Review: Netgear EVA700 Digital Entertainer

Netgear has long been churning out networking kit, and the EVA700 Digital Entertainer is its latest media streaming device.

As with other media streamers, such as the Pinnacle Showcenter 200 and Kiss DP-600, the Netgear will hook up to your home network (either wired or wirelessly) and stream content direct from your PC to your TV.

If you happen to have a UPnP (universal plug and play) NAS (network storage device), the EVA700 Digital Entertainer will also be able to grab media from that too.

The silver-coloured unit is fairly large and, considering it tips the scales at just 2kg and sounds pretty hollow when tapped, we feel Netgear could have made it more compact.

The front is kept very clean with just a power button, USB socket, infrared receiver and headphone jack. Round the back you’ll find two Wifi antennas, an Ethernet port and A/V outputs in the form of Scart, composite, S-video, and component. There’s no HDMI option but, should you have an HD Ready TV set, the component outputs will provide your set with an HD signal.

Audio is taken care of by standard RCA analogue outputs and a digital coaxial alternative.

The EVA700 is controlled entirely via the remote, which is a compact affair that’s stylishly designed and not too overcrowded with buttons. A couple of navigation buttons would have been welcome on the device itself for those moments when you lose the remote.

The USB port located at the front will read media direct from a USB key or Fat32 USB hard drive. Although this is useful, if you’re planning to attach a large hard drive you’ll have to cope with browsing through the stored content using the standard directory tree.

We managed to get the EVA700 hooked up to our wireless network without any major problems. The interface is more user-friendly than that of Pinnacle’s Showcenter, but we found some pages to be frustratingly slow to load.

The device was able to stream DivX video over the 802.11g network without any performance issues. As expected, streaming HD video wasn’t so successful and we had to resort to using a wired Ethernet connection. Netgear recommends using its Powerline Ethernet over mains adaptores (such as the HDX101) – alternatively you could consider other similar devices such as the Panasonic BL-PA100KT or Devolo Dlan 200 AVdesk.

Format support is good with Mpeg1/2/4, Avi, Wmv, DivX and Xvid all being catered for and, as long as you've got a broadband internet connection, a huge range of internet radio stations are made available.

While Netgear’s EVA700 does a good job of streaming video, audio and photos, there is little new to shout about and we’ve seen plenty of similar devices over the past few years. The lack of an HDMI output is disappointing and, although the interface looks good, we were often left frustrated by slow opening pages and unintuitive navigation. The RRP of just under £200 is pretty expensive, but we found it for sale on Amazon for £155.

Also consider:
Philips SLM5500
Stream your video, music and photos with the minimum of fuss

Pinnacle Showcenter 200
Compact media streamer, but the interface is awkward

Noxon 2
Wirelessly stream Internet radio and your digital music collection to your hifi

All media streaming reviews

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