My review of the Netgear EVA700 media extender

Here is my Amazon.com review of the Netgear EVA700 media extender. The
reviews I have read from journalists have been quite positive. You can
google them if you like. My experience has been rather less pleasant,
so I wrote this review.

Here is what works: you can plug a USB 2.0 flash memory device ("thumb
drive") into the front of the EVA700. You can play movies stored on
the flash device. The EVA700 understands MPEG-2, DIVX, much of Windows
Media, and some other formats as well.

Everything else about the EVA700 is broken.

Presenting any media over wireless network
------------------------------------------
When presenting audio, video, or photos over the wireless network, the
EVA700 will "freeze." No more network access after that, a reboot is
necessary. The problem seems to correlate with high bitrate sources. I
can stream a 730 Kbit/s. movie just fine, but a 3.7 Mbit/s. movie will
cause the freeze. Similarly, I can stream a 128 Kbit/s. MP3 (audio)
file just fine, but a 192 Kbit/s. MP3 file will freeze the EVA700.
Finally, about half of my photo files (mostly ordinary JPEGs from my
digital camera) will cause the network freeze.

Viewing Photos From network or flash memory device
--------------------------------------------------
Your photos will be cropped. I asked Netgear customer support about
this. The response was vague and apologetic. There seems to be no way
to prevent the clipping. Ominously, the message from customer support
mentioned that the feature of reading from a flash memory device is
not fully developed; I should use networking instead. Networking. See
above.

What Works?
-----------
There is one thing that works very well. Another thing that works,
"kinda sorta." The thing that seems to work well is to play a movie
from a USB 2.0 flash memory device ("thumb drive"). The thing that
works "kinda sorta" is to listen to audio streamed by the free
Shoutcast internet service (see next section). All of the Shoutcast
radio stations will fall silent after a time, but at least the EVA700
does not "freeze."

Your Media Server
-----------------
To use the EVA700 with networking, you must install media server
software on your PC, and network that PC to the EVA700.

The best media server I have found is Twonky Media Server. Using
Twonky, you can listen to Shoutcast MP3 (audio) streams on your
EVA700. Shoutcast offers programming from what are essentially radio
stations on the internet. Some of them are quite good. I suggest
that you use your PC to explore these radio stations. Using Winamp
software, you can search for radio stations that have decent bitrate
and that match your tastes. Then, you can jump to these stations on
your EVA700. All of these radio stations will fall silent after a
time. This seems to be a general problem with Shoutcast. Usually, you
can simply reconnect to the station and the music resumes.

The EVA700 ships with Windows Media Connect, which is rather obsolete.
I suggest that you not even install this.

If you install Windows Media Player 11, you get a built-in media
server. It works, but it is rather lame.

I tried TVersity, which seems to be a free software project. Unusable.

I have not tried wizd yet, but it looks promising.

Making The Most Of The EVA700
-----------------------------
The best advice is don't buy it. Unfortunately, all of the competing
products seem to be even worse! Read the reviews. The entire class of
media extender products is not yet suitable for living room use. The
stability of these products is roughly where Windows PCs were in 1988.
<shudder>

If you already have this product, use it with a USB 2.0 flash memory
device ("thumb drive"). I get my best use out of the EVA700 by
creating "slide show" movies. On my Windows PC, I use Adobe Premiere
Elements software to author a movie that is a slideshow of photos
from my digital camera. I add music (from my CD collection) to these
movies. Finally, I write out the movie as a 1080I resolution MPEG-2
bitstream file. I transfer this file to a thumb drive, and plug the
thumb drive into the EVA700.

So this is something that the EVA700 does well: it allows me to
present my photos in 1080I resolution. There are not many living
room devices that can do this. But this process requires much time
and work. Authoring the slide show movie is labor intensive. Adobe
Premiere Elements takes about 35 minutes to render a 10 minute slide
show movie. Transferring this movie onto my thumb drive takes another
5 to 10 minutes. How much do you love photography?

Other Solutions?
----------------
You want to stream media over a wireless network to your HDTV? Good
luck. Read the product reviews. My best hope now is Apple. They
already have the Apple Mini, which is quiet enough for living room
use and seems to be quite capable. However, it is a general purpose
computer, and so is quite expensive. They are also developing and
"iTV" product, but that is for the future.
--
David Arnstein (00)
arnstein+usenet@pobox.com {{ }}
^^