On Tuesday, Gateway announced its own branded DVD player that will also serve as a front end for playing back media files stored on a users PC.
Gateways “Connected DVD Player” represents another stab at distributing media files around the home, such as Tivos to share media files, known as the Tivo Home Media Option, or Microsofts plan to enable sharing among PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition.
The DVD player will not act as a personal video recorder (PVR) with an onboard hard drive. Instead, the DVD player will be connected via a wireless network to the PC, which will be required to run a custom software application.
“But its designed to look and feel the same,” said John Schindler, a product marketing manager for connectivity solutions at Gateway. Theres My Video, My Music, et cetera. But its proprietary Gateway software.”
The NTSC DVD player is a progressive-scan model, capable of displaying video from DVD movies, CD-R/RW discs, and file formats including JPEG, MP3, and Kodak picture CD. The player can also process MPEG and WMA audio streams from the home PC. The player contains stereo, coaxial digital, optical digital and headphone outputs, and can process Dolby Digital and DTS Digital encoding, according to Gateway.
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