Several months ago, HP made news by discontinuing one of their popular HTPC line of computers. One reason they discontinued that line was because of the impending release of MediaSmart TVs. Basically MediaSmart TVs are high definition TVs with a media extender built into the TV.
The most interesting feature of MediaSmart is that Divx and Xvid are finally supported by some type of extender. Take that X-Box 360. Some of the additional features include:
- Image files supported: JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF and PNG
- Video files supported: MPEG, DivX, XVID, DVR-MS, WMV and AVI
- Music files supported: MP3, WMA, WMA Pro, AAC (unprotected) and more
- Crisp image with industry-leading 6ms response time
- Integrated a, b, g and 802.11n wireless networking
- Built-in wired Ethernet
It is hard to tell how much of a premium you are paying for the MediaSmart portion of the TV. With the upcoming release, of new Vista Media Center extenders, we will have to see if MediaSmart is a long term solution for HP. I would think most people who want the features a MediaSmart TV provides would also be interested in those new extenders, which by the way will also support Divx and XVid.
MediaSmart seems like a feature that is nice to have but won’t influence your decisionmaking when it comes time to buy that new TV.
Mon, Sep 10, 2007
Media Center Extenders