NETGEAR NeoTV 550 (NTV550) Review (page 6)

Menu and browsing speed

I found the Neo menus to be very responsive especially when browsing very large lists of files. There was very little lag when I asked the Neo to bring up a list of several thousand files, it was displayed almost instantly. Scrolling is rather quick too. You can either scroll one entry at a time (by using the cursor up or cursor down keys) or press the page up and page down keys to jump a page at a time. You can also use the Next >| and Previous |< keys to jump to the bottom or the top of the list. You can also use the alphabetic keys to filter the lists.

As mentioned previously, when it comes to browsing by cover art/thumbnail the Neo can be rather lethargic. However, due to the caching that the Neo performs it is then very quick to display the same images subsequently.

Follow me

This function is really very cool indeed! Picture the scene….it’s late at night and you’re in your sitting room watching a movie but you know you really must get to bed. So the natural thing to do is to stop the video and go to bed. However, if you have more than one Neo (or indeed an EVA) you can “send” the video up to the Neo/EVA in the bedroom and continue watching the movie from there at the exact same point you left it playing on the Neo in the sitting room! How cool is that?! Not only that but it actually works! The Neo/EVA you’re sending the video to has to be in standby mode or powered up for this function to work since the network card is not active when the Neo/EVA is fully powered off.

Whilst I think this feature is great I would like it more if it gave you the option to pause the video on the sent-to Neo/EVA. This would allow you to recommence playing the video when you were ready rather than find it is already playing when you went into the room. I’m sure that can’t be too difficult to implement.

You can also “send” the video/music/slideshow “everywhere”. This will commence playback of the currently playing media on every Neo/EVA in the house. Great for whole-house audio!

You can also send a message to another Neo/EVA. You can choose from a list of predefined messages (such as “TV off please”, “Dinner!”) or you can create your own message using the virtual keyboard. However, this function didn’t seem to be working that great because it could only send the message to the Neo I was using. Doh! More development needed there me thinks.

Control your Neo from your computer or cell phone

You can also control the Neo from your computer or from a web-capable cell phone. However, this functionality looks to be still very much in development as it’s rather messy and unrefined at the moment. However, it does appear to work.

Testing the performance or your network

The Neo has an option to allow you to run a network test to see what sort of throughput you’re getting between the Neo and the host computer.
If you experience some stuttering during video playback then you can run a network test to see whether the problem is with your network or with the file itself (bad encoding for example). Ideally, you should be looking at getting >15Mbps for DVD ISO playback but if you want to play blu-ray ISOs without stuttering then you need to see speeds of at least 40+Mbps, preferably more. On a wired connection you should expect to see speeds in the 40Mbps+ region.

The network test results can vary depending on the file(s) the Neo has chosen to pull from your server to perform the test so don’t expect to see all shares yielding the same results even if they’re all on the same host. Smaller files (e.g. small photos) tend to yield different results than larger files (e.g. ISOs).

The Neo has a 10/100 network interface which may surprise some people as they’d be expecting to see gigabit. However, a 100Mbps network interface is perfectly acceptable when you consider that blu-rays are less than 50Mbps. Infact I’d go as far to say that putting a gigabit network card in a streamer that has no internal storage is simply a gimmick to make you think it’s better than one without. Life is, unfortunately, not quite that black and white.

As mentioned previously, the NTV550 supports both Samba and NFS. NFS is generally considered faster although I’ve yet to find a video that stutters under samba but which plays fine under NFS. Infact I’ve yet to come across a video that exhibits any stuttering at all on the Neo and that is even on the highest bitrate blu-ray ISOs in my collection!

Conclusions

If you’ve skipped all of the review and just jumped to this section then shame on you!

When summing up how I feel about this new streamer from NETGEAR I obviously have to keep in the back of my mind that I’m playing with a pre-release version. There will undoubtedly be differences between the firmware I’m using now and the final version that ships with this unit. Indeed if history repeats itself then even the shipped version of the firmware will not be the last. With previous NETGEAR streamers the developers were continually improving the firmware and if you take the EVA8000 as a perfect example of this, the differences between the shipped firmware for it and the final firmware before the product sadly went EOL were chalk and cheese. The shipped version was absolutely dreadful but the final firmware made it a very nice little player for its time.

However, if you take the EVA9150 as another example then the firmware for that streamer has hardly changed at all since it was first released and it looks like it will not change much in the future now the developers are concentrating on the Neo. And maybe once this Neo is released they’ll soon move onto another new streamer. So, I must give precedence therefore to the state of the Neo firmware as it is NOW and not on what it could become or what I hope it will become.

There is some very stiff competition out there at the moment and I’m sure better products are just around the corner. However, given the relative infancy of the streamer market then none of the streamers out there are perfect and so we are really comparing a bunch of unfinished products against each other. This is an important point for those people who will be venturing into the streamer market for the very first time.

There are many things about the Neo I that absolutely love. Full menu support for blu-rays would be my highlight followed by the impressive audio capabilities. However there are things I’m not so impressed with such as the fact that images are not pre-cached and so browsing images for the first time is rather slow. I’m sure many people will also be disappointed that it doesn’t come with in-built wireless too although I really can’t stress highly enough that wireless might not be up to the job for many people.

That all said, I’m still extremely impressed overall with the Neo and will be buying a bunch more when they’re released. Expect to see my EVAs, Dune and my Popcorn Hour on eBay real soon. Please bid generously!

If the suggested RRP is accurate (US $219.99, €199.99, £149.99, AUD $299.99) then I think the competition should be worried. Not only is the price attractive but the device is so darn good, even now. It really is. It’s perhaps the first streamer I’ve ever used that I would happily recommend to my non-geeks friends and I can assure you I’ve used a lot more streamers than I’ve kept. Most went straight back to the store once I’d seen first hand just how flaky and unrefined they were. Jeez, I’ve even had one that I had to install a fan inside it to stop it overheating!

So in summary, even with the current firmware I’m using I think the Neo raises the bar somewhat and will become the new benchmark for streamers today. If the developers can make a few tweaks to the firmware then I honestly can’t think why anyone would want to buy anything else. That is of course until the competition unveils their latest creation!

The anticipated release date for the Neo is the beginning of December 2010. So, the clock is ticking……..