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San Jose based Networking firm Netgear was out in force at this year’s CES show in Las Vegas, showing off a plethora of products it says will help push towards a fully internet enabled home, where content can move seamlessly from one device to another.
“2011 will represent a tipping point for the industry when more consumer electronic devices than computers will be connected to the internet in the home,” said David Henry, Netgear’s senior director of product marketing for home products. Indeed, the company believes we are fast approaching an age where everything from our Blu-ray players to our game consoles, set top boxes and appliances are all connected.
With people demanding and expecting more, high quality content to be able to stream seamlessly across devices, Netgear says its main challenge is catering to the amount of bandwidth a modern day connected home would need.
To this end, the firm has unveiled several products like its $100 wireless range extender and tiny $140 adapter which transforms a power outlet into an Ethernet jack in order to make every last inch of the home internet capable.
One product Netgear was touting on the CES showfloor was a 3D+HD wireless home theater networking kit (WNHDB3004), which as the name suggests is a four port universal Internet adapter for home theatre which can deliver high-definition streams simultaneously to four devices. It also purports to do away with the bandwidth clogging which can be caused when several Internet TVs are streaming different content at the same time within one home.
Netgear says the kit is powerline-based and can send 1080p and 3D streaming around the home and between four devices at a theoretical data rate of 500MBps, though the firm admits the actual data rate will be closer to 250 MBps. The product is powered by silicon from Quantenna Communications and apparently really shines when users test it out at distances of over 300ft, something not many competitors can claim to do.
At a suggested retail price of $169, it certainly won’t break the bank, either. Netgear also offers another version of the product, the WNDR3800 model, with dual band GbE using a 680 MHz MIPS processor which boasts features like the Netgear Genie, Clear Channel Selector and ReadyShare over-the-internet access.
Netgear was also showing off its 3G / 4G modem / router with support for HSPA+ and LTE, with internal modem modules from Sierra Wireless and its first hybrid Wi-Fi/powerline router, the N300. The N300 uses Netgear’s Pick-a-Plug technology which tells the user which outlet in a room is best for network performance and will ship this month with a $119 suggested retail price.
Another cool product at the Netgear booth was the TV Internet PTV2000 Push2TV HD set-top box, designed in conjunction with Intel to work with the chip firm’s wireless display technology (Wi-Di) that allows users to wirelessly project FullHD 1,080 from a laptop to a television.
That particular product will also purportedly deliver a full browser experience on a TV and is scheduled to ship during the first quarter for around $119.
