The current flux in the television market is embodied by the emergence of two closely related categories, namely, the Smart TV and the connected TV. While the former category is being actively promoted by Google (and, till recently, Intel), the latter is in the hands of the usual TV manufacturers like Samsung, LG, Vizio etc. The popularity of OTT (over-the-top) premium content in the form of Netflix, Vudu, Hulu Plus etc. in the US has also aided in popularizing the concept of Smart / connected TVs.

With the upgrade cycle for TVs being in the order of 5 - 10 years, there are a large number of consumers who have yet to jump onto either of these bandwagons. This has opened up the market for an intermediate device to bring connected features to their existing TV sets. It is precisely this market that has made devices like the Roku boxes and the Sony network media players successful. Last year, we looked at one of the Roku models that Netgear rebadged, and came away satisfied. This time around, Netgear has decided to come out with its own device for this purpose.

In today's review, we will take a look at the NTV200, the next generation refresh of the rebadged Roku model. Can Netgear one-up the Roku 2 with its own product? How does the NTV200 stack up? Read on for our take.

In the last year or so, three major SoC manufacturers vied for market share in the media streamer market. While Intel's CE41xx took the high end path with design wins in the Logitech Revue and Boxee Box, Sigma Designs and Realtek continued to retain design wins with their existing customers. Sigma's customers used SMP 8642/8643/8655 while Realtek customers migrated from RTD 1073 / RTD 1283 to RTD 1185. We have had media streamers based on these SoCs in-house for quite some time now. Almost all of them have been touched upon in one piece or the other. However, a comprehensive comparison piece was never published.

Read on for our comprehensive comparison of the Boxee Box (Intel CE4100), the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 (Realtek 1185) and the Netgear NTV550 (SMP 8642).

Roku is one of the pioneers in the media streamer market. They introduced the first Netflix streaming box in 2008. New models have been coming out every year. This time around, the rise of connected TVs and the Smart TV push from Intel have forced Roku to come out with something different compared to offerings from previous years. We had covered the launch of the Roku 2 lineup earlier and pointed out the casual gaming angle as the differentiating factor.

The top tier Roku 2 XS model was sent for review by Roku. How does it fare in our testing? Is a mixture of Internet video streaming and casual gaming on the big screen worth the $99 asking price? Read on to find out.

Approximately a year back, we reviewed the ASRock Core 100 HTPC which was a pioneer of sorts in the small form factor (SFF) HTPC space. Till that point, the pre-built SFF market was restricted to the anaemic Atom / ION based nettops. Core 100 was powerful enough to impress us and recommend it as a HTPC for buyers in the mid-range market.

Fast forward a year, and Intel has now moved forward from the Arrandales to the mobile Sandy Bridge CPUs for the notebook segment. ASRock has followed up their Arrandale based Core 100 with the mobile SNB based CoreHT series. In addition to the improvements that have been brought by the mobile SNB, we will also look at what ASRock has brought to the table in this review.

In the competitive media streamer market, we have been covering products with a huge US presence. Today, we will look at an offering from DViCO in the TViX series. DViCO is a Korean company with a big presence in the Asia-Pacific and European multimedia markets. DViCO's media streamers / tuners / PVRs are available under the TViX label.

We have had the TViX Slim S1 in our labs for more than 6 months now. Based on the Realtek RTD1283, it was introduced in July 2010. The initial firmware versions were not upto the mark, and the unit went into the review backburner. With streamers based on the next-gen Realtek chipsets starting to make an appearance, it was time to dust off the old review unit. Our friends over at MPCClub rank the TViX Slim S1 as one amongst the top five media players right now. Is it really that good? Read on to find out about our experience with the TViX Slim S1.

The media streamer market is a highly competitive one, where you have the big players like Western Digital and Netgear, and the really small ones like Micca. None of these companies have media players as their sole product, because it is quite difficult to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack in that market. We were surprised to learn of Nixeus, a Los Angeles based company, that was founded in 2010 with the purpose of bringing multimedia solutions to the market.

Nixeus introduced their first media player, the Nixeus Fusion HD, towards the middle of 2010. It made a big splash online, and there were many people on AVSForum singing its praise. The support was great, and reported bugs were looked into quickly. This encouraged us to get hold of a review sample. Read on to find out how the Nixeus Fusion HD fares in our stringent review.