Netgear Celebrates 15 Years with New Breed of Home Networking Solutions
This year Netgear is celebrating 15 years in the technology business, and at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas they demonstrated why they are a major player in the sector and the growing connected home market. At the show they were the recipient of three CES Innovations Awards for their innovative solutions for the new connected lifestyle. For CES they took a number of their latest products to demonstrate that they have kept abreast of our changing lifestyle and technology trends as we enter this new way of living.
The range of devices Netgear demonstrated at the show cover all areas of the emerging connected home. They covered Entertainment, Security, Storage and networking (wireless, Powerline and Ethernet). In response to the state of the market, the company’s CEO, Patrick Lo is quoted as saying “NETGEAR has remained an agile leader and has continued to deliver innovative products that give consumers the functionality they want and need. We look forward to leading the way into the next wave of Internet connectivity and providing consumers with the tools they need to experience a fully connected lifestyle."
Storage
Netgear has been very quick to react to our changing storage need with release of their Netgear ReadyNAS* range of home media storage devices. With our growing need for entertainment content so as our need for digital storage space. A home today with broadband access of 25Mb or more will host gigabyte in storage. The ReadyNAS range (now up to ReadyNAS Ultra 2) has grown with this need. Netgear has gone even further to partnered with TiVo the Entertainment On-Demand solution provider to integrate the support their platform so that users can expand their DVR (Digital Video Recorder) capacity. The ReadyNAS range also comes with Orb transcoding which formats your content for your chosen screen or device, and Skifta which shifts movies and music onto compatible DLNA devices.
Media Player
Their range of media players have also evolved to keep up with the variety in entertainment sources. Their media player the NeoTV HD Media Player which was developed with Zixi is one their devices to receive a CES 2011 Innovations Award. The NeoTV HD Media Players (NTV550) allows you to play your digital photos, music and videos directly onto a HDTV whether the media is stored locally, on your home network, or the Internet. The NTV550 supports 1080p HD, DTS and Dolby Digital surround sound, and offers an additional E-SATA port for faster transfer speeds along with advanced metadata tagging that lets users browse cover art. Other media players include the Digital Entertainer Elite.
Networking
Pure networking has always been Netgear’s strong point therefore; they have this area completely covered. In this category they have shown purely wireless solutions and hybrid solutions to give you to option of using wired, wireless or both, which in Powerline AV. To take you outside to the internet they have demonstrated a set of devices with varied functionality.
In the growing area of Powerline AV solutions they demonstrated three products at the show; these were the NETGEAR N300 Wireless Router with Powerline AV (WNXR2000), the NETGEAR Internet Adapter for Home Theater (XAVB5004) and the NETGEAR Powerline AV 200 Nano Adapter Kit (XAVB2101). The WNXR2000 offers a mixture of wired and wireless connectivity with a speed of up to 200Mbps, it allows you to networked your whole home without the need of rewiring your home. The NETGEAR Internet Adapter for Home Theater (XAVB5004) is HomePlug AV certified and is the market’s first 4-port 500Mbps powerline adapter kit; it can used to delivers flawless HD video streaming and is capable of connecting up to four Internet-ready home theater devices, such as IPTVs, TV set-top boxes, HDTVs, Blu-ray players, media players or game consoles to the Internet.
For many of us who have used wireless solutions you know it does not always work as it is expected. According to Netgear their latest Wireless solutions the Universal WiFi Range Extender (WN3000RP) “increases the coverage of an existing home network to include 'deadzones' and provides more network bandwidth for entertainment, gaming and social networking applications.” The 3DHD Wireless Home Theater Networking Kit (WNHDB3004) which is another CES Innovations Award honouree it “is the first solution capable of reliably delivering multiple jitter-free 1080p high-definition video streams throughout the home with no new wires,” according to Netgear. It’s a 4x4 MIMO which means it has four transmitters and four receivers built into each 3DHD Wireless adapter for Multiple Input Multiple Output transmission.
Gateways and Routers
For devices that takes you out of your home and onto the web Netgear showed three gateway routers which meet our basic needs and more. The premium edition NETGEAR N600 Wireless DualBand Gigabit Router (WNDR3800) is an upgrade to the WNDR3700 with the same name. It offers all the features of its predecessor plus a host of media solutions - such as ReadyShare Printer and Quick Start, Clear Channel Selector, Steady Stream HD, which starts streaming videos faster with less buffering delay and maximizes bandwidth for highest quality video. Other features include DLNA media streaming, Expanded TiVo Storage and is Apple Time Machine Compatible.
Other devise includes the new NETGEAR N600 Wireless DualBand Gigabit ADSL Modem Router (DGND3700). It was design to support multiple broadband technologies within a single gateway and consolidate multiple network devices in the home, it has a built-in ADSL modem and 4 port Gigabit Ethernet for high-speed cable or fiber service. Another is the N750 Wireless DualBand Gigabit Router (WNDR4000) which offers the basic in internet connectivity with a speed of 450Mbps.
Service Providers
Netgear has also developed a family of OSGi-enabled gateways IP- devices (VEVG3700, DHH1000 and CG3202/CG3302) for the mobile, cable and wired service providers. These are the mobile Broadband router (MBR1000), which is a 3G/4G mobile broadband solution; the OSGi-enabled VDSL2 and GigE dual WAN gateway (VEVG3700), a DSL, FTTH or DOCSIS compatible network solution, and can act as a DLNA/UPnP server to stream content to other devices; The ADSL2+ , VDH1000 and VDB1000 DECT handset and charging base Digital Home Hub (DHH1000); The Cable gateway (CG3202), a DOCSIS 3.0 Dual Band WiFi cable solution developed for the connected home if offers high performance for real time applications including video, audio, voice and online gaming.
Powered by the iControl platform Netgear developed a new range of security solution that enables service providers to extend their services to customers through a set of IP based home security services. The product range includes Home Security Screen (HSS101), IP camera (HSC101) and wireless range extender (WN2000RPT).
*check to see which model supports the features you need