Jason Dunn
09-11-2004, 07:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117733,tk,dn091004X,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117733,tk,dn091004X,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The gateway is essentially a media server that can store movies (homemade or otherwise), music, and pictures on its own hard drive. You move such media to the gateway from a home computer: "It's totally drag and drop, and you can use a PC, a Mac, or Linux--it shows up as network-attached storage," says Trevor Bratton, ViewSonic's senior public relations specialist. The adapter plugs into a TV and connects wirelessly to the gateway, getting video and other content into the living room or wherever else the user has a TV. In fact, Bratton says that one of this system's advantages over existing video-streaming approaches is that multiple adapters can talk to one gateway, so family members can watch streaming video in both the den and the living room, for example."</i><br /><br />Pretty cool concept! The seems to be a network attached storage device (NAS) that is designed to work with a wireless media adaptor that you'd attached to a TV. From the sounds of it, they're using UPnP so that Windows-based computers will automatically see it. Likely Samba for Linux, and Rendezvous (?) for Mac. The only down side is the price: $699 for an 80 GB version seems a bit expensive to me (nevermind it's not big enough for all my media). What would be exceedingly cool would be if there were USB/Firewire ports on it so that you could attach other external drives and have them mesh together as a single drive. Now THAT would be cool. 8)