PlayOn
Unlike the above features, access to PlayOn’s service is subject to a monthly subscription following a 14 day free trial. The link-up with Netgear provides a 25% discount on the fee, but like the Netgear Stora, it appears that some of the Digital Entertainer Live’s more interesting features are pay as you play, which I’m not a fan of at all. Still the lure of a 14 day trial is a good one, so let’s check out what PlayOn can do.
For those of us in the UK, the answer is…. very little. In the US, you’ll be provided with access to Hulu, Netflix, ESPN, CBS, CNN, Amazon Video on Demand and more. Maybe that’s worth your subscription? Here in the UK, we get CNN, ESPN and the promise of BBC iPlayer – the latter of which is certainly worth shouting about, and indeed, Netgear do shout about iPlayer on the box.
You get access to all of the BBC’s channels, with the week’s TV programmes available on demand…. but unfortunately, none of the videos worked due to an inability to access PlayOn’s servers – a configuration issue? Well, I could access all of the programme listings, just not the content. It’s academic, really as there’s not a lot on PlayOn’s settings I can tinker with to get the content to work – it should be set and forget. I’ve set, but unfortunately, I’ll have to forget about BBC iPlayer and PlayOn can forget about their subscription until they can provide decent content that works.
Shoutcast
Finally, an old friend that consistently works on all media receivers that feature it – Internet Radio served up courtesy of ShoutCast. Name your genre, and there’s an online radio station with kick ass tunes for you. It’s a boon to any living room…
Conclusions
Is the Digital Entertainer Live the best media receiver on the market today? No – with a poor MKV implementation, and very limited abilities to search through your media, there are simply better featured and less expensive DMRs on the market today, and it’s hard to recommend the Digital Entertainer Live over them. Is the Digital Entertainer Live Netgear’s best DMR to date? Yes! It’s certainly a step forward in terms of quality compared to the previous generations of Digital Entertainer – content is acquired quickly, can be navigated and played back smoothly and the design and polish in the user interface is a big step forward. The online services bundled into the product show promise, but are patchy in their implementation – perhaps it’s just too early to expect a quality experience from online video in 2010?
So, kudos to Netgear for moving their DMR range forward, but the Digital Entertainer Live has a few glaring issues that would need to be addressed before it could receive our whole hearted approval.
