Next week sees the launch of a new media streaming device in the UK. The Xtreamer is a small networked media player which plugs into your TV via HDMI (or composite video if you really must!) and can play back a huge variety of music, video and photo file formats.
It’s similar in concept to digital media receivers such as Western Digital’s WDTV, and offers a competing range of format support, including:
Video containers:
- MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V)
- MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG)
- MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS)
- VOB
- AVI, ASF, WMV
- Matroska (MKV)
- MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4
- FLV – Flash Video
Video codecs:
- XVID SD/HD
- MPEG-1
- MPEG-2
- MP@HL
- MPEG-4.2
- ASP@L5, 720p, 1-point GMC
- WMV9
- MP@HL
- H.264
- BP@L3
- MP@L4.0
- HP@L4.0
- HP@L4.1
- VC-1
- MP@HL
- AP@L3
Audio containers:
- AAC, M4A
- MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)
- WAV
- WMA
- FLAC
- OGG
- AVC HD
Audio codecs:
- Dolby Digital
- DTS
- WMA, WMA Pro
- AAC
- MP1, MP2, MP3
- LPCM
- FLAC
- Vorbis
Audio pass through : DTS, Dolby Digital, DTS-HD MA, DTS-HD HR, Dolby True HD, Dolby Digital Plus
Photo formats : JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, HD JPEG
Other formats: ISO, IFO, FLV, RM, RA, RAM
Subtitle formats : SRT, SMI, SUB, SSA, IDX
Streaming formats : RTSP, FLV
That’s more media formats than you can shake a stick at! A number of web services are also supported, including:
Video: YouTube, Picasa, Yahoo Video, CNN, NBC Today, CBS Face the Nation
Audio: Live365 Radio, iPodcast, Radiobox, ABC News, BBC Podcast, CNN News , Indiefeed, Jamendo
Photo: Picasaweb
RSS feed: Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Xchange, MSNBC News and more
The Xtreamer is powered by 256Mb of RAM and a 32Mb Flash chip, so streaming performance should be solid. Network connections include a standard 10/100 ethernet connection and an 802.11n Wi-Fi module which is bundled for free. Digital audio inputs and outputs are available, and you’ll see from the graphic above that an internal SATA slot caters for 500Gb hard disk (which you’ll have to buy separately) which can be accessed via a web browser, FTP or Samba (on the Mac).Once the internal hard disk is full, you can expand storage by adding external USB hard drives. That said, if your running a home server, I doubt whether you’ll need the storage.
For £99, the Xtreamer looks like a decent offer – that said, these kind of networked media players always seem to let themselves down with a terrible user interface, so I’ll be keen to see how the Xtreamer performs when we receive our review unit next week. For now, check out the following YouTube video:
More Info: Xtreamer (UK) | Xtreamer Forum
