Netgear EVA700 review

Netgear's EVA700 can ferry audio and video to your television via wired or wireless networks.

Putting yet another piece of technology in the living room may be unpopular with some members of your household, but when it's designed to liberate your media files from the PC and bring them to the TV, it can't be a bad thing. Plus it helps when the item in question looks as smart as Netgear's EVA700.

The curved silver front panel definitely makes it the smartest streaming media receiver we've ever seen, and it should blend in well in an existing home entertainment stack. Like other media receivers, it uses either a wired or wireless home network to stream audio, video or photo files from your desk-bound PC, plus there's a USB port on the front for playing media directly from portable storage.

There are plenty of connectors on the rear, so you can connect it to your living room TV, including a component output for those with high-end TVs. The SCART connector should satisfy most users though, while coaxial S/PDIF and stereo phono outputs make it easy to hook up to a hi-fi or home cinema setup.

The EVA700 is easy to get up and running, thanks to a simple setup wizard. For the lucky few with a Viiv PC and a compatible router, it's easier still thanks to a simple password entry system. The interface generally works smoothly, but occasionally feels a little unpolished, with a nasty flickering volume bar appearing when adjustments are made. The remote is clearly laid out, but the media file shortcut buttons didn't always work.

All the usual media file types are supported, but the EVA700 wouldn't play VOB files ripped directly from DVDs. It streamed 720p HD video files across a wireless network without any problems, though. We did see some nasty visual artefacts on our DiVX test video file, though these weren't evident with other file formats. Still low resolution pictures weren't scaled that well either, leaving them rougher-looking than we expected.

The EVA700 comes with Microsoft's Windows Media Connect 2.0 server software. This is easy to set up and use, and gives you immediate access to all the files in your PC's My Documents folder. It's also compatible with the uPnP AV standard, so there's a wide range of other server software available too.