At long last, GoVideo has released a new version of its networkable DVD player, the D2740 Wireless Media Receiver + DVD Player. While this unit deserves praise for worthy improvements over its predecessor, the D2730, it may not deserve $180 from your bank account.
The biggest change in this new version is the inclusion of an integrated ethernet jack and 802.11g wireless networking (with support for WEP but not the more-secure WPA encryption standard). The previous player required an add-in card for any connectivity, and could support only 802.11b wireless. After I fiddled a bit in the setup menus, the D2740 connected solidly to an 11g router across 50 feet and through three walls. Music and video played smoothly, without any hiccups.
Once networked, it found the PC on which I had installed the included server software, which enables the D2740 to retrieve a slew of media files from the hard drive, including MP3 and WMA audio, AVI and MPEG-4 video, and photos in the JPEG, TIFF, BMP, and PNG formats. According to GoVideo, the D2740 also reads the Photoshop PSD file format, but I was unable to open several PSD files in my tests. A spokesperson for GoVideo acknowledged that the player occasionally fails to read some supported file types.
While connected to the server PC, the D2740 can also access Rhapsody, a $10-per-month streaming music service; the service appears as a separate server on the D2740's menu screen. Accessing Rhapsody went smoothly.
Unfortunately, the improvements stop there. The D2740 fails to correct many of the failings of the 2730. For one, it still relies on Digital 5's barely usable streaming media server software. The PC-side component remains a barebones app that inelegantly indexes media files on a system. Music listings, for example, fail to show the bit rate or even the file type (other than calling it "audio"). And when showing photos and videos, the interface pointlessly retains information boxes labeled "Albums," "Artists," and "Genres."
The player component of the Digital 5 interface is even worse. Using video out to a TV, the D2740 displays two blue windows with text menus reminiscent of WordPerfect for DOS. The left window lists media folders matching the collections on the PC. The right is context-sensitive, displaying song or video titles, or thumbnails of photos, depending on what mode you're in. Scrolling through the listings is poky, and made more difficult by GoVideo's chintzy remote that fails as often as it succeeds to transmit an infrared signal. I found the overall interface far slicker on the competing D-Link MediaLounge, which sells for $180 as an A/V streamer or for $270 with the addition of a DVD player and memory card reader.
As a DVD player, the D2740 offers acceptable image quality, with good color and grayscale performance. However, the de-interlacing for progressive-scan output is a bit rough. I noticed "crawling" in video featuring sets of parallel lines--such as the railings and siding on houses in the opening scene of
Given the 2740's middling performance--with regard to both streaming media and DVD playback--you'd be better off keeping your DVD player separate from your media streaming device. If you already have a DVD player, and have room for another A/V component, consider instead an audio and video streamer such as the D-Link MediaLounge. And if you are interested only in music, check out a networked audio bridge such as Apple's $129 AirPort Express, or Roku's $200 SoundBridge M500.
Sean Captain, special to PC World
