The Gadget: HP's Mediasmart Connect, a networked receiver that plays back H.264, DivX, XviD, MPEG-2, WMV video, photos, and even connects to your Media Centre to act like an extender. It's also expandable space-wise with HP's Pocket Media Drives, and supports 10/100 Ethernet and 802.11a/b/g/n. It comes in a glossy piano black finish which attracts dust and fingerprints as easily as an actual piano.

Read More »

We've reviewed both the Cowon A3 and the Q5W and found them to be fantastic media players with a pretty damn wide range of video and audio format support. Cowon's just bumped up both players to 80GB, which is great since you're probably going to be loading both with lots of video files. We're still waiting for it to go up to 160GB like the iPod classics though. [Cowon]

IOGEAR's portable media player, actually named Portable Media Player, may look as generic as its name on the outside, but actually has some good features on the inside (but no screen). There's the most unique one, the ability to upscale video files to 720P for display on an HDTV, but there's also XviD, DivX, MPEG1/2, and full DVD menu support as well as a bunch of audio support. With a 120GB drive on board, the US$349.95 price tag doesn't seem all that steep, but there's probably little to no chance that most people will have the use of playing back 720P video on the go, on other people's screens. Maybe if you traveled a lot and wanted to watch your own movies in hotel rooms? [IOGEAR]

Read More »

Not only can you use this to play back streamed HD content from the Slingbox Pro HD on your HDTV, the Slingcatcher acts as a file dump for tons of file formats as well (DivX, XviD). The third and most innovative feature of the Slingcatcher is its ability to take video from your PC (either a portion of a screen or a specific window) and stream that to the Slingcatcher. It lets you watch YouTube video, ABC HD video, or anything you can play back on your computer—but on your living room HDTV.

Read More »

The Gadget: Linksys' slightly fancier Windows Media Center Extender, which streams the Windows Vista/XP Media Center interface over the network so you can watch live or recorded TV and downloaded files on TV in HD.

The Price: $US299

Read More »

As dapreview points out, this just-announced Cowon N3 looks quite like the Cowon Q5W we reviewed a few weeks ago. The most noticeable difference comes from the fact that this has a 7-inch screen as opposed to the Q5's 5-incher. Other than that, there's no internal memory—you have to use one of two SDHC slots to add storage—and GPS and DMB (portable TV) support. The good news is that this does support DivX/XviD and all the other video and audio codecs the Q5W does, meaning that you'll never have to go a second without entertainment. Ever. [Dapreview]

Huzzah! I've discovered why XviD files didn't work in the PlayStation DivX Playback test. Apparently, streaming over Windows Media Player 11 does not work for any XviD files and most DivX files, but it does work fine if you load the files onto an external USB drive or burn it to a DVD. But there's a workaround, kind of.

Read More »

The PlayStation 3 2.10 update is here, bringing with it not only Blu-ray Profile 1.1 support (which adds picture in picture among other things), but DivX and WMV playback as well. Unfortunately, DivX support means DivX support, and doesn't include XviD as some of us hoped according to readers includes XviD support, but the files we have tested don't work at all. We threw our normal battery of files at our PS3, and came to the conclusion that it's not quite as good as the Xbox 360 implementation. Here are our notes.

Update: We've found that XviD playback does work, but only on burned DVDs and external hard drives. See here for an update and a workaround.DivX and WMV play back fine. Just as they claimed, the PS3 now can play back DivX files and WMV files. No problemo.

Read More »

Remember Connect360, the app that let you stream music and video from your Mac to your Xbox 360? It's just been updated to support XviD and DivX functionality to match the fall upgrade you installed earlier this week. It still costs $US20 if you haven't purchased it before, but you can try it for free to see if it works for you. If this were the policy for everything, we'd have a lot of half-eaten bananas at the supermarket, along with much cleanup needed in the diaper aisle. [Nullriver]

The Gadget: The Cowon Q5W PMP that has a feature list as long as my leg, which (and this is abbreviated) supports a bunch of video formats such as DivX and XviD, along with various nerd-friendly audio formats like OGG and FLAC. It's also got an optional GPS mount as well, in addition to 60GB of storage and a 720x480 display.

The Price: $US599 for 60GB, $US549 for 40GB

Read More »