Netgear partners with BitTorent Inc.

The two have formed a collaboration to deliver HD videos, music, Internet radio and digital photos from your home PCs and storage devices to your HDTV.

Netgear has announced an ongoing "collaboration and agreement" with BitTorrent Inc. to promote video download streaming to HDTVs via Netgear's new Digital Entertainer HD (EVA8000) media receiver device.

The Digital Entertainer HD connects to an HD TV to stream digital media from PCs, network storage, and USB media players.

The receiver automatically locates, organizes and plays HD movies, TV shows, music, and pictures. It wail also stream internet-based video, news feeds, weather reports, or radio programs.

It supports HD playback of Windows® Media Video 9 or MPEG-4 file formats at up to 1080p resolution on your HDTV.

It will also allow you to do the following:


* Stream HD videos, music, Internet radio and digital photos from your home PCs and storage devices to your HDTV

* Automatically find all the digital media files on your home network and organize them into an easily accessible library

* Play YouTube Videos on your TV

* Plug your USB flash drive, digital camera, iPOD, or other USB storage device directly into the Digital Entertainer HD and instantly access stored digital media on your HDTV.

* With a TV tuner card installed in your PC, the Digital Entertainer HD can schedule recordings and pause and rewind live TV from your living room (TV Tuner card not included).

* Using two or more Digital Entertainer HDs in different rooms, synchronize music throughout the house (Party Mode) or pause a video in your living room and resume it in another room (Follow Me

All of the features of this new device from Netgear sound pretty cool but, I think they could have left out the "play YouTube videos" capability. Don't think watching a grainy video of some guy playing a guitar is what an HDTV is meant for.

What types of digital media file formats will it support?

- MP3 up to 320 Kbps or variable bit rate (VBR)

- WMA8 and WMA9 files up to 192Kbps or variable bit rate(VBR)

- WMV up to 1080p

- Internet Radio (streaming MP3, WMA)

- Video Formats: MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, WMV, Xvid

- Audio Formats: MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, FLAC

- Photo Formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF

- Playlist Formats: WPL, ASX, WAX, WVX, PLS, M3U, RMP

For those who use iTunes to acquire digital music media, the Digital Entertainer HD will apparently stream iTunes songs downloaded onto a Windows PC but not a MAC. The reason for this is that it is only able to stream it once iTunes authorizes the music for playback, and evidently this DRM is only able to be overcome on PCs and not MACs.

What's primarily interesting about this partnership with BitTorent Inc. is that it makes you wonder whether it is because of content or software that Netgear entered into this collaboration in the first place, or was it in fact both?

BitTorrent Inc. has already announced distribution partnerships with many of Hollywood's major movie studios as well as the UK's BBC, and is set to begin offering their content sometime in February of this year.

Content is crucial for Netgear otherwise it's just a fancy router, especially when the price is to be a reported $349 bucks.

Now when it comes to software, I have a sinking feeling that Netgear is using the uTorrent client server that BitTorrent Inc. recently acquired. It's small size and memory footprint really do make it an ideal means of delivering high quality audio and video quickly and efficiently.

"Our customers' growing appetite for quality HD content is well-served through NETGEAR routers, adapters, media receivers and storage devices," said Patrick Lo, NETGEAR's chairman and chief executive officer. "Even with broadband connections, however, the experience is only as good as the technology delivering the content over the Internet and to the HDTV screen. The audio and video quality of the Digital Entertainer HD -- combined with the speed, simplicity and security in BitTorrent's delivery technology -- offers exactly the type of experience our customers demand."

Hmm, I thought so. So BitTorrent IS slowly going legit after all.

"BitTorrent provides the most sensible content delivery platform for high- definition entertainment on the Internet," said Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent. "We are pleased to add NETGEAR to our family of innovative hardware manufacturers as we continue to expand BitTorrent's delivery capabilities beyond the PC."

I must admit that it is pretty cool to see the expanding potential of the BitTorrent protocol, the team over at BitTorrent Inc. taking it in new directions that will only get more exciting and revolutionary as time goes by.

In case you were wondering, Netgear's Digital Entertainer HD (EVA8000) will be avialble sometime in the next fiscal quarter(?), whenever that is.