The Netgear

Netgear

Netgear is a U.S. manufacturer of computer networking equipment and other computer hardware....

 MP101 was the first of a series of digital media receiver

Digital media receiver

A digital media receiver , also commonly referred to as a media extender, media streamer, digital media hub, or digital media adapter , is a home entertainment device that can connect to a home network to retrieve digital media files from a personal computer or other networked media server and...

s by Netgear.

Family history

The Netgear MP101 was followed by the MP115 and the latest in the family are the "Digital Media Receivers" comprising the EVA700 and the EVA8000

The Netgear MP101 is a small brushed silver unit that sits on your hi-fi rack and attempts to provide a link between your PC

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

-based MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 collection and your conventional hi-fi.

The Netgear MP115 provides the same looks and functions as the MP101 but adds video

Video

Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...

 support.

In Netgear's Digital Entertainer

Netgear Digital Entertainer

Netgear's Digital Entertainer line of products are digital media receivers that can pull multimedia content from home computers to the typical audio/video entertainment center. There are three products in the line, the EVA700, the HD EVA8000 and the current EVA9150 Digital Entertainer Elite...

 line, the EVA700 moves to a more conventional DVD-player

DVD player

A DVD player is a device that plays discs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. These devices were invented in 1997 and continue to thrive...

 styling, but effectively has the same features as the MP115.

The EVA8000 follows the EVA700 form factor but adds in HD compatibility, and the ability to read directly off a media share. [May be available on the EVA700.]

Concept

The MP101 requires a UPnP AV media server to provide access to digital media, while some other units (and the later EVA8000) can read from a Windows share directly (or a NAS

Network-attached storage

Network-attached storage is file-level computer data storage connected to a computer network providing data access to heterogeneous clients. NAS not only operates as a file server, but is specialized for this task either by its hardware, software, or configuration of those elements...

 device).

Netgear does not actually manufacture these devices; they are made instead by a third-party company and then marketed as a Netgear product.

Implementation

The MP101 is based on the ARM9 Marvell

Marvell Technology Group

Marvell is an American producer of storage, communications and consumer semiconductor products.Founded in 1995, Marvell Technology Group Ltd. has operations worldwide and approximately 5,700 employees. Marvell’s U.S. operating subsidiary is based in Santa Clara, California and Marvell has...

 Libertas 88W8510H system-on-a-chip

System-on-a-chip

A system on a chip or system on chip is an integrated circuit that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single chip substrate...

 and has 8 MB of DRAM

Dynamic random access memory

Dynamic random-access memory is a type of random-access memory that stores each bit of data in a separate capacitor within an integrated circuit. The capacitor can be either charged or discharged; these two states are taken to represent the two values of a bit, conventionally called 0 and 1...

. Netgear licensed the ARM MP3 decoder software for use with the device.

The MP101 runs the open-source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 eCos

ECos

eCos is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads. It is designed to be customizable to precise application requirements of run-time performance and hardware needs...

 real-time operating system

Real-time operating system

A real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter...

 – Netgear has made the source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

available here.

External links

• Netgear's MP101 Support
• Netgear's MP115 Support
• MP101 review (December 20, 2004)
• ARM press release: NetGear Builds Innovative Wireless MP3 Player Around ARM Powered SOC From Marvell (March 16, 2004)