Ubergizmo got a chance to play with an in-development 720p networked media player built around the DivX platform. While they compared it to AppleTV, such a device seems more like an orange — it’s dependent upon a host PC, doesn’t have a hard drive, and doesn’t make use of content purchased from an iTunes-like store. All that aside, the device has a couple of pretty unique features…
“The user interface was quite nice. Much better than what we usually get in this type of device (think Apex, Linksys?), but the crunchy part is that all the user-interface (UI) rendering is done on the PC and sent to the player as very small DivX files! That?s a good idea that enables good graphics and UI on cheap hardware.”
That IS a good idea. Sluggish UI systems have been the bane of previous networked media player offerings. Anyone who’s had the “pleasure” of owning D-Link’s DSM-320 will know what I mean. Another cool feature is that forthcoming DivX hardware players will make use of an API to facilitate the development of user-created applications and plug-ins. Me like.
The best part of all? We could see these players for around $99.
DivX?s Apple TV, but smarter [Ubergizmo]
