Cirago’s device fills plenty of media roles, but it doesn’t excel at any
The Cirago TV Platinum CMC3000 is a small, network-connected box with HDMI output and an internal hard drive. This box can play back all manner of content, record TV from your set-top box, and provide 1TB of network-attached storage. You get all this for a street price less of than $200. What’s not to like? As it turns out, the Cirago is a classic jack-of-all-trades and master of none.
The little box with big (but yet unrealized) dreams
People who enjoy building their own computing hardware will be familiar with the Boxee name. But if you don’t fall into that camp, you’re probably wondering what the heck this weird-looking, not-exactly-a-cube thingy is all about. The answer comes in two parts.
Hat’s off to Logitech: They really know how to design a keyboard. Our opinion of the rest of the Revue—Logitch’s first Google TV product—isn’t nearly as lofty. The Revue’s utility in no way justifies its $300 price tag. And while Dish Network customers can buy the device at the subsidized price of $180, they’ll forever pay a $4 per month “DVR integration fee” to get full use of it.
While there is no dearth of solutions for streaming PC-based movies, music and pictures to your TV, the PC games in your personal collection are still “unstreamable.” Enter AfterCAD, and its GameString Adrenalin service, and personal PC game libraries will become just as “streamable” as other media content.
So what exactly is GameString Adrenalin? AfterCAD is calling it “personal cloud gaming.” It essentially allows for PC games to be played remotely from within any Flash- or HTML5-enabled web browser. The company has even posted a video (below) of World of Warcraft being played on Google TV.
"Our GameString technology represents the next generation in cloud gaming as it doesn't rely on downloads, plugins, java or obscure codecs to work. The proof is in the fact it works with the Google TV right out of the box while other cloud gaming services will have to write an app to run it on,” said Chris Boothroyd, CEO of Aftercad.
“For Game Publishers looking to leverage the cloud to spice up the production values for Flash based social games, it is clear our approach is the way of the future and the way to go."
Things aren't looking very good for Logitech's SqueezeBox Touch, a slick looking media streaming device which continues to have its release date pushed back time and again. The last delay had the SqueezeBox slated to ship out this month, but according to a post by a Slim Devices developer on the official Logitech message board, it probably won't arrive until April at the earliest.
"We're looking at a couple of months until release," reads the post.
News of yet another delay can't come as good news to those who pre-ordered the media streamer as far back as October 2009. At the time, Logitech was promising a December release.
But what's even worse is no know one outside of Logitech knows why the SqueezeBox hasn't yet been released. The company hasn't told its customers anything, although a senior member on the forum says Logitech has been having issues integrating their latest streaming software into the SqueezeBox's low-power hardware.
HP’s Media Vault is like a clumsy, fat version of HP’s star-quarterbacking, marathon-running, leather-jacket-wearing MediaSmart Home Server. And that’s saying something, considering the MediaSmart EX475 is something of a middling performer. We can’t fault HP for trying to make a cheaper, simpler alternative to the Windows Home Server-based MediaSmart, but we’re certainly ready to take the company to task for releasing a product that doesn’t work as advertised.
We like Netgear’s EVA8000—a lot. Its industrial design fits in with the rest of our AV gear, its user interface is as elegant and polished as it is easy to use, it supports resolutions up to 1080p with an HDMI port, and that’s just the beginning. But if you buy one, make sure it has the latest firmware update before you do anything else. We couldn’t configure our review unit at all until we updated the software. With that housekeeping accomplished, we were on our way to streaming bliss. Although the EVA8000 has dual antennas, it’s still limited to 802.11g speeds and cannot reliably stream high-definition video content without a wire, but it delivered excellent image and audio quality.
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