There are lot of niche players in digital home market. Also few bigger SOHO network company like D-Link and NetGear. Good news is that old slow mainstream hi-fi companies are jumping to bandwagon: Yamaha, Onkyo and Philips. So. You may find now 10/100 LAN connectors among with most usual connectors on the backplane.
Yamaha
Yamaha has good reputation in home cinema systems and receivers. New models RX-V2700 and RX-N600 has media player functionalityes, added to pure good old receiver.
RX-V2700 features
- 7-channel powerful surround sound: 980W=140W x 7 RMS; 1,295W=185W x 7 Max
- Digital ToP-ART with superior audio-grade parts and devices used throughout
- Pure Direct for higher fidelity sound reproduction
- 3 in/1 out HDMI (Ver 1.2a) for handling digital signals including Super Audio CD
- Assignable amplifiers for bi-amp connection
- 1080p compatible HDMI (3 in/1 out)
- High-definition video up-conversion
- Up-scaling (480ior 576i to 1080i/720p)
- De-interlacing (480i/576i to 480p/576p)
- Wide-range video bandwidth (100MHz -3 dB, 1080p compatible)
- Network Receiver functions
(Internet radio, PC music files, USB portable audio players and flash drives) - iPod compatibility via optional Yamaha YDS-10
- Compressed Music Enhancer
- Improved YPAO sound optimization with 6 system memories
- GUI on-screen display (6 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Russian and japanese)
- Superior zone control with additional zone remote unit and zone multi-language OSD
- Upgraded CINEMA DSP with 22 DSP programs
- Dolby Digital EX and DTS 96/24 compatibility
Very interesting feature is MP3 music artifact removing: Compressed Music Enhancer
RX-N600 features
- 6.1-channel, powerful surround sound: 570W=95W x 6 RMS; 145W/Ch Max (for Europe);
- 810W=135W x 6 Max
- Digital ToP-ART and High Current Amplification
- 192kHz/24-Bit DACs for all channels
- Playback MP3/WMA/WAV music from a PC
- USB flash drive/music player compatibility
- Play Internet radio
- MusicCAST Client compatibility
- Compatible with iPod via optional Yamaha YDS-10
- Compressed Music Enhancer
- On-screen display
- 3 HDTV compatible component video inputs
- Component video up-conversion
- Digital video processing with TBC (Time Base Corrector)
- Quad-Field CINEMA DSP and 14 surround programmes
- Night Listening Enhancer (Cinema/Music) and SILENT CINEMA
Onkyo
Onkyo has also serveral new stream-able receivers. They look lika good old-school AV Receiver, but backplane reveals ethernet connection.
Internet Features:
- 30 Internet radio random presets
- Ethernet port (Homenetwork)
- Net-Tune Protocol Function
- MP3, WAV, WMA decoding
What exactly is Net-Tune??? Is it UPnP compliant? All what I found from the marketing matherials, that You have to install Net Tune Central server software to Your PC or home media server and starrt listening MP3, WAV and WMA music and Internet radio. Most probably it is just another entry level UPnP server.
2 comments:
These units seem sweet, but not simple to install. I take it a custom installer would do this??? Does anyone have any feedback on digital music servers? I'm interested in either the Philips WACS700 (http://www.philips.com) and the Olive Symphony (http://www.olive.us)
Any info helps. Thanks!
True, this network connected home entertainment devices are not matured jet. Bus most of the units what are UPnP compliant are quite easily installable. No need for particular installation (no ip adresses, drivers etc). Still many big names make thing more or less propriertary.
Very good 3.- party UPnP media server software is TwonkyMedia, look www.twonkyvision.de
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