Netgear NTV550 (NeoTV 550)
Along with the also yet to be released D-Link Boxee Box the $169 NTV550 has the ability to bring streamers into the Blu-ray generation. Until recently it’s been hard to find support for naive DVD playback and impossible for Blu-ray.
Purchase Points
- Native DVD and Blu-ray support including lossless audio
- Less expensive than the D-Link Boxee Box
Pass Points
- Wi-Fi ready
So far there has been no mention of which online services will be supported such as Netflix. Which means just like the D-Link Boxee Box if you want Blu-ray support you might be giving up most if not all of the popular online streaming services. Also if you purchase a Netgear WNCE2001 Universal WiFi Internet Adapter
Hopefully the next generation streamers will catch up to the past generation and offer most if not all of the online services. It would be nice to have one box do everything. Right now it appears if you want to stream everything you’ll need more than one.
A shelf tag for the NTV550 has shown up at Fry’s with a price of $169 and is expected to be available within two weeks.
As of today the expected release date is the last week of November.