AnandTech started covering the media streamer market last year. Thanks to the support of readers like you, the response has been very encouraging. Over the last few months, manufacturers have been willing to talk to us about their proposed products in advance of their launch. This has given us some opportunities to provide feedback and make a request for features that we think are indispensable.

We had already talked about A.C.Ryan's entry into the US market in our CES 2011 coverage. One of the products that was covered in the press release was the second generation PlayOn!HD streamer. The PlayOn!HD lineup was A.C.Ryan's flagship last year, but that position has been taken over by the A.C.Ryan Fluxx. However, A.C.Ryan is continuing their PlayOn!HD product lineup too. This year, we have the PlayOn!HD2 using the next generation Realtek chipset 1185DD.

A.C.Ryan was kind enough to send us a prototype in advance of the official market availability later this month. The firmware is still a bit raw, which means we will postpone the review of the core functionality to a later date. Instead, what we will be seeing today is a look at the hardware platform itself. Read on to get a look at the first Realtek 1185DD based media streamer in the wild.

ASRock has yet another Mini PC in its lineup, this one makes use of an Atom dual-core processor and NVIDIA ION Graphics. In this review we will attempt to see if the ION 3D is capable of keeping up with its bigger brothers the Vision 3D and the 100HT-BD in the role of Home Theatre PC.

Last year, Micca released a hard drive based portable media drive called the Slim HDD Digital Media Player (imaginative, I know). Based around a standard 2.5” notebook hard drive, the Slim DMP could handle a wide range of containers and formats and had a 720p HDMI output. For the $59 (no drive) price tag, it represented a solid value and even without too many premium features, it was a very functional media player at its core. Now we’ve got Micca’s followup device, the $79 Slim-HD Portable 1080p Full-HD Digital Media Player, which adds support for 1080p playback, FLAC audio, and a new UI. How does it fare in our labs? Read on to find out.

Today I have in my hands the Netgear Roku XD media streamer, the latest media streaming solution for the living room to get retail store distribution by allying itself with a company best known for networking solutions. Does the Netgear Roku HD have what it takes to compete with the likes of D-link's Boxee Box or Logitech's Revue? What are the limitations and benefits of this particular media streamer? Let's find out.

Western Digital has become a noted player in the media streamer market over the last two years. Instead of resting on the laurels received for the WDTV, they have continued to introduce new products periodically. Their flagship product lineup started with the WDTV. Introduced in November 2008, it used Sigma Designs 8635. The second generation (2G) product (WDTV Live) added a 100 Mbps wired ethernet port. It used the next generation Sigma chipset, SMP 8655. By then, Netflix became an indispensable requirement for media streamers in the US market. This led WD to introduce the WDTV Live Plus, a 2.5G product which used the Macrovision enabled SMP 8654. Today, Western Digital is introducing their 3G flagship product, the WDTV Live Hub.

We were fortunate enough to gain early access to the WDTV Live Hub (only after it was leaked in Canada by Best Buy, though). WD claims that the 3G product takes all the features from their previous flagship products, and adds a host of attractive features at a price point of just US $199.99. How effective are these new features, and more importantly, are they worth the additional cost? Read on for our review of the WDTV Live Hub.

Zotac has become quite popular in recent times for their entry level products in the mini-ITX motherboard, Atom / ION nettop and nVidia GPU space. Their mini-PC lineup started with the Zotac MAG series last year, and this year's refresh comes in the form of the ZBOX.

Zotac sent us their highest end model in the ZBOX lineup, the Zbox HD-ID34. Its specifications satisfy the requirements of an entry level Blu-Ray playing HTPC, but how does it really fare? Read on to find out our impressions after putting this HTPC through the paces.

Boxee and D-Link announced the availability of the Boxee Box for pre-order on Amazon today. At CES 2010, they demonstrated the Boxee Box with the Tegra 2 SoC inside. The press release today brings the news that the Tegra 2 has been replaced by Intel’s CE4100. This is one of the first mainstream products in the market to incorporate an Intel x86 based SoC.

What happened behind the scenes? Why did Boxee and D-Link decide to drop Tegra 2? What are the details of the new SoC in the Boxee Box? What capabilities are brought forward by the Boxee Box in the media streamer market? How would it compare with a HTPC? Read on to find out more about the Boxee Box and our analysis of today’s announcements.

The last few years have seen a large number of digital content sources becoming easily accessible to end consumers. Digital content providers such as Netflix have recently been expanding their service to be compatibile with game consoles like the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii, and an increasing number of Blu-ray players and televisions. WD has followed suit and now offers a flavor of their WD TV series that supports Netflix video streaming and also has one of the widest ranges of both online and local content compatibility that exists in the media streaming device market today.

In this review, we examine the WD TV Live Plus and put it to test using our recently developed media streamer / HTPC review methodology.

Anandtech has evaluated many systems in search of the utopian HTPC. However, every one of them has ended up with some issue or the other. When ASRock offered to send us their flagship HTPC introduced at the 2010 CeBIT show, we jumped at the opportunity to evaluate it and determine whether it was the HTPC of our dreams.
 

Instead of going with a second generation ION chipset that many had expected them to (after the ION 330-HT from last year), they sprang a surprise by opting for an Arrandale based platform. Having realized that the Atom in the nettop was the main reason for enthusiasts to avoid using them as full-fledged HTPCs, they have corrected their approach now. We had earlier mentioned that Clarkdale / Arrandale was quite up to the task as a HTPC platform. In the last few months, we have seen the introduction of many H55 / H57 based mini-ITX motherboards supporting the Clarkdales. The strong demand for such motherboards indicates that there is a definite market for pre-built HTPCs based on the Clarkdales and Arrandales in that form factor. The Core 100 series from ASRock seems to fit that bill.

How does ASRock's flagship product fare? Is it the destination in our search for the utopian HTPC? Read on for Anandtech's review of the ASRock Core 100HT-BD.

VLC 1.1.0 was released on Jun 22, 2010. Since the monolithic VLC bundle obviates the necessity for installing external codec packs, it is an indispensable install for many HTPC builders. VLC 1.1.0 brings to the table many interesting features missing earlier. High definition video playback received quite a bit of attention in this release. In addition to support for decoding videos with GPU assistance, handling of MKV files has also been improved. VP8 / WebM support is also an interesting addition. A number of other improvements have also been made, and you can find details in the changelog here.

In our opinion, GPU decoding support in VLC is a big game changer. HTPC enthusiasts often spend a great amount of time getting DXVA to work well in their favourite media player. If VLC manages to get similar results from a layman's viewpoint, it would be a godsend for HTPCs to take off from the niche they currently hold. Anandtech set out to test the GPU acceleration provided by VLC on the Windows platform. Read on to find out what we discovered.

A few months back, Anandtech carried the review of the Patriot Box Office media streamer. Pursuant to a very good reception from readers, we have decided to start a dedicated home theater section where we will be covering products in this space. Of primary interest will be media streaming boxes, but we will also cover other DLNA enabled products, media extenders, PVRs and DVRs.

We will formally inaugurate this section with a roundup of the various platforms in the media streamer space. Towards the end, our methodology to evaluate the various media streamers will also be presented. Readers are welcome to give feedback and let us know areas they would like reviews to concentrate more on. Read on to find more about the history of media streamers, the current state of the market and where we think it is headed.

Patriot sent us its first foray into the streaming media market. This tiny little box will let you stream everything from ripped movies to full blown Blu-ray images to your TV. We took it for a spin.