Barbarians at the High-def Gates
Almost all the TVs at CES were high-def, but since wacky viral videos are now the rage, manufacturers stooped to prove they can also show low-def content by connecting to anything that moves on the Internet. We saw a slew of announcements intended to let people watch pixel-challenged videos, better suited for a small corner of a computer screen, on their 50-inch displays.
To demonstrate its Bravia Internet Video Link (to be available initially for its Bravia S-series LCD HDTVs), Sony showed a visually muddy and fingers-in-your-ears home-video clip streamed from Grouper of a young woman sneezing uncontrollably in a field. The optional module (price to be determined, summer) attaches to the rear of Sony's sets so you can use the TV remote to pull free Internet video content from Sony's partners AOL, Yahoo, Sony Pictures, Sony BMG Music, and Grouper. Some of the content is high-def, though you wouldn't know it from Sneezy. The book-shaped module connects to your home network through an Ethernet port (Wi-Fi isn't built in) and includes a pass-through HDMI output to the TV.
Netgear introduced a wired and wireless (802.11n) media receiver that lets you stream YouTube videos directly to your set. When it ships early this year, the Digital Entertainer HD ($349) will be one of the first receivers with HDMI for streaming high-def movies at up to 1080p.
Not to be outdone, Sling Media, the company that stunned CES 2 years ago by letting you watch your TV from a computer anywhere in the world, debuted SlingCatcher (about $200, summer), which lets you watch streamed or stored video from your PC on a TV anywhere.
As CES was unfolding in Las Vegas, Steve Jobs stood on a stage in San Francisco and took the wraps off Apple's long-rumored set-top receiver, Apple TV ($299). The box streams movies and other media from a Mac or PC using a high-speed AirPort 802.11n wireless network. It includes a 40-GB hard drive for storing content locally, and has both HDMI and component-video connections for your TV and an optical digital audio connection for your receiver.
For TV viewers who know nothing about home networks but would still rather watch video from their computers on their TVs, SanDisk offered a sneakernet solution. Use the USBTV flash drive (price to be determined, April) to copy videos or other content from your computer, then walk it over to its mate, a cradle containing a multimedia processor that plugs into the TV's S-video input. It comes with a small remote and is expected to be available in 2- and 4-GB versions. — Michael Antonoff
