Netgear unveils Internet TV Player

The Internet TV Player at Netgear's CES demo. (Credit: Dong Ngo/CBS Interactive)

Together with the Digital Entertainer Elite, Netgear showed on Wednesday its new Internet TV Player (ITV2000).

This is an internet set-top device with a simple remote control that allows viewers to watch internet videos from various sources on their TV screens. It works with both new HDTVs and old analog TVs.

The purpose of the device is to display on a big screen TV what you would normally watch alone on your computer.

Currently, the device can stream content from popular sites such as BBC.com, CNN.com, ESPN.com, EuroSport.com, NBC.com, PGATour and TMZ.com, as well as video powerhouses YouTube, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos and MetaCafe.

The Internet TV Player supports streaming of live TV broadcasts from internet sites around the world. It can also handle paid movies from on-demand services such as CinemaNow.com.

The device can perform intelligent searches of internet videos, including targeting video sites by country, topic of interest, person or popular websites. It can also play video, music and photos from a local USB flash drive, as well as from Netgear's ReadyNAS family of network storage solutions.

The Internet TV Player connects to the home network and the internet via Ethernet or wireless USB adapter.

What the ITV2000 can do is not new; the Sony Bravia can do pretty much the same thing. However, the ITV2000 is the first device to deliver the technology in such a small package. It is just slightly larger than a deck of cards.

The Netgear Internet TV Player is expected to be available in early winter 2009 with the estimated price of US$199.