Crave

On Tuesday, Netgear announced its new Internet-connected Digital Entertainer Live set-top box.

(Credit: Netgear)

If you're a fan of devices that play media from USB drives, such as the WD TV, you'll probably find the newest toy from Netgear interesting.

The company announced Tuesday the newest Internet-connected set-top box in its Digital Entertainer product family, the Digital Entertainer Live (model EVA2000). The device is similar to the WD TV as it also has two USB ports and supports playback of a long list of digital media files, including DivX and Matroska MKV, a popular compressed format for high-definition movies.

(Credit: Netgear)

The EVA2000 incorporates an Ethernet port that gives it access to Internet-based media options that let you view YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and a wide range of other free content on HDTVs. Other than free content, the EVA2000 also supports pay-per-view movies, such as those from Roxio CinemaNow.

According to Netgear, the Digital Entertainer Live features a built-in search engine that can perform dynamic keyword searches of more than 100,000 Web sites for Internet videos. The search results are categorized by popular subjects and put into separate folders.

The Ethernet port can also be used to connect the EVA2000 to other network devices, such as other computers or network storage devices to play digital content stored on them.

For those who want to use the new set-top box with fewer wires, the EVA2000 has an optional Digital Entertainer Live Wireless USB Adapter (EVAW111) that connects the device via Wi-Fi. However, it's always better to connect it using a network cable if you want to smoothly stream high-definition content from a network storage device.

The EVA2000 comes with an HDMI port for HDTVs and composite cables for older TVs. It also has regular RCA jacks to support analog TVs.

The Netgear Digital Entertainer Live is available now and costs $150. Its optional Wi-Fi adapter is available for another $40.

Since my CES blog on Netgear's WNDR3700, I have received a numerous e-mails asking about the availability of the product. Today, I can provide readers with a definitive answer.

Netgear announced Tuesday the immediate availability of what it calls "the ultimate networking machine for gamers, media enthusiasts, and small businesses," the RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit router WNDR3700.

The WNDR3700 wireless router

(Credit: Netgear)

This is Netgear's highest-end draft-N router that offers true dual-band (concurrent signals in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands), as well as other features such as ReadyShare for high-speed access to a USB hard drive from any device on the network, broadband usage metering, Digital Living Network Alliance support and video quality of service.

According to Netgear, the router is equipped with a 680MHz processor to offer up to 500Mbps WAN to LAN speeds and up to 350Mbps real-world wireless throughput. It's also on of the first consumer wireless routers that compatible with DLNA-certified products. This supposedly makes it better at streaming digital media than other non-DLNA compatible routers.

The broadband usage metering is actually the first to be seen in a consumer-grade wireless router. This is a feature that lets users monitor the download traffic used; it is especially useful for broadband users with bandwidth quotas, such as Comcast members.

The RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router is now available worldwide. The router comes with a one-year warranty, 24/7 technical support, and has an estimated price of $190. You can get it now or wait for my review of the product, which will be available later this month.

(Credit: Netgear)

I am not a big fan of parental controls, but that might be just because I'm not a parent.

If you are not like me and have been wondering if paying a yearly fee for the comprehensive parental control feature that accompanies the lackluster iBoss router is worth it, Netgear may have just made your life a lot easier.

Netgear announced Tuesday the release of Live Parental Controls, a comprehensive Web-filtering feature it has developed in collaboration with OpenDNS.

The new feature enables parents and small businesses to restrict Internet access to all the devices that connect via the router, with filtering based on more than 50 categories of content. The Live Parental Controls incorporate a comprehensive set of filtering features including some not available in other parental control solutions, such as remote management from mobile devices and highly flexible settings.

The best things about the new features are that they're free and are included with Netgear's new routers. The first one that comes with this is Netgear's Wireless-N 300 WNR2000 router. Netgear plans on putting Live Parental Controls in its future routers and Internet gateways.

The WNR2000 is available immediately and costs less than $80, which is very good for a Wirelesss-N router and it's a great deal considering the new Web filter, especially when compared with the iBoss.

Hands-on testing and a full review of Netgear's Wireless-N 300 WNR2000 wireless router will be available soon.

We've seen plenty of network-connected streamers over the last few months, most of which rely in some degree on Windows Media Center for content. This wouldn't be such an issue if Media Center would just play nicely with third-party devices.

These "extenders," like the Linksys DMA2200, gave us an inconsistent stream with unreliable picture quality regardless of our connection strength. On the other hand, the Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD wasn't able to play as many file types as we would have liked.

It is with the Digital Entertainer Elite that we've found the best of both worlds: a media receiver that doesn't rely on Windows Media Center and a device that can handle almost any file format you throw at it. The Elite isn't necessarily for everyone, though--in fact, we'd probably recommend it only to that crowd of do-it-yourselfers who are fluent in the ins and outs of audio and video formats.

The Elite is priced around $400 and, while you won't have the added luxury of Netflix or Amazon Video on Demand, there are plenty of extra features that may justify its purchase, including a removable and user-replaceable 500GB hard drive. Read our full review to see if it's right for you.

If you're not familiar with Seagate's all newBlackArmor NAS servers, there's another network storage option for your business that's a little more commonplace.

The new ReadyNAS NVX from Netgear.

(Credit: Netgear)

Netgear, a networking and storage vendor known for its ReadyNAS network storage servers, decided Monday to expand this family of NAS devices to further support the business environment.

The new NAS server, called the ReadyNAS NVX, is designed for homes and small businesses. According to Netgear, the device offers double the performance of previous NV+ units and supports file and application services for Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac systems, including Time Machine backup technology (available in Mac OS X 10.5).

The new ReadyNAS NVX includes four drive bays, each of which can hold a SATA hard drive of any capacity. It features iSCSI interface to offer a high throughput speed.

Like other ReadyNAS servers, the NVX has multiple layers of data protection, including drive fault tolerance (RAID), local USB backups, online backups, and secure off-site replication to other ReadyNAS systems. It also comes with the embedded ReadyNAS Vault option that lets users automatically archive data to a cloud-storage data center, from which data can be recovered via a Web browser.

The new ReadyNAS NVX is available now with 2TB of storage for an estimated street price of $1,500. The device comes with full 24/7 technical support and an generous five-year warranty.

Personally, I think this is good news, as the ReadyNAS I reviewed a while ago was one of the best on the market at that time.

(Credit: Netgear)

Having your network storage device automatically back up data onto a remote server is a great idea, and so far I've seen it implemented only by Datto. But given the increasingly popularity of cloud NAS, this won't be for long.

Netgear decided to join this small crowd Monday by introducing its new online backup and disaster recovery service, called ReadyNAS Vault, for consumers and small to medium-size businesses (SMBs).

The ReadyNAS Vault is designed to be a simple, enterprise-class solution for Internet- or "cloud-based" data protection and will be available for all versions of Netgear's family of ReadyNAS products.

ReadyNAS Vault will be built right into all ReadyNAS servers. Consumers then can regularly and securely copy data to a remote storage facility and recover or access data from anywhere in the world via the Internet.

The new solution also allows for managing multiple individual ReadyNAS servers and a centralized online console. Users can do this regardless of where they are, as long as they have access to the Internet.