3 New Products You Shoud Know About
January 25, 2011

2011 could be the year many more folks take a serious look at Internet TV as a viable option to traditional cable or satellite set top boxes.

Based on our expereince last fall with the new Toshiba LED TV, model 55UX600U, which advertised support for Netflix and other popular web content providers. We were roundly disappointed the only viable web interface provided out-of-the box was to You-Tube. They have since beefed up their interface to include Vudu, but still no Netflix!

We were pleasantly surprised to see Panasonic expanded its Viera Cast interactive TV features launched in 2008, Panasonic announced a new and improved IPTV technology, called Viera Connect (pictured above). The larger collection of IPTV offerings on 2011 Viera HDTVs will include applications for video streaming (including Netflix and Hulu+), and two-way interactive features from gaming to social networking, and fitness programs. Gaming and video streaming are mainstays, but the ability to monitor and manage health and wellness via the TV may attract a whole new audience of fitness buffs to this technology!

The fridge may be the last thing in the house you’d think of to connect to your network. But in our Future of Home Automation section in the Home Automation Primer we warned appliances would all come with an Ethernet connection.

The Samsung RF4289 goes beyond a connection used for software updates only by adding practical functionality for the kitchen. The 8-inch LCD screen acts like a built-in tablet PC and includes apps for kitchen-friendly content like Weather Bug, Epicurious, and AP News. You can use the Google Calendar to keep track of your family events and the photo slide show can replace fridge magnets. It also includes the Twin Cooling Plus system to keep food fresher longer.

While the Samsung fridge is an attractive step forward, we're still a ways away from an automated interface to a smart home control system, until some industry leader can clearly claim to be the "smart OS for home technology" of choice.

For those with a large digital music collection containing tracks in high-resolution formats, the choices for matching playback quality have been limited. So, who needs a CD to enjoy pristine-sounding digital music these days?

Not those who plan on adding Bryston’s BDP-1 high-resolution digital music player. The solid-state piece of equipment relies on its plug-and-play functionality for delivering gorgeous-sounding tunes to your system, with the “plugs” in this case being a couple of USB drives on the front and rear panels. There is no disc drive, but that’s part of the point – you can connect a hard drive full of music you’ve ripped or downloaded, including high-resolution 24-bit/96KHz files from the many sites that now offer them. Then just connect the BDP-1 to your sound system and sit back and enjoy!