Netgear NeoTV 550 review

Netgear’s latest media streamer can play files from UpNP, DLNA and SMB shares, stream video from YouTube and access internet radio stations. If you don’t want to plug it into your network, it can also access media stored on a flash drive or SDHC card.

The NeoTV 550 is a simple black box, with a USB port and SDHC card slot on the front and a smattering of logos. Seeing as it’s likely to be sitting under your TV among a selection of sleek AV kit, it’s a shame Netgear didn’t make more of an effort with the 550’s looks. On the rear are HDMI and component outputs, an optical S/PDIF and a 3.5mm minijack socket for the included composite video and stereo phono cable. If you don’t want to put up with poor standard-definition composite connection video quality you’ll need to buy your own HDMI or component cable.

There’s no built-in wireless, so you’ll need to use an Ethernet cable, HomePlug kit or Netgear’s own WNCE2001 wireless bridge to connect to your network. We’d recommend a wired Ethernet connection for streaming high-definition content. The 550 didn’t cope well with losing its network connection half-way through a film – it crashed, and we had to unplug it from the mains to reset it.

The included setup program makes installation easy. It searches your PC’s hard disk for available media files, shows you a list of locations where such files are present and lets you select which ones you want the 550 to monitor for content. You can also browse the folders you’ve shared from the 550’s menus.

The high-resolution interface looks good and is easy to use, helped by the chunky remote control. The streamer had no problems playing any of our videos, from high-definition AVI files to a straight rip of a Blu-ray disc’s file structure. It could also play all our MP3, WMA and AAC audio files, as well as high-quality FLACs. The 550 was also fine with files stored on USB drives or SDHC cards, so we could take the memory card straight out of our portable camcorder and play its H.264 files on the big screen.

We were less impressed with the streamer’s internet functions. There’s a fairly limited selection of internet radio stations, which work well but tend towards the mainstream, so no dedicated drum n’ bass channels. The YouTube function is harder to use. You can browse through the latest and top rated videos, or search for a video. Entering text with the remote is fiddly, but you can plug in a USB keyboard – however, the space bar isn’t mapped to add a space in the media player, so searching for multiple words is a pain.

Netgear’s NeoTV 550 is a competent media player. It’s ugly, though, and playing content from the internet can be fiddly. We don’t think it’s worth the hefty price premium over the Western Digital WD TV Live. Although that device will play Blu-ray format video, you won’t get full menu support from ripped discs.