Netgear EVA700 Digital Entertainer review

Dave Stevenson Read more October 7, 2009

£128

Price when reviewed

The Netgear EVA700 is the first of what Intel hopes will be a full-blown salvo of Viiv-branded devices. Connect the EVA700 to your network and it will scan other devices on the network for UPnP or media servers, and then serve up compatible content via the plain but functional UI. You can connect to your TV via component, composite, S-Video or scart socket. Our first impressions were good: we had no problem connecting the EVA700 to a wireless network and, using Media Player 11 to share its content, everything was working in less than 20 minutes.

Netgear EVA700 Digital Entertainer review

Our best experiences came with video files encoded using DivX. With both the EVA700 and our host PC connected wirelessly to an 802.11g network, our video ran beautifully. HD is supported up to 1080i over the component connection, although the lack of an HDMI port dents the appeal. The other caveat is that HD video requires more bandwidth than 802.11g can reliably supply. Our tests produced jerky video even when the rest of the network was quiet.

The front of the unit is host to a headphone jack and a USB port that will work with any FAT32 storage device. The EVA700 will also play back JPEG files and most audio formats. PlaysForSure DRM is supported, but not iTunes purchases.

It’s not all rosy, however: there were mutinous grumblings from our audience when the connection between our host PC and the EVA700 fell down, which it did frequently. When this happens, the system stops responding while it waits to see if the network springs back to life.

For all Intel’s fuss about Viiv, content is currently underwhelming: if all of your other network hardware is Viiv compliant, you can save a few seconds on setup, but our experience was otherwise identical on both Viiv and non-Viiv networks.

When the EVA700 works, it does well, but we found it too intermittent to be practical. 1080p isn’t supported, and occasionally we were left high and dry while navigating through content. The price makes the EVA700 more tempting, but without new firmware to correct these issues it’s an unconvincing debut for non-PC Viiv hardware.