Home > Consumer Reviews > Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer (HDTV Ready Media Streamer)

Firmware released in Feb 08 makes this unit a completely different kettle of fish!
I had the same problems with freezing, lip synching etc, with the new firmware (2.xx) all of these issues have gone away. You also get lots of new features including a better user interface, support for straight DVD rips with menus (ISO & VOB) and the ability to play Matroska format movies.
There are two things I like about this unit compared to most other media players I've tried:
There's no need for any software at the streaming end. The unit just looks for shares on the network, which means it will play files from a PC, Mac, NAS or anything where you can share folders from.
It plays pretty much any movie file including MKV, DIVX, XVID, AVI, MPEG and upto 1080P resolution!

It was a shame this firmware wasn't available at launch but since upgrading my unit, it's like having a whole new player. One that works really well!

Okay, where to start?

This device is not ready for market. That's about the size of it. Mine has been returned to Amazon. I spent 2 weeks with Netgear support being passed from pillar to post with no usefull assistance at all. I made them a promise that I'd post as many reviews as possible about this device and that they would be very detrimental but 100% accurate. I would not want to be a liar, so here we go...

The pro's
It looks great, the interface is good. Beware the folder browsing - you have to enable it in the admin section (God knows why) but once you do so it works very well.

Music
The music side of things seems fine, browse by artist, album, genre etc. Good searching and playback quality was fine.

Pictures
Pictures can be a little slow but once the system has created thumbnails of your photo's, browsing through folders is better, although again, when it comes to switching from one full size photo to another it did tend to lag a little. I suspect though, that most users, like me, are not buying this device to look at pictures.

Extras
YouTube streaming worked fine for me, although others have reported issues. Obviously a YouTube clip on a 42" LCD TV isn't going to look great, but you can't blame Netgear for that. As YouTube quality and streaming gets better, this feature will be even better by default.

PC Access didn't work for me as I could only see the middle part of my screen irrespective of the screen resolution on my PC. This meant that I couldn't get to the icons on my desktop or the 'Start' button. If the screen display had worked, this feature could have been usefull, although picture quality is not superb. As with YouTube and Pictures, this is a nice to have, rather than a must have of the system.

Movies
The TAG feature which lets you download IMDB data and images for your movies is good and makes the system 'Complete' as a media server. Playback sound and picture quality was superb. When selecting movies to play (All XVID, AVI ranging from 1.5 to 4GB) the system would buffer for about 10 seconds before playing, which is perfectly acceptable. Streaming was very impressive too as I was trying this over a wireless G network (The device does not support N or pre-N) and I got no noticeable skipping.

The cons.
As stated above. The device just doesn't seem to work and is not ready for general release. If you are happy to assist Netgear through their support network and BETA forum then go for it. You'll be in for a rough ride but eventually I do beleive this still has the potential to be the best product of it's class, if you're willing to wait. The lastest public firmware release is a must have to get stable. There are 2 subsequent BETA releases which fix various issues but break others - they are BETA so you can't expect much, but there is no set date for the next stable public release.

My biggest problem was with inconsistent file sharing. I have 15 shared folders. 1 for photo's, 1 for music, 1 for TV and all the others for different genre's of movies. On first setup, it found all folders, subsequently, it would drop at least 5. You have no idea which 5 until you try to play a movie and get told there is an error. You then have to restart the box (which sometimes locks it up) and re-scan for media all over again (10-30 minutes each time)

Playing a film (subject to the above) is fine, so long as you don't want to stop and restart later (goes out of sync, and won't retstart from the beggining), fast forward (goes out of sync), rewind (goes out of sync), step foward or back (goes out of sync) - Spot the pattern!

Netgear Support
Oh dear! First of all, they need to change their name to Netgear Call Logging, as that's all they do. By all means try them, but you'll get more use from the forums or by researching things yourself. At one point I was told that all the problems were due to my router, until I pointed out that I had a Netgear router, at which point it was just a router firmware issue so could I DOWNGRADE the firmware. I pointed out that my router only worked 100% after getting the current firmware and was unwilling to do this, so I was then asked to remove all security - which again, I refused to do as it would open up my network.

Conclusion
Even reading this review as I write, I have to admit that I'd still be tempted to buy one if I was you, but please trust me - it's just not ready - DO NOT BUY ONE. I got one from the second batch to hit the UK and had no choice but to send it back. It's not the cheapest of it's kind on the market but comes with such promise that the price is justifiable assuming it all works.

I only hope Netgear learn from the forums and other reviews as if they do, I'll buy one again, although I wouldn't do it for at least 6 - 12 months. They will only learn if they get hit where it hurts - in the wallet, so please do the right thing. Keep your hard earnt cash and stop people like Netgear thinking that they can release these devices before they are ready for market.

Thanks for reading this far

Good luck

PS - I tried a Pinnacle Showcenter 200 a couple of years ago. Doesn't look as good, interface isn't as pretty, but it works far better. The only bug I got was if you try to play a VOB file which has embedded special features in the main movie stream (Director commentary, Follow the White Rabbit on the Matrix etc). Other than that brilliant and you can get two for the price of one EVA8000.

The Digital entertainer is awesome. It transformed my family Christmas this year. I can almost understand some of the bad reviews it has got. If you use it to play files off your PC and just go with the standard configuration of searching all your My Documents folder then you will get a confusing mish mash of folders and content. I have lots of digital content on a NAS (HP Media Vault attached to my Wireless Network). I have one folder I share with the Digital Entertainer from the NAS, full of video content. To set it up you just add a network share, enter the IP of the NAS and the name of the folder you want to share. Viola, several years of legally ripped DVD content, no need to stream from your PC. We could flip from watching the first series of 24 to Heroes to Dora for the Kids. I don't think we watched any Christmas Telly at all.

Frankly if you want to watch normal movie files like AVI buy this and it will play perfectly. I can understand people complaining about VOB etc but save space on your drive and convert! I personally ignored the options for YouTube, photo's and music. A TV is for watching video/movie content and I wish Netgear had focused more on selling that angle than letting people look at RSS and Flickr. That's like asking a VCR to let you suft the net. Not needed!

Am I the first person to have upgraded to the latest Feb 08 firmware and still having reliability issues? Maybe it's because I am largely using the USB interface to load my multimedia library from an external portable drive (e.g Freecom). Seems better (and greener) than leaving PC on all the time. I also have a rival product (Linksys KiSS1600) and whilst it may not have all the fancy features that this product has, it does not (a) freeze completely half way through a film (b) take 2-5 minutes to boot up and allow you to access USB-held media and (c) occasionally crash for no reason whilst playing internet radio with a screen saver. Here's a few other quirks that you should be aware of (let's ignore crashing problems for a moment):

1. Plays internet radio - very good quality sound. Good feature, easy to use - self contained feature

2. You Tube. Hmm, does work but only via your PC. I do wonder why this couldn't be self-contained like the internet radio application

3. By default, it builds its own flat directory structure before allowing you to access files. Again why? Fear not however, somewhere in the depths of advanced settings, you can opt for normal folder access...

4. You can display (and listen to) content from your multimedia PC with this machine. Interesting and very clever feature - the directional arrow keys on the remote control acting as a virtual mouse once connection has been established. Makes you wonder why Netgear bothered with the YouTube appplication as you need to have the PC switched on for this anyway.

Sound and picture quality are first class of course and the video streaming appears to work fine. The acid test - and read into this what you like - is that my wife can understand and operate the KiSS1600 despite its silly remote control, but she has no inclination to understand or use the EVA8000. In a nutshell, it's too slow to load and not quite reliable enough in handling the basics. I seem to spend a lot of time in "advanced settings" - never a great selling point to your other half!

Whether a new firmware issue fixes these problems remains to be seen. Given Netgear's reputation I dare say it will, but it might just take another 6 months or so.

I was scheptical about buying this having read some of the reviews, but am very pleased with it. Since it's launch Summer 2007 there have been several software updates, and the current firmware really does work well.

I have still found some formats of MOV and WMV that it wont play, but all of my DIVX material works a treat. Recommneded for video. I already own a Squeezebox for streaming audio, and I prefer teh way it handles files so will only be using the EVA8000 for video.