The best press event of the morning was definitely from Netgear. The theme of their presentation was the concept of the All-Access Home and they focused on 3 innovations that Netgear has made that make the All-Access Home possible.

  1. Metamaterial antenna technology that supports multiple internal antennas while reducing WiFi interference
  2. Push ‘N’ Connect which offers simplified, 1-click WiFi setup
  3. X-RAID automated storage technology that provides redundant data backups

And although Netgear is launching 18 new products at CES, they focused on 3 key products in their vision of the All-Access Home.

  1. RangeMax Dual Band Wireless N Router is a concurrent dual band router that features 8 “metamaterial” antennas. It is A, B, G and N certified and offers the new Push ‘N’ Connect setup. It will be available this month for $129.
  2. HD/Gaming 5GHZ Wireless N Networking Kit offers lag-free, jitter-free HD video and gaming across a wireless network. It has 6 internal “metamaterial” antennas and features the new Push ‘N’ Connect setup feature. It will be available this month for $129 for 1 and $229 for a 2-pack.
  3. Ready NAS Duo offers centralized, network storage that uses Netgear’s patent-pending X-RAID technology. The tiny two-bay device supports up to 2 TB. It provides secure remote access via the web and uses the new Push N Connect setup. It will be available in various configurations; however, the 500GB Ready NAS Duo will retail for $499.99.

The best part of the presentation was when they actually put all of these new products to the test. They connected a Netgear Digital Entertainer HD set-top box to an HDTV. On a second HDTV, they connected an XBOX 360.

To get these product connected, they used the RangeMax router, the HD gaming kit and the Ready NAS.

First, they started playing HD video from the Ready NAS Duo streamed through the Netgear Digital Entertainer HD to one of the HDTV displays. No problems with video quality and no stutters.

Next they added in the XBOX 360 playing Halo 3 online through the HD Gaming kit. Again no problems with the video quality or stutter on either display.

To tax things a bit more, they started downloading video from Bit Torrent. No matter what bandwidth intensive activity they added, the video on both displays looked great.

The final test was to pull one of the 1TB drives, which was serving the HD video, out of the Ready NAS Duo. Again, there was no stutter or hiccup in video performance on either screen.

Overall, it was a very impressive and, thanks to the presenter, entertaining demo.

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