Netgear's DAVE700
This one won't be officially announced for another two or three weeks, but we caught a sneak peek at the DAVE700, a new wireless 802.11g digital media adapter coming from Netgear ("DAVE" stands for "Digital Audio Visual Entertainer"). These things are a dime a dozen, but Netgear is loading the DAVE700 up with a few nice extras like a detachable external antenna to maximize reception, a USB 2.0 port for streaming music or video off of an iPod or any other USB mass storage device, and pretty decent codec support (MP3, AAC, OGG, and WMA for audio, DivX, DivX HD, Xvid, MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV, and Quicktime for video — oh, and it will even play a VOB file ripped to your PC). The bad news? They're only working on a version of the DAVE700's client software for PCs (even if you don't have a PC it can stream media off of network attached storage), and the box they had on display only had component, composite, and S-video outputs, no HDMI or DVI. The good news? Netgear's rep (who was unusually knowledgeable for a dude working a booth at a floor show) said that they're working on three versions of the DAVE700, including a high-end version that would probably include DVI and incorporate Netgear's Rangemax MIMO technology.
Close up of the DAVE700?s USB port.
The DAVE700?s interface.
