NetGear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD user reviews

Pros It decodes h.264

Cons No wireless N.

Summary These 2 other reviews are funny because they haven't even used the product. If you really want an indepth understanding of the product from users I would suggest AVS Forum and the Netgear Forum.

The first gentlment assumes everybody will be using a wireless connection and the secone reviewer fails to understand that the EVA8000 is one of a very few streamers that is capable of h.264 which is huge for streaming HD.

The XBox requires modding for a great deal of it's funcitonality and if you are a fan of HD, the iTunes selection of HD content so very poor which renders Apple TV useless.

I am going reserve judement on this unit until I try it out myself then I will report back.

Pros I have had this unit for 8 months now and can access all shared media from the PC on my network. Will play ISO, AVI and VOB formats. Just rip your DVDs to a USB, NAS unit or media server and away you go.

Cons Does not support 1GB wired and Draft N wireless. In 100 yr old house, wireless G and N Routerscould not push signal from rear upstairs to front living room. Relocated Terastation NAS to shared gigabit switch in living room and all is streaming well

Summary I am hoping that they will put out another firmware patch to addres some clunkyness with RSS and UTube feeds. Upgrading the USB to allow USB wireless N or G would be cool, if techically possible. This unit is too nice and too expensive not to continue to develop the software and firmware functionalities.

Pros Beautiful interface

Cons Impossible to get all features working

Summary I spent an agonizing week sorting out the file incompatibilities and firmware problems and realized that even the tech support personnel knew less than I did. I finally gave up and ordered a competing unit.

Pros It has many great features (if/when they work) and it looks like an a/v component, not a computer component. I also really like that it does not require a computer to work (not a media extender) & works with a NAS device too.

Cons I hate that most of the features didn't work for me, and when they did work, they didn't work for long. I received my first unit in June and am now with my 4th unit in Sept and none of them worked right. Frequent reboots are the biggest problem.

Summary Overall, the unit has great promise, but it just doesn't work as advertised. I could never get it to recognize my PC for you tube access and the computer control never worked once. The worst part though is that the system would reboot at random times. I would use the unit everynight and at best it would reboot 3 times a week, and at worst it would reboot every 10-20 minutes. It was essentially unusable.

I really wanted to like this unit, and I did like the promised made on the box, but not the actual 4 units I tried unfortunately.