Netgear NTV300 NeoTV Streaming Player

It's a budget streaming media player

I bought this streaming media player thinking it would make a nice gift, but after trying it out myself to see how hard it would be to setup and use, I ended up returning ...Read complete review

I bought this streaming media player thinking it would make a nice gift, but after trying it out myself to see how hard it would be to setup and use, I ended up returning it to the store.

The box doesn't include an HDMI cable, and the main unit itself doesn't provide composite video, analog or digital audio out. It's one thing to turn on your TV to start streaming content, but if you want to simply stream Internet radio or music, you will need an audio receiver or system with HDMI input, if you want to turn off your TV.

The internal hardware, if I understand correctly, is an ARM SoC (System on a Chip) with 128 MB of NAND (think Solid State Drive or SSD), and 256 MB of RAM. The streaming media player runs using Linux, so you might think that you could stream directly from your PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone to the player, but I couldn't find anything in the set up to allow for local streaming. Perhaps there isn't enough NAND for local streaming, but I suspect that the budget streaming media players just don't come with the necessary software for local streaming. It does include a built-in Wireless N-150 adapter with internal antenna, and a wired 10/100 Ethernet connection. The actual set up process is fairly simple and easy, but I completely skipped the wireless set up after finding slow performance using the wired connection. You can test your Internet connection using the NeoTV's remote and setup menu, and mine reported an Internet bandwidth running anywhere from 2.2 Mbps to 3.2 Mbps. Again on the wired side, the box offered no information as to what speed it was connected to either my Gigabit router or switch, and the speed it does report doesn't represent the speed you can actually download content.

There will be an automatic firmware update immediately after setup in most cases, and that is because the original firmware used a "trick" to password protect the NeoTV's firmware from being modified by the user. Once someone found out that the "trick' allowed people to access the NeoTV's firmware with just the remote control, Netgear was forced to update the firmware. The content providers seem to also be included in the firmware, but based on my test, Netgear isn't keeping track with the content providers. One provider had a fixed button on the remote, and after pressing it the box crashed and rebooted. Pressing it again resulted in an error code, with instructions to visit the content provider's web site. I did using my desktop, and while the domain name and content may have been unchanged, the site appeared to be under new ownership, and there was no reference concerning the error code.

There wasn't much in free, no sign-ups, no trial, no account required content to test the NeoTV's actual performance. From what I was able to download, some things timed out, took a while to load, or started fine. I suspect the time-outs were caused by the content no longer being available, which may or may not reflect upon the firmware updates. I tried to play one SD (Standard Definition of either 640x480 or 720x480) from Hulu Plus at my TV's 720p setting, and it wasn't pretty. It was the first episode of Naruto Shippuden, and the only thing I came across that wasn't a clip or an advertisement. Again, not a lot of truly free content to try, and too much video compression only makes up-scaling worse to watch.

The most surprising thing about the NeoTV was just how hot the bottom of the main unit got when I picked it up. I didn't notice any ventilation slots, and I wouldn't be surprised if the ARM chip was simply mounted to a heatsink for passive cooling. Almost as surprising was just how much I disliked the directional pad on the remote control. I actually tried playing a video game that was provided via the NeoTV, and it took some serious getting used to with the directional pad on the remote control.

Pro:

If you only have a tablet or a smartphone, on a budget, and are into paid subscription content, youtube, or Internet radio, buying the NEoTV when on sale is a nice way of introducing yourself to streaming media.

Cons:

Most game consoles do, or will, allow you to stream media from the Internet, AND most PC's, laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones.

It only supports HDMI, BUT there are other units around the same price range which include additional connections.

If you were thinking of streaming content to the TV you have in your kitchen, you might not want to set this next to the butter.

Thoughts:

It does what it was meant to do, but with the limited amount of content providers you can access, I considered this more a novelty gift than a useful present. If Netgear had included Amazon Prime, I might have thought differently. From my understanding, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, and NetFlix are presently the three largest providers of shows and movies, and offering all three content providers could make investing in the NeoTV much more worthwhile.