My Keynesian spending binge continues (I'm going it for the economy of course -- give me a medal). As I mentioned in the "Black Monday" thread, I went nuts and got a 40" flat screen HD TV. And then I just had to get this, which should be here some time tomorrow:

http://www.netgear.com/Products/Ente...Specifications

Several other outfits make these, including Linksys, D-Link, HP, and others. However, some of them flat-out require Vista or Windows Media Center crap and others depend on the UPnP A/V protocol, which requires Windows Media Player 11, or some other UPnP A/V software. D-Link makes one that requires WMP 11, but others include their own UPnP server software. The Linksys models all require Vista/Media Center.

Of all I looked at, this Netgear model was the only one that could do straight SMB regular network access, acting as a regular network peer to read and write shares. It can still do UPnP (and requires it for DRM content, which I wouldn't use anyway), but I preferred the regular network access ability.

Then the thought hit me: does anyone make a TV with this functionality built it? That is, a little ethernet port and/or wireless receiver right in the TV?
If so, and if it's reasonably priced, I wish I would have bought one of those.


-Richard