In an effort to be more Web-focused, the Live Hub also offers some Web-based widgets, including ones for Flickr, Facebook and CNN. Compared to Google TV’s complete embracing of the Web, though, WD’s effort seems a little weak.

Are Media Streamers numbered?

Media streamers like the Live Hub fill an odd space in the home entertainment market, and personally I think their days are numbered. The point of a media streamer is to play your content (videos, tunes and photos) from your PC onto the devices that are capable of playing it back much more impressively (your HDTV or Hi-Fi).

Technically, most of them do this very well, streaming content in many different formats, and connecting to many different devices. The problem has always been the user interface.

The Media Streamer’s Achilles Heel

The user interface is the part of the media streamer that you use – it’s the screen on the telly and the remote control you use to access your media and to play it. Unfortunately, this has always been crudely implemented, with the result being that media streamers have only ever been niche devices, loved by geeks, but not the mainstream.

Now with the likes of Google TV and Apple TV, there are new shiny interfaces onto all your media from two companies who really know what they’re doing with software. Both Google TV and Apple TV offer fantastic interfaces, with Google TV in particular offering a seamless Web and TV interface that makes browsing your media a snip no matter where it’s stored.

So the WD TV Live Hub really has its work cut out if it’s going to compete with Google TV and Apple TV. At $199.99, it’s $100 cheaper than Google TV, but $100 more than Apple TV. Personally, I think it’s a good device, but it’s much too little, and it’s already overshadowed by its bigger rivals.

If a company wants to make a successful media streamer now, they’d better make sure its interface is at least as good as Apple and Google’s offerings. Currently, only Boxee seems to be doing that, but the other manufacturers need to step up if they want to stay in the game.

[Source: Pocket-Lint]

Luckily, QNAP has launched the new QNAP NMP-1000P Network Media Player, which can support pretty much every kind of video and audio format you’ll ever come across, and decode it using a super-quick 667MHz audio/video decoder from Sigma Solutions.

That’s not the half of it, though. in order to do such trickery, the NMP-1000P needs to get its media from somewhere, and thanks to the magic of Ethernet and Wi-Fi, it can suck it up either from your PC or the Internet.

So what does the QNAP NMP-1000P Network Media Player actually do?

In layman’s terms, this means the NMP-1000P will playback any video and any tune you can throw it, and either send it to your HDTV, your home theatre system, or your hi-fi (depending on whether it’s a video or audio file, obviously!)

Any of your videos or tunes can either be streamed through the NMP-1000P from your PC, or simply stored on its internal hard drive for later use, in which case you won’t need to switch your PC on to play the file.

But what if you don’t have much media on your PC? No problem, the NMP-1000P will also stream content directly from the following Web apps:

• Mediafly
• Apple Movie Trailers
• CNN
• SHOUTcast
• Internet radio service
• Flickr
• Picasa

It’s even got a built-in FTP client and BitTorrent client, so you can download media from other computers connected to the Internet, and all without turning your own PC on.

What can you connect it to?

Round the back, it’s like a swiss-cheese of connection sockets! The NMP-1000P comes with the following ports:

• USB
• eSATA (for external hard drives)
• HDMI v1.3a (for connecting to your HDTV and streaming 1080p movies)
• Audio out
• Component Video
• Composite Video
• Analog stereo out (for connecting to your hi-fi)
• SP/DIF (for digital connection to your hi-fi via optical cable)

Add to that the built-in Wi-Fi receiver, plus the Ethernet port, and you can see that the NMP-1000P really will connect to anything – and is just about the geekiest gadget you’re ever likely to buy for your home media setup.

It gets better, though. If you think that’s geeky, just wait until you see what video formats it supports!

What media types can it play?

Video files are complicated beasts, and if you have a video that’s encoded in a format that your hardware doesn’t support, you won’t be able to watch it. Worse, the video itself will be encoded using a certain format (such as MPEG), and will then be contained in a container (such as AVI), which contains other files such as titles, playlists, subtitles, and other meta-data. Again, if your media player doesn’t support the container, it won’t be able to play the video.

With the NMP-1000P, though, it’s not a problem. Here’s the list of video formats it supports:

• MPEG1
• MPEG2
• MPEG4
• XVID
• H.264
• H.263
• WMV9
• VC1

And here’s the list of containers:

• AVI
• MPEG/MPG
• VCD (ISO, MPG, NRG)
• DVD (VOB, IFO, ISO, NRG)
• WMV
• ASF
• TP
• TS
• TRP
• M1V
• M2V
• M4V
• M2P
• M2T
• M2TS
• BDMV/BD ISO
• MTS
• MOV
• MP4
• RMP4
• MKV
• MOD
• 3GP

Phew! That’s pretty much every video format and container you can think of! And that doesn’t even include the list of audio and picture formats supported!

Like I say, the QNAP NMP-1000P really is a geeky but of kit, but if you need a media player that will connect to anything, decode anything, and stream anything using wires or wireless, you really should give this little box serious consideration.

[Source: SlashGear]

Well HTC hears ya loud and clear, and is bringing out the HTC Tube – no, not a phone for once but a clever box that adds DLNA streaming capabilities to your DLNA-less device such as the HTC Desire or the HTC HD2, or even other Android handsets.

Using the Tube you can now wirelessly stream your videos to your TV through the Tube’s HDMI out – excellent for showing those interesting holiday videos to the family or just big screen films if you’ve loaded them onto your phone.

Bringing wireless HDMI to your phone with HTC’s Tube, the portable media centre phone just got more interesting.

Here are the specs for the HTC Tube:

[Source: SlashGear]

The Boxee Box does the same, but plugs into your HDTV rather than installs on your PC, which apparently isn’t quite as good for watching HD videos and the like as your £2,000 plasma!

The makers claim that the Boxee Box will play any non-DRM you can create, happily pumping it up to 1080p out of the HDMI port. Boxee is also internet friendly, pulling down media from anywhere on the internet using the special built in browser, including content from BBC, ITV, MTV, CNN, Channel 4, Comedy Central and more.

It’s also the most social of media players, hooking up with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Picasa, all being a breeze to update using the innovative two-sided QWERTY remote control.

How the Boxee Box compares with Apple TV and Google TV

While the Boxee Box has been priced higher than the likes of Apple TV and Google TV’s likely retail, it’s quite a different beast. Apple TV has excellent integration with iTunes for simple rentals, plus AirPlay wireless video playback on your iOS device is impressive.

Google TV brings the Google / Android style web experience to the TV but it’s not yet clear how far its media centre abilites go.

Boxee’s Box, while costing more, is a device more akin to a hub for your networked media, as it does have the ability to play all media without conversion or proprietory software, plus it offers an excellent and well-refined web media interface.

Coupled with the Intel Atom power under the hood and the quirky design, the Boxee Box could well be the media player to put a spanner in the plans of Apple and Google for taking control of your living room!

If you like the sound of it, you can buy the Boxee Box now – don’t forget to tell us your thoughts on it in the comments below, if you do.

But what if you don’t have $5,000? Or worse, what if you just spent $5,000 on a shiny new HDTV that isn’t Internet-enabled?

Step forward Boxee and D-Link, who together have been showing off the Boxee Box.

If you want to expand the features of your HDTV, open it up to a world of rich new (and free!) Web-based content, view your pictures and videos as well as those of your mates, or listen to your music or Internet radio, then read on: the Boxee Box does it all, remarkably simply, and for an unusually low price.

Boxee overview

Boxee began life as one of those cracking apps that lets you stream your movies, videos, etc., from your PC to your TV. Originally just a software application, it’s been doing this a few years now, but the problem has always been that it was a little too teccie. Although Boxee provide a few clues as to how you can hook your PC up to a TV, the info provided is a little vague!

Basically, it boils down to installing the Boxee software on your laptop, then hooking your laptop into your TV via an HDMI, DVI or VGA cable. The problem here is that you need to tether your laptop to your TV and yourself to your couch.

Not exactly convenient.

If you want anything more fancy (wireless, perhaps?!), you’re pretty much on your own. There are dozens of different solutions, but finding the best option (and the best trade off between ease of use, price and picture quality) is a nightmare.

So Boxee, despite being a cracking app in its own right, was always for the geeks. You would never give Boxee to your Dad, for example, and expect him to set it up on his home TV (at least, not if your Dad’s anything like mine!)

Fortunately, Boxee realised this, so they’ve come up with a solution: the Boxee Box, or everythng you need to get Boxee working on your TV with absolute simplicity.

The Boxee Box

The Boxee Box is a Set Top Box developed by D-Link that contains everything needed to start using Boxee on any HDTV straight away. As you can see, it’s a somewhat unconventional looking box, and I guess its shape will make you love it or loathe it.

Personally, I love it!

Boxee hope the box will become the center for all of your media, and so have provided a plethora of connectivity options to ensure whatever you’ve got will connect to it in some way. As such, the Boxee Box comes with the following:

• HDMI – one inexpensive HDMI cable to connect The Boxee Box to your TV
• SPDIF – hi-definition digital audio that will pass through Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound and DTS to your A/V Receiver
• Stereo Audio (RCA) – red & white cables from the 80’s, 90’s and today
• 2 x USB ports – add devices like external hard drives and more
• Wireless 802.11n & Wired Ethernet – Cords if you got ‘em, wireless if you don’t
• RF Remote Control – control playback from anywhere

It’s what’s inside that counts

The Boxee Box has some serious hardware inside to give you the richest experience possible on your shiny HDTV. Inside is an NVIDIA Tegra2 chip powering the cracking user interface. Based on a dual-core ARM Coretx A9 CPU (i.e. very very fast!), there’s more power in the Boxee Box than in most laptops. Tegra2 has enough grunt to play 1080p HD content pulled from either your PC or the Internet (it supports Adobe Flash 10.1) without even breaking sweat.

The Boxee Box is also unusual in that it doesn’t use InfraRed for its remote – it uses RF, which means it doesn’t require line of sight, and can work in any room in the house.

Add to that an 802.11n WiFi chip and you’ve got a full powered media streamer that’s guaranteed to work flawlessly with 1080p HD content pulled in from anywhere.

How the Boxee Box solves the four problems of media streaming

The Boxee Box at a stroke fixes the four most common problems that have plagued media streamers and media hub applications since they were first conceived:

Connectivity

How do you connect your PC to your TV? By wire or wireless? If it’s wire, do you use HDMI, DVI, Video-S, VGA or (more rarely) Ethernet? Do you connect directly to the TV, or to a Set Top Box such as a media streamer?

If it’s wireless, what type do you use? WiFi via a media streamer, or wireless HDMI, streaming the video from your PC via a transmitting dongle straight to your TV, which also needs a receiving dongle? There are many other options you could also try, but each comes with its own trade-off between price, quality and usability. How do you know what’s going to suit you until you’ve actually tried the different options? Unfortunately, that’s an expensive strategy!

Boxee’s Solution
The Boxee Box solves these problems for you at a stroke. It uses WiFi and connects to your HDTV using a standard HDMI cable (the same as you’d use to connect your DVD player to the TV).

That’s it! Turn your PC, your TV and the Boxee Box on, and start using it straight away.

You don’t need to make a decision about which technology to use. Because the Boxee Box has been designed to provide a robust experience with a great user interface and the highest quality picture , you can be reassured that the Boxee Box will work exactly how you want it to – straight out of the box (as it were!)

Quality

Streaming media from PC to TV has always been fraught with quality issues. If it’s a wireless link you’re using, it needs to be robust enough not to keep dropping all the time, and fast enough to ensure a smoothly flowing picture without jitter.

Boxee’s Solution
The Boxee Box uses fast 802.11n WiFi for super-smooth Hi-Def video streaming, and D-Link have ensured the WiFi signal won’t miss a beat thanks ot the high quality 802.11n WiFi chip by Broadcom.

This is the advantage of Boxee teaming up with D-Link. Boxee tell D-Link exactly what their software needs for optimal operation and ease of use; D-Link have the hardware chops to develop it. The result – a box that’s been optimized for the quality demanded by Boxee, and ultimately by you.

The Remote

Another problem with getting the Web onto your TV: YouTube videos, Web sites, Twitter feeds, Facebook status updates, etc., all require text entry. If you’ve ever used a TV remote to enter text, you’ll know it’s the most frustratingly hideous thing you’ll ever do. Hunting and pecking for characters on the screen using the remote’s up, down, left and right buttons is ludicrously bad; in fact, it’s so bad, you’ll only ever do it once and then give up in a fit of exasperation!

All that content in the world, and not of it available because you can’t enter any text.

Boxee’s Solution
Boxee’s answer is to kit their remote out with a full QWERTY keyboard. It’s a normal remote control on one side, but flip it over, and you’ve got a physical keyboard for entering text. Obvious really!

It also uses RF rather than infra-red, and so can be used anywhere in the house – you don’t need line of sight for it to work. You can therefore control your music, skip tracks, rewind, etc., from any room in the house.

User Interface

The final problem with media streaming applications and media receivers has been their awful user interfaces. Because most of the R&D has focused on the hardware (i.e. the tricky part of actually getting the video on the PC to stream to the TV), not much thought ever went in to how the user would actually use the product.

The result was usually the user interface from hell!

Boxee’s Solution
Boxee, in contrast, has designed the user interface first, around the user, and then tasked D-Link with the problem of building the hardware to support it. The result is a beautiful user interface that looks superb, is genuinely intuitive, and has features that even dedicated Internet-TVs can’t replicate.

Like what, you’re asking?

Boxee itself – the ultimate social media app for your TV!

Here’s a video of the Boxee interface showing some of its features. You can see for yourself how great the interface looks.

Now check out more of exactly what Boxee can do for you.

The Boxee Box’s social side

When you fire up Boxee on your TV, you’ll see three main windows:

• Feeds – the latest feeds from your friends’ social networks. Plus what they’re watching and what they’re listening to.
• Featured – recommended content that Boxee thinks you’ll like based on your past viewing habits
• Queue – a list of movies, videos and TV programmes that you’ve found that you want to watch later. This is your playlist of things you want to watch.

That’s the homescreen. The best bit, though, is finding content you want to view.

Boxee contains content from pretty much everywhere. In fact, it’d be easier to list the places it doesn’t get content from, but because that wouldn’t be particularly useful, here’s a list of some of the key places it does!

Watch content from your PC

Boxee is a media streaming application, and so is designed to pull your pics from your PC. It’ll scan your PC to find any pics or videos there, and will then display them in its own beautiful user interface. You can view the pics picture by picture, or watch them as a slide-show, zoom in or out or rotate them.

Videos, too, can be played back and controlled just as easily, as can TV programmes or movies that you’ve downloaded, and any music that you’ve got on your PC.

Just imagine: you’re sat on your couch, viewing your videos, your pictures, and listening to your tunes on you HD home entertainment system, even browsing the Web, while the PC that’s storing all this content is tucked safely away in your study upstairs.

And if you’ve got the ultimate home entertainment setup with full surround sound, Boxee will let you pump your tunes effortlessly from your PC to your home entertainment’s amp and speakers, so you can hear your tunes how they should be heard – loudly!

View content from the Web

Perhaps the best part of Boxee, though, is the way it integrates with the Web.

You can select from hundreds of apps that connect to different Web sites, letting you pull in content from virtually anywhere.

You can link to your Flickr or Picasa account, for example, and view the pics you or your friends have taken, or just browse pics from other people. Connect to YouTube and view your own videos or any videos for that matter.

There’s even a Boxee Bookmarklet that lets you add any video you see on a Web site to your Boxee Queue with a single click, making it ready for you to view when you get home from work, for example.

Remember, all this is taking gplace on your beautiful HDTV.

With your Boxee account, you can also view all this through any PC with Boxee installed as well (it’s a free download), but the Boxee Box means you can view it all in super HD (assuming you have a super HDTV!)

Share what you’re watching

Boxee doesn’t just download content, though – it lets you share what you’re watching with your friends. Add your user details, and it’ll automatically share what you’re watching via Twitter or Facebook.

Probably best not to share everything you’re watching, though (particularly if you’re an MP!), as some of the apps you can download are a little, shall we say, risque! Don’t worry, though, you can set parental controls to prevent adult apps from being viewed.

Conclusion

Boxee is a brilliant way to view all the content that you’ve collected over the years, and the Boxee Box is the perfect compliment to an already excellent application.

If you’ve been wanting to get a media streamer for some time now, but have been put off by the complexities, quality, poor user interface or even the price, then the Boxee Box is the perfect solution.

Download Boxee onto your PC or Mac to try it out – it’s completely free – and see for yourself how good the user interface looks, and how easy it makes viewing pictures and videos form across your PC and the Web.

Now picture all of that content running wirelessly on your HDTV, the sound coming out of your surround sound speakers, all controllable from a QWERTY-equipped remote whereever you are in the house. And all that for less than $200 (UK price to be confirmed).

Perfect! The Boxee Box is already on my gadget wishlist – how about yours?

None of them have set the world alight, though. However, that still doesn’t stop people trying. Step forward Netgear, who have just launched the new Netgear EVA9150 Digital Entertainer Elite.

The Digital Entertainer Elite is a bland featureless box that hooks up to your HDTV and streams your music and videos wirelessly directly from your PC or its large 500GB internal hard drive.

Indeed, it’s the size of its drive that Netgear are promoting as the Digital Entertainer’s main advantage. By comparison, Apple TV offers only 160GB, and the XBox 360 120GB.

In addition to media from your PC or the internal hardrive, the Digital Entertainer Elite will also pull in content directly from the Internet via Flickr and YouTube, which is a nice touch, and great timing, too, as YouTube have just announced they’re now able to play videos in HD.

My only problem with the Digital Entertainer Elite is that it looks dull, and although it sounds like it should be a really cool product, it just sounds too utilitarian to excite me enough to want to buy it. Maybe that’s what everyone else thinks as well, as media streamers haven’t exactly captured the public’s imagination.

[Source: Wired]

So we’ve done the hard work for you and compiled a list of the top Bluetooth MP3 players on the market today, together with links to the all the Bluetooth MP3 players from the major online stores.

Yes, we’re very very good to you people!

Why buy a Bluetooth MP3 player?

A Bluetooth MP3 player is a must-have couch potato gadget who prefers listening to their tunes without moving, rather than having to fiddle about with wires to hear their tunes. A Bluetooth MP3 player will let you do some or more of the following:

• listen to your tunes wirelessly, either through a Bluetooth headset or an external Bluetooth speaker. No wires, no fuss, just stream your music from the MP3 player to the speaker, no matter where it is in your lounge.
• stream your tunes to your car stereo wirelessly – a number of car radios now also come with Bluetooth, meaning you can listen to your tunes from your MP3 player in your car without having to use headphones (dangerous and, er, illegal!) or one of those annoying FM transmitters.
• take calls from your mobile phone via your MP3 player – never get up to answer the phone again!
• wirelessly copy your tunes to and from your PC – no more fiddling about with USB cables.

Wired MP3 players are so lost year, while Wi-Fi ones are still a bit pricey. If it’s a decent MP3 player you’re after, you might as well throw Bluetooth into the mix as well – you won’t regret it.

We’ve come up with the following list showing five of the best Bluetooth MP3 players on the market today. If these don’t tempt you, check out our links to the Bluetooth MP3 players from the major online stores.

1). The Samsung YP-T10 Bluetooth MP3 player

Looking not unlike a mobile phone, the Samsung YP-T10 lets you stream your music from the device to a Bluetooth earpiece or a Bluetooth wireless speaker using Bluetooth A2DP technology.

Nothing flash or fancy, the Samsung simply lets you play MP3 tunes with or without wires. It comes in several variants, from 2GB up to 16GB, and also features an intriguing “character animation” user interface, to stop you getting bored from looking at a dull list of tunes! Good value too, with prices starting from just

This is an exciting development, but also a somewhat disappointing one at the same time, as I’ll explain (and maybe rant a little!) after the jump.

Excitement!

OK, first the excitement. Ever since I set up MediaMentalism in 2006, it’s been obvious to me that we’re slowly working our way to a home in which we’re all able to share our media wirelessly from one device (such as a PC) to another (a TV). What I didn’t count on, though, was exactly how slowly such a vision would take to develop! It’s two years’ later, and still there’s no such thing as an iconic media streamer that the average person in the street can identify.

The Samsung MediaLive is therefore an exciting development in that it brings that vision one step closer, as it’s a well engineered product from a large blue-chip electronics manufacturer, rather than a no frills toy from some random Chinese bargain basement company that no-one’s ever heard of, or a one-product wonder from a company with big ideas but a development budget too small for mainstream market penetration.

No, Samsung are big and they’re highly respected. The Samsung MediaLive is therefore a big deal, and best of all, has been given a genuine brand name (MediaLive) rather than some arbitrary (and unpronouncable) arrangement of digits and numbers. If Samsung are prepared to push the MediaLive concept, we could all have media streamers in our hoems in just a couple of years.

Disappointment!

And so, naturally, to the disappointment. Samsung keep referring to the MediaLive as a device for seamlessly sharing content from a PC and a Samsung 2008 HDTV; in other words, it’s not a generic box for transferring media, it’s a proprietary Samsung box that will only work with Samsung HDTVs.

This is a crying shame and an opportunity missed, as the MediaLive looks really good and has the potential to be a huge seller in the average home, if only it connected PCs to any TV, not just Samsung’s 2008 HDTVs.

Still, Samsung are no different from other manufacturers; Sony have been doing the same for a couple of years with their media streamers. That’s the problem with getting devices to share, I guess. No-one told the manufacturers that their devices should also share with devices from other manufacturers, rather than just their own!

The strategy of locking people in to one manufacturers’ technology is as old as the hills, but we’re in a different age now. The Internet and the Web has brought with a whole new generation of products and users who are used to the open model of free sharing, and the services that result are far richer, and far more rewarding to the companies that provide them, than a closed model will ever be.

Even the mobile phone networks are realizing this now, tearing down their walled gardens and letting their users access the entire Web, rather than just the isolated parts of it that each network controlled.

A call to arms

It’s time the electronics giants woke up to this fact and recognized that their devices are no longer seen as one part of a monolithic entertainment system with every component made by the same manufacture; rather, we buy them as individual devices that we hope will integrate with other devices from other manufacturers, with the whole set of disparate devices forming a single home network, the nature of which is unique to every home.

Entertainment systems are a thing of the past: unlock your fixed ideas and open up your business models, before somebody else comes along and steals your market from under you!

Full details of the Samsung MediaLive adaptor

OK, rant over! The Samsung MediaLive is actually quite a great media streamer by all accounts, and can even be installed behind your (Samsung 2008!) HDTV, making it a set-behind box, rather than a set-top box!

Better still, because it’s a Windows Vista Media Center Extender, the user interface displayed on your HDTV is all Vista, and not some crummy series of menus thrown together at the last minute.

Looks rather good, you’d have to agree!

Full details follow:

Samsung Electronics America Inc., the leader in the U.S. digital television market, lets consumers view PC-content on a Samsung HDTV with the retail launch of the company

Yet another black box for your living room? Yes and no, this little beauty is Belkin’s new wireless transmitter and receiver, aka FlyWire. FlyWire can connect to all your devices without the need to install wiring, so no more climbing up ladders and ripping out bits of your house in an effort to connect everything up without seeing wires all over the place. The new wireless transmitter can send 1080p video over a 5GHz band, and it is not all beauty and no brains, to make sure there is no interference it intelligently adjusts the frequency and power. Read on for more details.

Belkin offer a basic remote control for switching between the different inputs, and good news for everyone using a universal remote control, it works over IR.

FireWire will come in two flavours: FlyWire AV69003 and FlyWire R1 AV69000.

FlyWire AV69003 will be priced at $999.99 and is intended as a whole home solution. You will be able to have your devices anywhere in the house and be able to control them all through the Belkin FlyWire. The control of the devices will be done in one of two ways, either IR backchannel or through IR receiver and IR blaster attachments. Either way you will be able to hide your AV devices away in other rooms or cupboards and keep your living room nice and clutter free. FlyWire AV69003 will hit the stores late October 2008.

FlyWire R1 AV690000 will be priced at $699.99 and is meant for one room only so you don’t get the cool IR backchannel or the IR blaster attachment. This one seems slightly pointless to me as, yes you are reducing the number of wires but you still have to have the AV devices on show to be able to control them… Anyway, this version will be available around the first quarter of 2009.

As for connections, both versions will have three types of input: 3 HDMI, 2 component, and 1 composite. As it would be a little useless without an output it also has 1 HDMI.

For more detailed spec check out Business Wire.

[Source: Business Wire]

We all know that Google likes to have its fingers in all the pies, well they are now sticking their hands into an area of the home entertainment market coveted by Microsoft and Apple. Google really are taking no survivors; it would seem their company motto isn’t only “Don’t be evil” but also “World domination is a must”.

The Google Media Server can connect a PC to any device that supports Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), a set of computer network protocols that enable devices to share data across a home network. The server uses the Desktop Search to locate media files on the PC and on the Web. So basically all you need is a windows PC running Google Desktop and a UPnP-enabled device (e.g. video-game consoles PlayStation 3 from Sony and Xbox 360 from Microsoft, as well as Hewlett-Packard’s MediaSmart high-definition televisions). Once you have those you can then:

• Access videos, music, and photos stored on your PC
• View online picture albums
• Play your favorite YouTube videos as well as other online videos

I can hear Microsoft quaking in their boots (whether that is from fear or anger I can’t tell).

[Source:Google Blog]