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Linksys DVD player w/ WiFi and ethernet
An anonymous reader writes "Linksys has announced a progressive scan DVD player with 802.11g and ethernet. Users can stream MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, MP3, WMA, and other formats from their PC to the TV. Sure I can do this cobbling together other tools, but this is a self contained box even newbies can use. Think how many people could install and config a router and an AP, versus the number of people that can plug in one of the self-contained wireless routers? "
I can't wait to find out which kinds of porn my neighbors prefer...
here ya go. my boss has been eyeing one
and epson just came out with a whoopass hdtv. something like 72", built in photo printer, etc. $4k
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Do I get in trouble for watching pornography if the neighbor kid hijacks my wireless?
New meme: War Viewing
You heard it here first kids.
-Dave
Pilot: There's that movie playing on the HUD again.
Co Pilot: It's the *&%#$ Matrix: Revolutions, again.
Pilot: Let's do a barrel roll and see if we can lose that geeks DVD player, buckle up.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Now I can stream Ratchet and Clank from my PS2 through my Happauage BTTV card, grab it with Mplayer, out of my PC 'cross the network to my wireless access point and on to my TV!! Its the missing link I've been waiting for!
I'm well aware that I'm in the minority, but I believe that convergence in the form which the megacorps are currently attempting to foist upon us is a dead horse which they are attempting to flog.
This on the other hand is my idea of the future. A single, well thought-out component of a larger, modular system. Having a PC with a nice screen instead of a telly is one thing. Having all the media files that are on your PC availible across a wireless network through this handy little gizmo is quite another. Where can I get one? When can I get one? This could cut down on just so of the many (frankly worrying) chunks of wire spaghetti that currently run between PC and TC/HiFi.
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
There's a growing segment of the Joe Electronics Consumer population that's currently leapfrogging right over it. Most plasma TVs these days have an RGB input (standard VGA plug).
My 42" Samsung knockoff can do 1024x768, no problems. Even text looks great from the couch. The PC is tucked incospicuously out of the way. Although I have a regular progressive scan Sony DVD Player hooked directly to the TV, the PC of course has a DVD player, in addition to an 802.11g connection, an ATI AIW TV tuner card, and a giant hard drive.
Granted, the price point is a little higher, but the feature set is a LOT higher.
Will this thing do "region-free" with a few menu commands? That's a must for me. "Turn off macrovison" is nice, but less crucual.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
What would be much more useful would be a DVD player that hooks up to your TV, but can DIVX encode video (from DVD or any other video source) and stream over 802.11g to another TV, or to your computer for archiving and storage. That way, your TV gets a perfect picture from your DVD player, and your computer can receive and save streams of lower-quality video for any purpose.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
As far as I can tell, this would save me exactly one S-Video cable, from my livingroom PC to the TV - And I'd just need to replace that with an ethernet cable.
Assuming they sell this at a price comparable to a typical standalone DVD player, it does nothing more than choose one box over another, with the added "bonus" of using quite a bit of your LAN's bandwidth while reducing overall flexibility of content (Can it play flash? My PC can, and dumps it out to the TV. Can it play "Fred's obscure and proprietary video encoding format"? If it exists, my PC can, and dumps it out to the TV.).
I suppose one could argue that this means you wouldn't need a livingroom PC at all - But I strongly suspect that such an argument automatically excludes 99% of the potential market for such a product.
Have I missed any cool features of this which might make it more useful? As I understand it, it does nothing I can't already do.
you could get the new unit from momitsu (the v880n) which does all that, and has DVI output for your HD set (so you can actually appreciate the progressive scan), and supports ogg.
The DP500 is open source based (uCLinux) and works well with Linux hosts (there are several projects supporting it on SourceForge).
We have all seen the reports of the various PC manufacturers trying to get a bigger piece of the home entertainment pie. Dell and Gateway being the most obvious.. Also Microsoft, with their weak XP Media Center, and more interesting X-Box tie-ins.
Now, we've got the dominant producer of Internet infrastructure jumping in with a networked DVD player. Interesting... I wonder if this was one of the major reasons for buying Linksys, and we me see more from them.
This sounds like it was created to stream movies designed for a comptuer screen onto a TV set. Can you imagine trying to play a 640x480 movie on a 60 inch plasma TV? Talk about looking like shit.
NTSC DV is usually 720 x 480: just because Plasmas are big, doesn't mean they're high resolution.
You do know VGA monitors are better than TVs, right?