Netgear Unveils its TV-Torrent Player
Written by Ernesto on January 07, 2009Netgear has just announced its Internet TV Player, a set-top box that allows users to play content from video streaming sites like YouTube, directly on their TV. Perhaps of more interest is the device’s built-in BitTorrent client, which makes it an ideal TV-torrent player as well.
Over recent years, TV-shows have become increasingly popular on BitTorrent. While some watch the shows directly on their computers, quite a few people prefer viewing them on a big screen TV. For the latter group, Netgear’s Internet TV Player might be worth checking out.
The new device can play videos from several large streaming sites, including YouTube, Google Video and Metacafe. However, its true power comes from the built-in BitTorrent client. Millions of people use BitTorrent to download TV-shows every week, so there are a lot of potential customers out there.
‘Whenever’ and ‘wherever’ are two words that are often heard when people explain why they use BitTorrent, and Netgear cleverly acknowledges this with their new player. “It is ideal for those who are geographically displaced from their preferred television content, such as international sporting events and Bollywood productions,” is how Netgear’s marketing promotes it.
If Netgear is indeed hoping for BitTorrent users to embrace the device, most of the potential lies outside the US, where 90% of all the TV-torrent downloads take place. The main reason being that fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their country.
For those who have a large library of video files downloaded already, the Internet TV Player also supports external USB drives. Plug it in, and all your videos will be available on your TV instantly, easy as that. Netgear expects that the Internet TV Player (ITV2000), priced at $200, will be available in stores early Summer 2009.
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66 Responses
Very very nice but priced a bit steep…
@ $200 people who are a bit technical minded can get an old chipped xbox (not 360), install a better harddisk (ummm say 500gigs) and you have a very cool streaming player with 500gigs of hdd space to boot!
And this works like a charm, i've seen tons of pals do this
Guess it will be a better deal when prices drop.
I'm more interested to see how the likes of the MPAA react to this.. are they going to again scream it will be the death of their industry?
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
Like EZEE says, there are other ways of doing this and at $200 it's a bit overpriced.
Why not just save up a bit more buy a netbook? Plug that into your TV and you can do more than just use bittorrent and stream youtube…
If you like that interface, why not install XBMC Media Center?
Then if you get bored, you always have a netbook to play with ^_^
So it's a castrated network media tank for almost the same prize as a real one?
So exciting…
Well it might just be the right way to get less tech-savvy people to get TV-Shows over BitTorrent, widening the audience, and thus making it more attractive for the producers themselfs to pubblish their material on BT? Just hoping :D
If it were somewhat cheaper, then it might be a good way for the people who know less to use BitTorrent more easily.
Agreed, but this is (hopefully) just the first in a series of such appliances, and prices will go down ^^
If it included a router and WiFi then this could be really cool.
Prices may go down, but there is no reason at all for them to be this high in the first place. This is useless when anyone who can follow heavily documented instructions can do this with an xbox, or even some old clunker computer you were kinda hoping would die so you had a reason to throw it out. If you are smart enough to use bittorrent then you can do one of the above. For that price you can double the storage, and have something that isn’t completely crippled in what it can do.
That and 7/8 people I know who have had netgear products have had them die within 6 months of purchase. They just don’t last. 3 of them were DOA as well and had to be replaced.
Maybe its just my circle of friends but netgear has been complete shit for us.
What happened:
Roze came along. I hope that's self-explanatory for your sake because if it's not you'll have to find out. And trust me, your in for a world of fun :P
Where everybody is:
Most people left and went to "the other blog" … where Roze doesn't post. Around the time Roze started posting comments. The one's left over are at your Mothers's house – and yes, that does mean what you think it does.
popcorn hour is the best for streaming and playing media files and is priced about the same.
If replication of material were possible (which, of course, it is not), then it would undoubtedly be a good thing.
We have spoken with some of these companies about obtaining review models, but none have, as yet, gotten back to us.
Also, we commented on the Myka last year – http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-on-tv-080321/
No, that is not explanatory at all. I am only a single person after all.
We changed the comment system from the standard Wordpress system, to this IntenseDebate system. It's removed a lot of the less worthwhile comments, and those by trolls. The management tools are a lot better with this system, to deal with the worthless or abusive comments we've had earlier. Oh, and the threading means that people won't be posting a reply a page later, which others won't see, and post their own reply to etc.
That was intended to be "tongue-in-cheek" mate ;)
I'm starting to like IntenseDebate more and more, it really works great ^^
yeah man an old computer can do just as good of a job with s-video. anything good enough to run VLC which doesnt take much. you can get a computer capable of doing it free or close to it.
I currently have a media computer hooked up to a 42' hdtv with HDMI cable 1080p. I download alot of tv shows and hd stuff.
XMBC FTW!!!!!!11!
….to be serious though….XBOX Media Centre is great. It has YouTube support and loads of nifty scripts you can add. For the XBOX and all the preperation to install the OS it cost me $50US. One of the scripts on xmbc-scripts.com is even a torrent back end (so you can control d/ls from your lounge. Though if you want a SMB transfer you need to leave the computer on otherwise FTP the media to XBMC's 4GB HDD. You can even buy a remote for it. It can do stuff this Netgear/Popcorn'/Myka rubbish can't do like stream photos and music. Much cheaper than a netbook eh?
http://www.productwiki.com/microsoft-xbox/article...
http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-torrrent-controller...
I WANNA SUCKLE MY OWN BUTT, BUT I CANT REACH SO I LICK MY MOMS ASSHOLE INSTEAD. AND PIRACY IS UBER GAY
WD HD Media Player
There's already products (eg. Popcorn Hour, WDTV) that seem superior – based on the little infomation available for this device.
It's not the first you twat – there's already multiple solutions that have been out for a long period that have the same functionality. Really, you might wanna do a little basic research before posting….
Some hardware players supporting Bittorrent:
Popcorn Hour A100
MYKA
HDX 900 NMT Media Player
iSTAR Mini NMT Player
DVICO TVIX HD M-7000A
MZK-NAS01SG
Dune HD Ultra
And really I doubt these are a "good" way to introduce more people to Bittorrent: if you can't work out how to setup Utorrent then I doubt these will be any easier.
Doesn't support Bittorrent but a great little device that plays anything you throw at it – up to 1080p.
"For those who have a large library of video files downloaded already, the Internet TV Player also supports external USB drives. Plug it in, and all your videos will be available on your TV instantly, easy as that."
Really TF? I couldn't find any infomation at the official site regarding codecs or a summary of the basic capabilites. So unless I missed something that may well not be the case and you should edit the article.
Also how about writing about products that exist now such as:
Popcorn Hour A100
MYKA
HDX 900 NMT Media Player
iSTAR Mini NMT Player
DVICO TVIX HD M-7000A
MZK-NAS01SG
Dune HD Ultra
…seeing as these are retailing right now.
fail
wait
EPIC FAIL
and piracy is what? Must be a good thing to sue innocent disabled hospitalized people on the world and reality you exist on you FRAKING FAGGIT MAN. Only people that dont p2p are really gay
what codecs are compatible?
then why are you here? eat a dick.
so plug in an external harddrive like 500gb and transfer it between your pc and this, and you are done.
would be nice if it had wifi, and just tie it into your pc though…
What no hard-drive? Screw it then. This thing at least has to have a USB port to attach an external drive or it’s practically useless for more than single TV show episodes that barely fit into whatever memory that thing has. If you don’t need HD mod an old Xbox. XBMC has evolved into a full blown media center in the last years. Other than that I’m still waiting for an open source, linux driven, hard disk enabled, TV Torrent client running, silent and affordable set-top box with built-in wireless.
But also looking for a girl that doesn’t complain and is a good cocksucker. Which one’ll be first :P
I had an old home server which i just dumped in the tip, it would of had been perfect for streaming media, It was slow at AMD 1.1Ghz 256MB Ram, However it did overnight torrents a dream with only 1 Fan it kept the noise to a minimum.
http://burn-blue.com
You don't even need a modchip.
http://www.xboxscene.com/xbox-tutorials.php?p=151...
here: http://tinyurl.com/6wppf9
tversity !! + xbox / xbox 360 / ps3 / anything you have add a little utorrent and rss never look back at it again( except to watch of course)
lets face it, if it weren't for piracy, everyone would probably be paying $40 for a DVD….LONG LIVE THEPIRATEBAY
Hey r3dsk1n,
Thanks for that awesome link, been out of it so long i had no idea the old xbox could be softmodded, i guess when you have a chipped box most people dont read up on softmodding.
I went for the solder-less option of the xenium ice myself, but with a softmod the fear of soldering too has been neutralized!
well, better late then never, am gonna give that a try for sure… on a pals box ;)
Thanks again!
Cheers!
good question and i couldn't find any info regarding this on the netgear site.
IMO your far better off buying a Popcorn Hour A100 or a MYKA as they will play any codec you can throw at it and they are similar priced. But do your own research of course
You mean if it was free? Shame you cant download hardware huh you freetard.
(off topic) where is everybody?? TF used to (.. let's say a year ago) have pages and pages of comments on every article before I even got to reading them.. and now there's like 45… 56… etc.. so, anyone know what happened and where everybody is?
is this flash or something? because i can no longer see comments or make comments from my phone, quite disappointing really
These types of devices seem designed for less tech-savvy people, but those are exactly the sort of people who won’t understand why they can’t just watch BitTorrent movies and shows. Sure, they can in theory, but what happens when what they want to watch only has 1 seed and 2 peers? It’ll take several days to download. Or what if the file is packed with Rar? What if the torrent points to a private tracker?
Of course, for the stuff that it does work on, they’ll probably end up getting in trouble with their ISP when they see that they can watch movies that are still in the theater. Clueless users will think that because the device is legal, all the movies they can access through it must be legal as well.
As for NetGear’s reliability; I’ve had one of their older NICs in my system for the past few years and it’s still working fine.
@Ernesto:
Where did you get the info that it has a built in bittorrent client? I can't seem to find any reference on the product page.
This box is the same as the VuNow Vn1000HD which I reviewed two days ago at http://techvideoblog.com/reviews/vunow-vn1000hd-h...
It actually starts at $99 at http://vunow.com
It supports WiFi with a WiFi dongle. It hopefully will support 720p Youtube HD and mkv files but not currently with the latest firmware. But they are totally working on improving the firmware.
This box is much better then a HTPC cause it's much cheaper. Starts at $99 for the SD S-video version. No Intel or Microsoft powered computer required in your home. And yup it supports BitTorrent and automatic BitTorrent RSS downloads.
It does support WiFi using any cheap USB WiFi dongle.
It supports all codecs, includin H264, Mpeg4, DivX, Mpeg2, up to 720p, though they are still working on the firmware.
Do any of these boxes cost $99 and stream Youtube, Dailymotion, vsocial, webtv and other sources directly from the Internet without needing of a computer in your home? Cause that is what you can do with this box.
Does popcorn hour connect to the internet with Ethernet or WiFi to download or stream videos directly from sources such as Youtube and others in up to HD quality?
This box starts at $99 for the SD s-video version. Are you comparin that with an X86 based HTPC?
Geez people, stop bagging netgears technology. Obviously all people here are aware of torrents and downloading tv shows. What they are doing is reaching out to a new audience and thus increasing popularity and in long term, legality, of what we already do. As of now, downloading tv shows, movies, whatever – is not legal, with small steps like netgear has done here shows hope for the future of internet downloading and torrents, most of all, it puts the end (which is nearer than you think) further away.
Lpm?
It requires javascript. It is completely javascript-dependent.
You posted this same comment in the next article as well. Besides the fact that it is not relevant to the article, it is more indicative of the fact that it is not worth it to support the MAFIAA. Going against the MAFIAA and downloading and uploading is very well worth it.
Well, not really, browsers that support the noscript-tag will simply show the old wordpress-style comments, ID syncs them to your WP instance.
sux to be u loser. ahaha. suck it troll.
Exactly my point ^^
off topic here, TF, why do u have an advert for utorrent which is one where u have to pay for it?? i thought u were here to alert us to scams not promote them.
I wait for the day when hardware manufacturers say:
"we wont be producing new specfically designed hardware as;
1) Other manufacturers already make a similar product
2) With some knowledge and modification existing products can be made to do the same"
The reason why this may be more newsworthy than other products on the market is that Netgear is a mainstream hardware company which many people will be aware of, the other companies are either completely unknown to the man on the street or only regionally known. Netgear is an internationally known brand.
Please post here which other hardware company is making a similar product.
A product that downloads and streams all media formats from the Internet, including Youtube HD, BitTorrent downloads on USB storage and live webtv stations and then outputs this on a HDTV with HDMI or to an SDTV using S-video. And at between $99 and $199 retail.
i liked tversity…i used the flash version though so i could use the internet browser on wii…but the cache filled up before the end of a movie :(
I got 2 DMCA within the same week last year, I am NEVER downloading illegal again, it is just not worth it, I was even using Peerguardian when it happened.
1st, was that really needed? 2nd is that it IS a bit high price for a limited piece of hardware. I could (and have) set up a suitable media box with wireless and all the functionality for less than $50 using old second hand hardware, but more to the point is that there are plenty who couldn't simply because they're afraid to open up a computer's case. These are the people that this type of product targets, and certainly a noble (likely profitable as well) endeavor for them. It's just a bit pricey for what it is.
Brian, stick to downloading from sites like Rapidshare and from Usenet newsgroups and you’ll never receive any DMCA notices no matter what you download.
I was being sarcastic towards other people complaining that there are already similar products on the market and this is nothing new or interesting. I think it's a great development by NetGear personally, if it works well.
Yes it does (for all of those). It is prety much the holy grail of media players ATM. There are ppl working on getting USB TV recieves working with it, and once that works it's a PVR as well
yes, these are superior machines.
can checkout more of such players at hdtvplayer.info
some other players are: suno, egreat, elektron etc.
* Vote up
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* Charbax
It does support WiFi using any cheap USB WiFi dongle.
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