Networking – Page 2 – LIVEdigitally

Netgear knocks it out of the park at CES

Posted on January 7, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Opening disclosure: I am working on a consulting project with Netgear, but that work is unrelated to my blogging about them. I was invited to their press conference and chose to attend and got to see three new products that I was previously unaware of. This blog post is because I am genuinely amazed with a product of theirs.

Now, onto the story. Netgear had a press conference this morning and unveiled three new products which I will list and describe in ascending order of excitement and interestingness. Before the demos, Debbie Williams (Netgear’s Chief Marketing Officer) gave a brief “state of the union” for the company. Basically: 10 years old, market cap of $883M, products sold in >16K retailers, and they introduced 50 new products in 2006 (methinks about 42 of them were routers, but I guess it counts anyway, right?). She then went on to discuss how 2006 was the year of building the home network for the digital lifestyle (love that term, but I think I may have heard it before), and 2007 is the year of delivering the experience. She then introduced Vivek Pathela, Netgear’s VP of Product Marketing to do the demos (again, listed here in my order, not theirs):

Storage Central Turbo. This updates 2005’s Storage Central device by adding the capacity to expand to multiple terabytes of data as well as gigabit Ethernet. If you aren’t paying attention to the bits and bytes, it means it can store and stream HD movies around your house. This is a fairly evolutionary/logical enhancement to the product line. The MSRP is $249 (with no included hard drives, which makes sense since it’s so much cheaper for you to buy your own anyway) and the product should ship “early” this year. More pics:
Dual-Mode Cordless Phone with Skype. Now we’re seeing some interesting convergence happen. Quite a few companies introduced Skype or VoIP phones in 2006, some worked well, some didn’t. Netgear seems to have added a clever twist by incorporating a standard telephone in the same handset (aka Plain Old Telephone Service, or POTS). This is a very smart combination, as it lets a consumer have just a single home phone that can work with both Skype and POTS systems. Also, you can get multiple handsets all working with the same base station (although an audience member asked a great question: can more than one handset make a simultaneous POTS call? which stumped the Netgear team – I sure hope it’s a yes). The demo went great as Vivek called Patrick Lo, Netgear’s CEO, and had a quick live call with near-excellent audio quality. MSRP $199, available now (on Amazon)!
EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD. Oh my is this one interesting. It’s a, well, “box” that hooks up to your TV and your home network connection. It then streams your music, photos, and videos from any PC or networked storage device (NAS) to your TV. It also streams from YouTube (they demoed a classic Diet Coke/Mentos video, which about 90% of the audience reacted as if they’d never seen it before – wow). It also works in high definition (up to 1080p resolution), including full upscaling/downscaling of video. It supports almost every video codec, including MPEG-4 HD, WMV HD, DivX, MPEG-2, H.264, etc etc. It also streams iTunes (including protected content if from a Windows PC, sorry Mac folks). It also has USB to locally connect a flash drive or an iPod. It also supports multiple units so you can start a video in one room, then finish it in another. It also has full PVR (TiVo-like) capabilities. And from the demo, it looks like it works very well! As a guy who has spent about 8 years designing award-winning devices just like these, I am quite impressed. Quite! MSRP $349, available early 2007.

I’ve seen a bit of other coverage already of the conference. MacUser compares it against iTV and calls the UI “uninspired” which is a fair point, but I think making comparisons against a product that’s not really been “announced” yet isn’t quite appropriate. Also, I disagree that Apple will beat the $349 price point, as I think they’d rather rip into their loyal customer base who are more willing to overpay for the Apple brand. More coverage from Ed Kohler, Eric Savitz at Barron’s, Gadgetell, and SciFi.com, but for very extensive details, here’s the Engadget transcript. I also bumped into Dave Zatz (with Sakshi Goel of Netgear), Netgear’s resident CES blogger.

So there’s my front-runner for most interesting new product of CES: the Netgear Digital Entertainer HD. We’ll see how the rest of the show pans out! More Netgear conference pics below and the whole CES collection is here.

Want to go to CES for FREE?

Posted on November 29, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

All you’ve got to do is blog.

Yes, that’s right. Netgear is having a “guest blogger” contest in which one lucky winner will get a nice little package consisting of…

Free flight to (and from) Vegas
Free hotel room
$2000 in spending cash

Not to shabby, eh? Not only that, you get to (or have to, depending on how you look at it) be Netgear’s “resident blogger” for the show. Considering how much fun CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) is every year (and it is), this is a great opportunity! Click here for the official rules,

For more on CES, here’s the official site.

Ready to go? Enter the contest here. The contest ends December 15th (winners to be announced on the 20th).

Sonos 2.0 – the best gets better!

Posted on September 15, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

I first heard about Sonos pretty soon after it launched. In fact, I found myself at CES 2005 “face to face” with them over and over again, competing for various new product awards (I think we split evenly, but I’m not positive on that one). Saw them again at an Engadget meetup, and then sooner or later ended up getting a ZonePlayer 100 Bundle. I added a ZP80 to the mix when it debuted, and was pretty happy with my home music configuration.

I always had a few little gripes about the Sonos features, and, as one might expect, never hesitated to voice them to the company. My two biggest ‘wants’? Alarms and better Rhapsody integration. Well guess what, looks like I wasn’t the only one with the idea, as the newly launched Sonos 2.0 features now includes both (and more)!

First, my setup. I have 2 ZP100‘s (the original ZonePlayer unit with a built-in amplifier), 1 ZP80 (the newer unit, with no amp), and a controller (the remote control). One ZP100 is in the back bedroom (I use it to listen to music in my backyard), another in the kitchen, and the ZP80 is in the living room (didn’t need the amp there). All my music (about 80GB of ripped CDs in WMA format) is stored on a Maxtor 500GB Shared Storage Plus.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Sonos interface, it’s braindead simple to use. The screen shows a list of options, you have a little wheel (similar to iPod), and a few buttons with fixed and programmable controls give you access to all the features in the system. Actually, rereading that it still doesn’t sound as simple to use as it really is. It’s EASY. When friends come over, I generally hand them the controller and say “play something” – nobody’s gotten in wrong so far!

When I picked up my controller, I was informed there was an update available. The Sonos system automatically downloads and installs the update on its own, and worked flawlessly for me. In fact, I didn’t even have to touch my PC to do anything! Next time I went to the main menu, a “Clock and Alarms” item was listed there.

Setting the clock was simple, and it’s capable of synching with Internet time – again, virtually no technical configuration needed to get this working. I would like to see the Sonos interface include the clock throughout the graphical user interface (GUI), as its presently only visible when you push a button to show you the clock. I think they can easily add it to the ‘status bar’ at the top of the screen.

Along with the clock comes two other important features. One is sleep, which lets me have the music automatically shut off after a certain period of time. This is good, but what meant even more to me was the new alarms feature.

With alarms, I can have music wake me up. This is nice. But what is outstanding is the amazing flexibility of the alarms. I can…

set multiple alarms, all with completely different parameters
assign radio stations, chimes, or playlists to each alarm
set virtually any type of recurrence to an alarm
have each alarm go off at different volume levels
link zones (or not) to each alarm

Most importantly, I can snooze. Because no alarm system is even worth trying if you can’t snooze your way through the first hour of the morning.

I’d like to make two very minor suggestions in the alarm feature. First, I think an icon should appear (also in the status area) reflecting that an alarm is set. Second, as an advanced option, having a fade-in for each alarm would be a lovely touch. As a troubled sleeper, one thing I’ve learned is the ‘best’ wakeup for people is a slowly brightening room and slow increase in volume of background noise. It’s supposed to be a bit more therapeutic than a sudden entry of sound. Which is why, I think, we all need coffee in the mornings.

While Sonos and Rhapsody have always worked together, in the past it was solely through Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology, which was a bit of a rudimentary integration. You were able to access your own Rhapsody music library, but only when your PC was online with the Rhapsody software client running. Now, Rhapsody can stream direct from the source to your Sonos zones. I’m a huge Rhapsody fan (although Pandora is definitely a new impressive contender), so this is an extra win in my book.

With Sonos 2.0, I have complete access to all the Rhapsody services and features. Not only my playlists and music library, but all the ‘live’ aspects too, such as:

Top Charts (albums, artists, and tracks)
Genre and Artist samplers and Key Albums
Staff Picks
Rhapsody Radio

This is one of those cases where the whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts. Sonos 2.0 plus Rhapsody is an amazing combination for music lovers.

If you haven’t heard of Sonos before, there are already some great reviews out there, and I agree that it’s about the best system out there for streaming music around the home. That said, it’s going to set you back at least $1000 to get started ($1200 for the amplified bundle), so this isn’t the solution for the price-sensitive. If you have the money, there’s nothing out there that’s even close. And now with version 2.0, the best around just got even ~~more bestest~~ better.

Download an entire DVD to your phone in 10 seconds!?

Posted on June 19, 2006 by Guest Contributor

Yea, you read the headline correctly. NTT DoCoMo recently announced a new prototype wireless network with bandwidth capabilities approaching 2.5Gbps (yes, that’s GIGabits per second).

According to Technology Review where I found this article (it’s pretty techy, btw), that’s fast enough to download a DVD in less than 10 seconds! The technology is far from ready to go so it’s not like you’ll be watching a streaming version of Aeon Flux on your Razr anytime soon. Besides, the receiver they used to demonstrate the new network had 6 antennas – not real attractive in my opinion.

See an artist’s conception below:

Razr 6

(Okay, I also moonlighted as the artist on this one – this is what about 20 seconds in Photoshop gets me.)

An hour in Akihabara

Posted on June 10, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Akihabara is Tokyo’s “electronics town”. Prior to about 2001 or so it was about the coolest place in the world to go look at gadgets, as it was often the only place to find really interesting stuff. With today’s globalization, it’s definitely lost some of its allure, but is still a must-see spot in Tokyo. Heck, even my wife got a kick out of it! Here’s a fun assortment of photos I took in my extremely rapid stop at Akihabara last week…

In-store demos actually show the insides of these machines and how they work. Of course you can only wash one sock at a time.

Here I am at the Akihabara subway station

Remember Taito? Anyone? Cool 80s video games… Well, they seem to be alive and well in Akihabara!

More English here than anywhere I saw in Japan!

How can Sega even afford the lease anymore?
(also if you look in the background of the picture you’ll see a reflection of Ishimaru – I like the effect here)

Ishimaru is a “middle tier” store in Akihabara

These Panasonic headphones have replaceable ear buds and retractable cables – nice.

Despite the popularity of the iPod, Akihabara stores are full of tiny shiny mp3 players to choose from. After which, everyone inevitably picks the iPod…

One of the better in-store demos I’ve seen, both displays had the same DVD playing, with the obvious quality difference of the HD player. And with titles like “The Brothers Grimm” I’m sure people were rushing out to buy the players!

AirEdge is a company offering various 3G connectivity options

When the Japanese do mobile TV, they do it widescreen – check out these Aquos branded phones from Vodafone

I don’t think it’s perfectly clear from this picture, but this thing is bigger than the PPC6700. From AirEdge/Willcom, this is one big honking Windows Mobile PPC phone!

When the Japanese do mobile TV, they do it widescreen – check out these Aquos branded phones from Vodafone

Laox is the 2nd biggest store in Akihabara, behind Yodabashi. It has a bit of a K-Mart feel, but is a good stop.

I know it was big in Europe (it is huge in Belgium), and maybe Japan too, but at the end of the day, MD was lame, and good riddance. But, Laox still has a shelf full of the things…

While not commonly known, it’s actually illegal in Japan to run a store with no Hello Kitty products. This doll/gadget has built-in speakers (in the feet) and … uh.. hmm..

This portable media player is nicely sized, and plays all the ‘popular’ video formats, like xvid.

Oh, so shiny!

I think this one is pretty cool. Not sure if I’d pay $700ish for it, but it’s a cool idea.

Inside Laox Bose has their own store where they show their tiny speakers that sound awful or their really really big headphones that sound good but weigh 14 pounds

Panasonic brings you full 1080p vacuuming with their new HD unit

Love the concept, love the sign.

I really like the idea of video games that have exercise themes (note: I like the idea, but I don’t want one), Xavix has a full working in-store demo

Get your bronco workout in the convenience of your home… ?

I think this is where Tom and Katie picked theirs up

Shows you which floor on Laox to find your rodeo machine

Right across from Laox is a store with all sorts of wires and cables, they’ll even make your own custom cable there!

Another view of the buildings in Akihabara

A recent addition to Akihabara is this giant-sized Yodabashi store

Aww, so cuuuute

Someone’s still trying to push keyboards in the living room… ugh.

Seems similar to the new EVDO units we have in the US

I guess a lot of people are buying these things here…

If you haven’t found a way to thoroughly embarrass and spoil your pet yet, well, here’s the answer. Print your own design then clothe your lap-dog with this kit!

Yep, all mice.

I hadn’t heard of marimekko before, but I thought these were a little distinctive…

My wife thought this Disney-themed mouse was the ‘pick of the litter’ (so-to-speak)

Fans, lights, vacuums, cup warmers – if you have USB, you can do just about anything now!

Yodabashi sells generic power supplies for virtually any laptop

Lots of routers and ADSL modems on display in Yodabashi

Yep, we’ve seen em before, but the display was nice. I especially like the touch of putting them under glass

This kids camera allows you to take pictures and instantly print them on customized little papers, some with different designs too.

Need a telescope? Binocular? Yodabashi’s got it!

Last I checked the local Best Buy has about 3 different varieties… Yodabashi has… more.

I like Canon cameras. That’s it.

8-in-1? got it. 11-in-1? got it. 13-in-1? got it.

Just follow the simple chart and display

Not sure why, but I’ve enjoyed taking escalator pictures recently.

This is the best way to train your children how to use a remote control, a skill they will need much later in life.

They sure do look nice

When you get to Yodabashi, just go to the 7th floor and take the escalators down from there.

In a rare sunny moment, here I am outside of Yodabashi

Small cubes and other tiny non-competition for Apple

Sigh, couldn’t Walt have inspired more in his team?

Never heard of it, but it’s iPod-white, so it must be good.

See, it’s red! Sharp’s iPod non-knockoff

I like the form factor AND the blue, but I’m sure Panasonic has otherwise messed up this small mp3 player

Yodabashi has about 400 different MP3 players to try out. And then you go buy an iPod (you know, to stand out from everyone else)

For all those times you’ve dropped your TV in the bathtub, fret no longer, thanks to this portable Casio unit

Yodabashi has all your stereo and home theater needs

Yes, that’s right, it says Rodeo Boy. How do you get to the Alamo? Practice, practice, practice.

The Japanese sure love their toilet seats. At $900, this Passo unit even has a built-in iPod dock! (just kidding, but it IS $900!)

Yes, the title is accurate, these are demos of high-tech toilet seats in Yodabashi. I wonder if anyone else has used “toilet seat” as a Flickr tag before?

Perfect fun for all the kids. My favorite part is the screen shot of the ‘fun’ game (red circle added for effect)

This is somewhat neat, this little kit has your favorite Peanuts characters playing along with your music. Not sure what you need it for, but, hey, there’s Linus!

Another kit to play along with your music, just in case you are bored of a peaceful looking mantle.

In the Tokyo metro system, just 15 minutes away from Akihabara!

Belkin Pre-N Router and Wireless Notebook Network Card

Posted on January 2, 2006 by Jonas Review Editor

Introduction

Wireless networking is an extremely popular and efficient way of distributing a broadband internet connection throughout a household. When setting up a network required pulling Ethernet cable through walls, very few households drilled holes to build their network, and typically had only one computer hooked into the ‘net. Many of us had their computer in the basement, close to the broadband connection. Tangles of wires are clearly not things of beauty. With the introduction of wireless home networking, a far more elegant and tidier method of setting up a network gained popularity. Now, we could put our drills away, and connect a whole house of computers and peripherals with no wires!

The original wireless 802.11b standard got replaced by the faster wireless 802.11g standard. Both operate on the 2.4 GHz frequency. (The less common 802.11a wireless standard operates on the less congested 5.8 GHz frequency). Crowding 2.4 GHz frequency are microwaves, the most popular cordless phones, and the wireless 802.11b and 802.11g standards. This portion of the spectrum is especially packed in urban areas. In other words, your neighbor’s “gigarange” phone and wireless network, as well as the WiFi hotspot at the Starbuck’s on the corner all are competing for a narrow piece of the electromagnetic radio spectrum. It’s a real marvel that any of these devices can function with all of this interference.

Furthermore, when wireless networking was envisioned, no one planned on using it for streaming audio and video, across multiple computers as well as other platforms. In short, it was faster than the broadband internet connections, and that was more than fast enough. Today’s networking requirements are outstripping the available bandwidth of current wireless networks. With wireless chips in every notebook sold, many handhelds, and now bandwidth hungry media streaming devices, the wireless network that started out as a convenience, is transitioning to a key component of any household computer as well as electronics setup.

Not to worry though. The crafty engineers over at the IEEE are hard at work. These are the same folks that helped bring us such standards as parallel ports, Firewire, and the previous wireless networks. The plan is for faster, longer ranging, and more stable wireless connections in the 802.11n standard. While this all sounds great, the detail is that the standard is not planned to be ratified until 2007. Manufacturers just can’t wait to build (and sell) better networking products, so the current vogue is to label the current crop as “pre-n” which is not really part of any IEEE standard. No matter though, the bottom line is that if it works, who cares what we call it!
Continue reading →

New Hi Gain Antenna

Posted on December 16, 2005 by Jonas Review Editor

The HWU8DD is designed to connect your desktop computer or laptop easily to any Wireless-B or Wireless-G network via a USB connection. Hawking’s award winning Hi-GainTM Antenna technology extends wireless connection distances by up to 300%. The HWU8DD is equipped with a new 8dBi Directional Dish antenna that provides more distance and better speeds than other wireless adapters on the market. The Hi-Gain Wireless-G Dish Adapter is the only wireless adapter to integrate the distance benefits of wireless Dish Technology with WiFi networking. The built-in LED signal strength indicators provide network signal information to pinpoint the strongest signal available within your area.

Read the original press release.

Network Magic: Reviewed

Posted on December 7, 2005 by feeling entropy

People have multiple computers in their homes these days. In my San Francisco apartment, there are currently 6 computers. I can vouch for three of them, that’s 50% of my home network. A computer, by itself, is merely a computer. Multiple computers in the same establishment can combine forces and create a network, like the lions of Voltron.

Thing is, once you’ve physically connected your network, how do you get the network to net-work? I have always had issues with Windows and the My Network feature. Pure Networks saw this problem, and created a simple solution. Network Magic, the software solution that claims to eliminate the hair pulling step in setting up a small network, has been put to the test by LIVEdigitally.

Network Magic can be downloaded and installed, Continue reading →

ZyXEL AG225H review

Posted on November 9, 2005 by Jonas Review Editor

ZyXEL AG225H: Pocket Wardriving

Introduction

Wireless networks are everywhere, but the first challenge is to find them. I recommended a WiFi detector in our “Essential Notebook Accessory Guide” last month. It’s great to be able to detect a network with a pocket device, before unpacking a whole notebook bag of stuff, and “making camp,” to only find out that the signal is stronger 100 feet away.

While ZyXEL may not be a household name in networking, they do make a full variety of networking equipment. Spending some time on their website led me to the conclusion that there products are “industrial grade.” Just like at Sears they sell the wrench in both the Sears homeowner version, and the Master Craftsman edition, the ZyXEL devices are definitely “professional grade.”

Wardriving is the practice of going around and finding open wireless networks. Folks often use a notebook, with an antenna on the roof of their car to meticulously map out the network. This ZyXEL device promises to have this capability in the size of a Swiss Army knife. While there are several WiFi detectors out there, this device has the most ambitious feature set out there currently. Let’s look at what this new ZyXEL unit is capable of. Continue reading →

Sony LocationFree TV review

Posted on October 17, 2004 by Jeremy Toeman

One of the “hot new things” of this and next year is the ability to watch TV from locations other than the home. A variety of companies are launching new products, services, and even Web sites, all designed to enable you to view TV shows from wherever you are, whenever you want it. Even Sony believes this market is hot enough to launch a new category of devices, called LocationFree TVs. Over the past week, I’ve had the chance to use Sony’s new LocationFree TV (the LF-X1 model, with the 12.1″ screen) to watch TV wirelessly in and out of my home, with mixed results.

For those of you unfamiliar with the device, it comes in two parts: the LCD screen and a base station. The first is a flat-panel LCD screen, about the size of a typical laptop, designed to enable wireless TV access from any wireless network or wifi hotspot. The base station is connected to your home network as well as your AV device(s) and/or cable feed. I connected the base station to my home wireless network and my DirecTV-TiVo combination unit.

In my opinion, the easiest part of setup was the physical connections. The box and connectors were clearly labeled “AV input” and “network”, and used all standard cables. The base station allows you to connect two different devices, such as a satellite receiver and a DVD player, but I chose to just use my DirecTV-TiVo unit. My first moment of disappointment in the experience was when I realized that the unit did not come with any cables (other than power and the infrared emitter). For fifteen hundred dollars, you’d think Sony could include some simple cables. Thankfully, being the kind of guy I am, I went to my storage closet to pull out everything I’d need.

I connected the output of my TiVo to the AV1 input on the base station, and then connected the AV output from the base station to my AV receiver. The only other connection to the TiVo unit was the IR blaster, which is used to send outgoing infrared (remote control) signals to the TiVo. Setting up the network is likely the big stumbling block for most people. Even though the device offers wireless TV in the home, if you want to watch your LocationFree TV from out of the house, you must be hard-wired into the unit from your home network. Luckily I have Ethernet access near my stereo setup, otherwise I’d have hit a bit of a snag.

Next, I powered everything up, and turned on the LCD screen. In typical consumer electronics style, I was shown a menu with seven main options (TV/Video, Web, E-mail, Album, Basic, Monitor, Base Station), plus a “back” and “exit” button. At this point, I really think Sony would benefit from a “setup wizard” to guide the user through the setup process. I clicked on “TV/Video” to start, where I had three new choices: Channel Settings, Remote Settings, Picture/Sound. Hmmm. As a person who is very familiar with these devices and technologies, I knew to continue to setup the Remote, but I have a feeling that a lot of users would already be quite frustrated by this point.

Within the Remote Settings option I was able to configure the IR blaster, using a fairly intuitive screen, and when I was done I encountered another major usability flaw in the Sony user interface (or GUI). At the end of the setup, rather than have a satisfying “OK” button in the middle of the screen, I had to hunt around to find a small “back” button hidden in the bottom left corner. In fact, at no point anywhere in the settings menus does the device ever inform you that everything is set up, or you are done. You must click “exit” from the settings menu to start watching TV, even the first time you use the device.

Here are a couple of screenshots of some of the setup screens (click on the image for a full-screen view):

The bottom line: If you are not comfortable hooking up a VCR or a DVD player, you will have trouble with the base station. The LCD setup screens will probably leave you fairly frustrated, but with enough trial and error (and consulting the manual), you’ll probably figure it out eventually. Overall, I felt it was an unnecessarily complex setup process.

The in-home experience of the LocationFree TV was, for the most part, quite enjoyable. The video signal quality was better than good enough to enjoy (screenshots are below), and the device performed as I was hoping it would. I had a few issues with range in-home, as there were times when the screen would go blank and it would display an error that I was out of range of the base station. Unfortunately, this happened sometimes when I was as close as 5 feet away, so I believe other factors (possibly the microwave, cordless phone, or something else?) that disrupted the signal, although these occurrences were not too frequent. The process of fine-tuning some of the AV and networking settings were very unpleasant, but you are able to configure the device to use specified frequencies or channels if you have the know-how.

The battery life of the unit was around 90 minutes, which was quite disappointing, because it meant I had to carry the power adapter from room to room. Aside from that, both my wife and I found ourselves using the LocationFree TV throughout our apartment. One big perk for me involved using the unit during a bright day when I wasn’t really able to watch my projector.

The device has several pre-designed control layouts for interacting with external devices, such as my DirecTV-TiVo. The “DVR” menu has controls to replicate most of the buttons on the remote. When you tap on the LCD screen, a control pane appears to the right of the TV viewing area. Tapping on any control sends the IR signal from the base station to the external device, which then reacts as if you had pressed the remote control. While most of the controls I needed to use my TiVo were present, the ones I found myself needing the most was the page up/down buttons for browsing lists of shows. The most conspicuous missing buttons were the lack of channel numbers, a very bizarre element to leave out. It made manual channel changing impossible, and since I don’t often like to browse the 200+ channels I receive, I really only used the device to watch pre-recorded shows.

Controlling the TiVo was a bit tricky, since there was a 5 second latency between pushing a button and seeing the result. I typically overshot most fast-forwarding by about 45 seconds and had to hit the “replay” button many times to get to the right spot. Frustrating, but I can’t see much of a way around this issue.

The single worst experience about the GUI for TV viewing was figuring out how to get rid of the controls pane once it appears. First I tried tapping in the TV area, since that’s how it appeared in the first place. No luck. Next, I tried all sorts of other areas in the top region of the screen, which were all apparently dead spots. After a long while, I realized the “X” in the upper right corner of the pane, which “closed” the controls window.

This to me represents the consistent flaw in product design for “converged” devices – PC GUI metaphors (such as “back” or closing windows) need to be constantly reevaluated before used in different environments, especially touch-screen or 10-foot-GUI situations.

Screenshots of watching TV and the controls pane (click on the image for a full-screen view):

The bottom line: Better than expected picture quality throughout the home, but short battery life and intermittent connectivity issues put a big damper on the value. Again, user interfaces need a lot of clean-up to make the experience satisfactory.

A big part of the product’s appeal is the ability to use the LCD screen from any wireless LAN or wifi hotspot and watch (and control) your TV. As much as the in-home quality exceeded my expectations, the out-of-home quality was so bad, I can only use one word to describe it: unwatchable.

First, the process of configuring Internet (WAN) access to the device was definitely not something for the average consumer. If you have never before set up port forwarding, dynamic DNS, or static IP addresses, you will not, under any circumstances, be able to get this thing running. That said, if you are familiar with such terms, aside from the incredibly clumsy and frustrating UI, the setup process was fairly straightforward. Also, selecting and connecting to a wireless network from the LCD unit was pretty simple.

Once setup, however, figuring out how to watch over the Internet was a bit confusing. From the TV GUI, you have to start by clicking a “NetAV” button at the bottom of the screen. After that, the screen displays “connecting”, “authenticating”, then “buffering” alerts, until the TV streaming begins. The first time I tried, this took about 45 seconds, and then a partial screen image appeared, followed by a bit of audio, then just a still image. About 30 seconds later, I got another frame or two of the picture, with a smattering of audio, then nothing again.

I proceeded to click the “rate” button, which displayed a dialog giving options from 1 to 5, and a poorly worded warning that switching to/from “level 1” requires a reconnect. Not sure what this meant, I tried level 3. A few seconds later I was treated to a few more video frames, and the audio signal became nearly stable. I dropped the quality to level 2, which wasn’t much better. Expecting the worst, I switched to level 1. The unit disconnected, reconnected, re-authenticated, and re-buffered, and then displayed the TV equivalent of Atari 2600 video quality.

Screenshots of “level 1” video (click on the image for a full-screen view):

Level 2:

Level 3:

Level 5:

Some WAN setup screens:

The bottom line: It just doesn’t work. I ended up trying multiple wifi hot-spots or wireless networks, and could never find a single viable connection, despite having 384Kbps upstream from my DSL line (which is better than the average DSL installation provides). I cannot, at all, recommend using the LocationFree TV outside the home.

In addition to being a TV, the LCD screen also offers Web browsing, email, photo album, and, of course, painting, capabilities. I’m not quite sure what the paint feature is for, other than for people who are so bored with TV and the Internet that they feel the need to express themselves artistically. I’m not going to spend more time on the paint feature – it’s silly and frivolous, and my hunch is that some engineer said “You know, I could easily build a paint feature” and with the traditional consumer electronics manufacturer mentality of “ooh, more features means better products,” tah-dah, we have LocationFree Paint. You can see my drawing below. For $5 on PayPal, I’ll send you a signed copy.

The email application is pretty run-of-the mill, and works about the same as any typical Web-based email program. The interface includes an onscreen keyboard (image below), which included a few shortcut keys like “www.”, “.com”, and “http://”. Wow, I thought, some actual GUI design work! Of course, they forgot to have a mechanism for you to indicate you are actually done typing; you actually push a button labeled “close” to enter the text you have typed. I think I’d rather stick to gmail, and use the Web browser interface.

The Web browser is robust enough for a “lite” application, although no replacement for a full-featured browser. The Flash player worked for the few sites I tried it out, and all Web sites I viewed worked as expected. The UI included a convenient tabbed interface, which leaves me stunned that Sony beat Microsoft to include this in their browser. All-in-all, the browser was good enough to use for most Web surfing needs, but the onscreen keyboard remains the biggest drawback. As a Canadian, I did like the shortcut for “.ca”, although I would love to see Sony let the user customize their shortcuts.

The photo album feature lets you browse photos or watch slideshows. You can easily combine this feature with the handy “screen capture” button (which is how I generated all the images for this review, by the way) to grab images from your favorite shows. Naturally, as a Sony device, the LCD unit has a memory stick slot, although copying images to/from a memory stick was a little more painful than it should be. Also, while it took about 6 hard-to-follow steps, I was able to email a still image directly from the photo album as an attachment.

Here are a couple of screenshots of some of the email screens (click on the image for a full-screen view):

The famous onscreen keyboard:

Photo album:

“A Swan at Sunrise”

The bottom line: I am mixed on all the fringe functionality. If I had no laptops, I think I’d appreciate the email/web browsing capabilities a lot more. I can see some use for the features, and they are fairly well implemented, but they should be regarded purely as extras.

As an in-home wireless flat-panel TV, it’s a great product.

As an out-of-home “location-free” TV, it fails miserably.

The product promises to “set you free to live beyond the living room” which it does to some degree, but definitely not with the ease and simplicity I would hope for. It’s very pricey, and has very limited capabilities.

For almost $1500, I think it is an absurd value proposition. If I want a mobile solution, I could buy a media center laptop, and get much more functionality and a much better GUI. If I want flat panel TVs in my home, I could buy THREE 15″ displays and put them around my home.

Fundamentally, even if it was much, much cheaper, I still think it’s a bizarre approach to solving the problem of portable TV access. Am I really supposed to carry this with me on business trips? It’s actually heavier than my laptop, with half the resolution, and none of the functionality.

With regards to enabling remote access to content, my recommendation right now is to wait. As I’ve stated in previous articles, I don’t think the various “portable media center” or “media to go” solutions are good ideas either, and there isn’t much else on the market just yet.

The bottom line: Save your $1500 for now, and wait for some more intuitive and natural solutions to getting your TV, location-free.

Links

Official Sony site

Buy on Amazon