New NAD device announced for CEDIA

[jautor]

From Stereophile's Ultimate A/V web site this morning:

http://www.guidetohometheater.com/news/090604cedia/


NAD has announced its first "network receiver," a device capable of retrieving and streaming PC audio, video, and picture files and playing them back on home entertainment systems. NAD describes the NetCap network receiver as "an incredibly simple and inexpensive way to access music, movies, and pictures stored on any home networked PCs from the comfort of your home entertainment system. The NetCap treats your PC network simply as another AV source, and delivers any designated content to the big screen, including music and video files that can be heard in complete surround sound."

The Netcap supports all popular music formats (MP3, WMA), picture formats (JPEG, Kodak), and even movies (MPEG 4/DIVX), using either an Ethernet hardwired connection, or 802.11G (including 802.11b) wireless access. Even Internet radio broadcasts can be streamed to the home theater system via the NetCap. NAD provides the software that needs to be loaded on all the computers in the network. Then using the supplied remote with the NetCap network receiver, users can access all computers in the network and all the files on those computers. Music, movie and picture files can be selected from any computer quickly and easily via the on-screen display and wireless remote handset.

NAD provides an assortment of I/O connections on the NetCap, including an additional USB port on the unit's front panel. "Using a progressive-scan component video output, picture quality of video content is stunning. High quality music playback from compressed file formats is assured using NAD's superior decoding, D/A conversion, and high quality analog circuits," states a pre-show announcement. The NetCap will be available in 4th quarter 2004 at a suggested retail price of $499.



I'll be at CEDIA this week, and hopefully will get a picture and more info... The price looks correct for the feature set. Now, hopefully, it has a front panel display (in addition to a good TV-based GUI), and supports some form of lossless compression. The article at least mentions WMA, so there's some hope? I'll definitely be pounding on them!

Jeff

[NickChicago]

It's also interesting that it's being done by NAD, at a mildly acceptable price point. They aren't known for putting out sub-par gear.

[jautor]

Yeah, when I saw NAD, I expected something akin to the Yamaha Musicast - at least in price...

The $499 price point shows that someone there understands the leverage available with the "previous installed home networking infrastructure". Don't try to sell me commodity hard drive space - just link to it, and charge me for a good user interface! Please!

Jeff

[hmurchison]

The Netcap supports all popular music formats (MP3, WMA)

LOL. What about the 130 Million AAC songs out there that have been purchased? What about Flac support? This might be a decent box, I'm skeptical though. The recent "networked" audio components from traditional audio companies have sucked pretty much. I think it's easier to get a computer product to perform well as an audio device than it is to take an audio device and make it function like a computing device.

Suffice it, I shan't buy any networked audio devices until after CES 2005. I need iTunes support and a decent freakin' interface and capable networking. That's all I ask.

[Paul_PDX]

Sounds like another Showcenter or Neustron type box and you can find them for much less than $499, So is it just the NAD name that makes it worth $499. For less we are about to have more capable boxes which do DIVX HD or WMVHD when the next gen Sigma Designs based boxes begin to ship.

[Erik Garci]

Originally posted by Paul_PDX
For less we are about to have more capable boxes which do DIVX HD or WMVHD when the next gen Sigma Designs based boxes begin to ship.
At least one next-gen box is already available from Japan. It uses the EM8620L chip by Sigma Designs.

Vertex Link MediaWiz HD (https://compactimpact.com/shopping/product_info.php?products_id=92)

[Funky_K]

Will this have an rs232 interface for Crestron control?

[drew138]

Keep us posted on this or any other cool devices from the show. Hopefully this will be the year that we start to see some of the integrated products we're all waiting or.....

Found this online today... seems pretty sweet with all alot of supported codecs...

http://www.engadget.com/entry/8817137592535561/
http://news.designtechnica.com/article5288.html

Drew

[rhett7660]

For some reason I can't get into the devices that don't look like they will fit nicely into my audio rack.... I would prefer the item to look like a piece of audio gear.... If this makes sense....

R~

[rhett7660]

Reviving an old thread....


So does anybody know what happened to this? Did it ever make it to the store shelves???

R~