BitTorrent/NetGear Venture Goes Live

BitTorrent, Inc. continues to permeate throughout the home entertainment market. The BitTorrent protocol, already the de facto standard of file-sharing, has become a household name nearly on the same scale of Napster. To truly become a household name, BitTorrent has been pairing up with hardware manufacturers, notably NetGear, to deliver content throughout home networks.

One of the more self-proclaimed notable events of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) back in January was the NetGear Digital Entertainer HD (EVA8000). Today, NetGear announced the first shipments of the Digital Entertainer HD (DE HD). So what exactly is the DE HD?

Think of the DE HD as a device that eliminates the CD/DVD burning process or routing cables from the graphics card. The DE HD is a wireless interface to one's computer or media storage, which then streams audio or video content to either an HD TV or stereo system.

BitTorrent has been heavily promoting the device, which it hopes the consumer market will use to stream their content throughout the end user's home theater. However the DE HD is more versatile than just streaming paid content from the BitTorrent Entertainment Network (BEN). The device is compatible with an array of formats - both protected and unprotected. End users may be interested to know the DE HD supports MP3, AVI, and perhaps most importantly, XviD.

A foreseeable problem with the DE HD is that High Definition content is only displayed over the HDMI (High Definition Media Interface). Before this device becomes a "must have", the end user must have an HD monitor that supports HDMI. The press release is a bit vague when it comes to the DE HD's ability to play unprotected HD content, however the wording suggests this shouldn't be a problem.

"The Digital Entertainer HD can also stream many unprotected file formats from Macs, Linux computers, the NETGEAR Storage Central Turbo (SC101T), many USB storage devices such as flash drives and the iPod(R), and other portable music and video players."

The DE HD is certainly a step forward. However, consumers may question the need. To emulate the DE HD, the consumer can establish a wireless network, with the advantage of using a greater array of output interfaces supporting an HD signal.