At the end of our test of these three A/V streaming clients – the Fujitsu-Siemens AMP 150, Netgear EVA700, and Zyxel DMA-1000 – we come to the conclusion that this type of device is still in its early developmental stages and is thus plagued with a number of teething problems. For one thing, while the devices can handle standard definition (SD) video without a problem, all of them fail when it comes to HD-video. For now, streaming Full-HD content to your TV is nothing but a dream. If that’s what you’re looking for, our advice is to wait until at least another generation of devices hits the market. On the other hand, less demanding users may be quite happy with SD content and will find a comfortable way to watch DivX/XviD movies on their TV with these clients.

The good old DVD and its successors Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have one advantage over the A/V-clients – each of them uses a standardized video and audio format. Usability is also much simpler on player hardware for these media – just pop in the disc and the movie is ready to roll.

However, if the majority of your media library consists of video and audio files that don’t use a codec recognized by current DVD players, you were forced to re-code them to watch them on your TV until recently. Depending on your PC, this can take several hours. Streaming the content directly to your TV over the home network would be a much easier solution. In addition to your PC, that requires an A/V client like the ones we tested here.

In summary, we feel that these devices represent a good start. However, their compatibility to HD-video formats leaves a lot to be desired. Therefore, we are unable to make a recommendation regarding the units tested here.

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Recommended reading:

• Digital Living I: Turning Your Home PC Into A uPNP Multimedia Streaming Server
• Digital Living II: NAS-Storage Devices with Integrated Multimedia Servers