Life|ware at Disney Innoventions Dream Home - Networked Home of the Future
Disney is at it finally with a new dream home of the future - the Disney Innoventions Dream Home. eHomeupgrade has a bunch of cool videos showing the various networking audio video options for the home of the future.
USB Drive Sneakernet Networking - Mimobots are Best
We noticed this little article referencing the mimobot USB drives. We often use ours for some sneakernet networking. Sometimes it's just easier to take a 4 gig file and plug it in then push it across our network in some spots - as we roughly have 1/2 802.11n and 1/2 802.11g.
Oh and if you're looking for the coolest sneakernet USB drives - check out mimobots.
Another holiday season has come and gone and we all seem to have survived. Now that it's over, we here at Networking Audio Video are curious what the holidays brought you geeks. Did you get any sweet streaming gadgets? We spent the holidays playing with our new toy, the GMG TVisto Pro 3500 Media Streamer. While it didn't really fill us with glee, it wasn't without merit.
So what did everyone else get? Add a comment and let us know what the other geeks of the world received this holiday season. Hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday and is gearing up for CES this January and all the goodies that entails!
I-O Data WN-G54/R4 Router Makes Getting Around Your Obtuse Home Security Very Easy
For the most part a router is a router is a router. Sure they offer some special features like QoS or whatnot, but for the majority of people out there they just need the basics. Get my machines to all have access to the net and protect them via a built in firewall from any of those 'bad' people out there. Most people don't care about all the fancy things most modern routers can do these days. We aren't those people :) We are always very protective of our home network and we make sure that our wireless router has the most secure setup possible.
We will be the first to admit that for the most part what we have setup here is overkill as the chances that someone would actively try and hack our network is pretty slim( that wasn't a challenge!! ), but why take the chance right. So we made sure to use WPA2 with a very secure passphrase among other tactics. The problem comes from certain devices that we have around the house that want to use the wireless network to get access to remote servers and the Internet in general. Well they aren't designed to work with WPA, they will only talk to a network secured with WEP or sometimes only if you are wide open. Well there is no way that we are going to lower our security just so a few devices can get access to the Internet. So we have had to deal with the fact that they just would not be able to connect.
One device that hasn't been able to access the net that makes us very sad had been our Nintendo DS. They had come out and said that it would only work via WEP and would always be that way. We were very sad since there are a lot of fun things you can do with the DS online that we figured we would never have the chance to do. Well along comes the WN-G54 with a solution to that problem.
Basically their router, which is the standard 10/100, 802.11b/g, has two modes to it. The first mode is your very secure network for your home machines and whatnot. The second mode is an insecure passthrough mode that allows certain devices to bypass your internal security and hop right on the net. This way you can keep the majority of your network in secure mode while granting special permissions to the devices that can't deal with the multiple layers of security. This may be a great solution for people like us that are unwilling to compromise our security so that a few of our devices can get access to the outside world.
We are going to try and get one for our office and see how it works. We'll be sure to let you know.
Review: Rocketfish - Wireless Multimedia Bluetooth Keyboard and Laser Mouse
We've been using the Best Buy in-house brand
Rocketfish Wireless Multimedia Bluetooth Keyboard and Laser Mouse over the past few days, and think this is a pretty amazing product. At $99, the Rocketfish™ - Wireless Multimedia Bluetooth Keyboard and Laser Mouse is perfect for using with a large screen TV because of the Bluetooth wireless media functions, and dedicated media player controls on the keyboard and mouse. It's also really solid when paired with our Dell XPS laptop on a stand. What we really like is the fact our laptop didn't have Bluetooth, but now it does - which allows for faxing - wireless headphone use and other neat Bluetooth networking features.
Comes packed in a combo box that includes the Bluetooth dongle,
mouse, and keyboard - all wireless.
Product Features
Up to 60' wireless range
104 keys and 10 one-touch multimedia keys let you conveniently work, surf the Web, or control digital media
Laser mouse features 4-way scrolling, 4 multimedia keys and ergonomic rubber side supports for quality functionality and comfort
Acts as a Bluetooth hub, so you can transfer digital media to and from your computer or Bluetooth device (Bluetooth adapter included)
Includes USB Bluetooth adapter, CD driver, User manual, 4 AA batteries (2 for keyboard; 2 for mouse)
Planex Jack in the Box Multi-Function Home Media Server
Planex is set to release their new product, the "Jack in the Box". This is a home media server with some very interesting capabilities. This is the standard empty NAS server meaning you have to supply your own drives, but with the price of discount drives on the web we think this is a great way to keep the overall price of the unit low. It will support up to two 750GB drives in each of its SATA bays and can do RAID 0 and 1.
They have bundled in a home brewed BitTorrent client which is a trend we love to see develop. We love the idea of turning our power hungry computer off for the night and let our low power NAS server do all the work. They also claim to be able to support an iTunes server which would be a great addition to anyone wanting to stream music throughout their house and not have to leave their main computer on.
We are not sure when this will hit the states since as far as we can tell it is only out in Japan, but this is a device that anyone running a home media network should really consider.
QNAP BitTorrent Enabled NAS: TS-109 Pro Turbo Station
QNAP is about set to release what could just be the best thing since sliced bread with their TS-109 Pro Turbo Station. For any of us that have struggled with the concept of leaving your main PC on all the time so that it can handle all of the networked devices you have in your house the TS-109 could just be the answer.
Currently we use our main PC for so many music streaming servers and BitTorrent clients that we can never really turn it off without bringing down just about every device in our house. What we have been trying to setup in the office is a low power device that we can offload some of services to so we aren't reliant on our PC so much.
The TS-109 is one of those all in one hard drives that we have been seeing more and more of lately. The TS-109 seems to have just about everything you could need in a small form factor. For starters it can handle up to a 1TB drive internally. While that is nice, with the way movie file sizes are growing with HD now that won't be enough for everyone. That is why the nice people over at QNAP have added USB and eSATA ports to the back of this bad boy. And with Q-RAID 1 support you can secure your data from drive failure also. It also sports the ability to act as an iTunes server for anyone that wants to stream iTunes music but again doesn't want to have to leave their PC on all the time.
QNAP is also pushing the idea that this is a "no noise" device which means you could( and we stress could ) keep this device in your media cabinet and you wouldn't be able to hear the whine of the drive as you download season one of CHiPs while you sit on your couch and your PC is turned off.
So basically what we are trying to say is that when this comes out it will be a great addition to anyones array of storage and network streaming devices.
When this becomes available you can be sure we will pounce on it and give you a detailed review.
For those of you with some technical know-how and that are looking for a product that not only does it all, but does it all and then some, you should think about MythTV. MythTV is an open source software package that can do just about anything with your home media. It can act as a PVR, video viewer, photo viewer, mp3 player, game emulator, RSS feed reader, weather viewer, and a dvd player. And if it can't do something you want, odds are someone has already written a plug in to do it.
The reason we say that you need some technical know-how is that this is a Linux based software package, and the installation, depending on which flavor of Linux you install on, can be challenging. We played around with this about 3 years ago and then again just a few weeks ago and the improvements blew us away. First off the install is fairly simple now following a pretty standard install script that most computer users have seen before. The interface is very smooth and responsive and the themes that come bundled are gorgeous.
Apple has released a successor to its very popular line of Base Stations the new Airport Extreme. This is everything you would want in a main router for the house.
It has a very friendly configuration interface that makes it easy to setup and maintain your home network. We have been using the previous model in our house for over a year now and it has served us well, from having top notch security to making it easy to keeping our wireless devices connected. The wireless strength has been great even in our hold home which normally defeated all of our attempts to introduce a wireless network.
With this new model Apple has stepped up to the plate and has seen the oncoming onslaught of HD and streaming HD so they have introduced the draft standard of 802.11n. This mammoth speed boost from what we all thought was super fast 802.11g is amazing. Basically we are talking somewhere in the range of 100-200Mbps!! Even on the low end that is some insane speed for your wireless network.
Continue reading:"New Airport Extreme"
Life|ware at Disney Innoventions Dream Home - Networked Home of the Future
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