing a demonstration with the NETGEAR MCAB1001 Ethernet to Coax Bridge (ECB) kit, powered by its c.LINK MoCA technology, in live demonstrations with the VUDU HD Internet Movie Box at CES.