Yep, another set-top box. Netgear unveiled the Netgear Internet TV Player (ITV2000) today. From this box you can stream content to your TV from sites like BBC, CNN, ESPN, EuroSport, NBC, PGATour, and TMZ, as well as video sites like YouTube, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos, and MetaCafe. The box will be available in early Summer 2009 for $199. I’m going to start counting the number of set-top boxes that will be released this year. What’s your guess?
Internet TV Player (ITV2000)
NETGEAR’s 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 retrieving billions of Internet videos from a place it was previously unavailable — the TV in their living rooms. Rather than watching videos on PC screens in separate rooms, families can watch video from a variety of Internet sources on the TV together, in the comfort of their den or family room.
The Internet TV Player unlocks the value of new HDTVs as well as old analog TVs. It is ideal for the Internet families who enjoy online video, and for those who are geographically displaced from their preferred television content, such as international sporting events and Bollywood productions. It streams content from popular sites such as BBC.com, CNN.com, ESPN.com, EuroSport.com, NBC.com, PGATour and TMZ.com, as well as video powerhouses YouTube, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos and MetaCafe. NETGEAR’s Internet TV Player supports streaming of live TV broadcasts from Internet sites around the world, and premium, paid movies on demand such as CinemaNow.com, in addition to downloaded videos from sites such as BitTorrent. Its superior VTap video search capabilities enable the intelligent search of Internet videos, including targeting video sites by country, topic of interest, person or popular website. Consumers are also able to play video, music, and photos from a local USB flash drive as well as from the NETGEAR ReadyNAS family of storage solutions.
Slightly larger than a deck of cards, the compact Internet TV Player connects to the home network and the Internet via Ethernet or wireless USB adapter. It does not require a PC to play Internet video, nor does it require installing any PC software or setting up file sharing or firewall settings.
The NETGEAR Internet TV Player (ITV2000) is expected to be available in early Summer 2009 through leading retailers, e-commerce sites, and value-added resellers, at an MSRP in the U.S. of $199. More information can be found at (http://www.netgear.com/Products/Entertainment/DigitalMediaPlayers/itv2000.aspx).
Set-top boxes are old news (or should be by now); built-in functionality is the real future.
I guess at least 30 of these useless things.
This box is basically made by Verismo Networks, thus it is likely similar to the VuNow VN1000HD which I reviewed in a video yesterday at http://techvideoblog.com/reviews/vunow-vn1000hd-hi-def-pod/
This type of box is not useless, it is potentially revolutionary. You can now potentially watch all the videos from the whole Internet with such a small cheap box and no need for a computer in the home to do any transcoding or anything else. This is basically like a TV tuner but where it tunes the whole Internet in all formats from all Internet video sources, instead of tuning from those traditional TV signals.
Does this work with DSL or broadband connection?
Normally it would require you to have average 512 kbps downstream so if you have a slower package with dsl/broadband then you might need to move up but even with lower package somewhat it will still work…