This year definitely was the year of the streaming media device. Sharp is introducing a new unit in Japan early next year, called the CE-MR01, designed to stream a variety of image and movie formats over Wi-Fi. And it looks nice and all (you really can’t tell with these things until you use the interface), but I can’t help but wonder if they are just a flash in the pan.
DVDs are still a dominant content delivery platform for movies and television, which means everyone will need a DVD player. PVRs with hard drives are common for people with cable and satellite television. There are plenty of set-top boxes already, I’m saying. Since these streaming media devices are basically just decoding chipsets with Wi-Fi and Ethernet, why do they need to be separate units at all? I bet by this time next year, you’ll be hard pressed to buy a DVD player that doesn’t do streaming media from a network share.
Sharp CE-MR01 Network Media Player [eHomeUpgrade]
