[Hi-Jack]

Although we are not at CeBit in Germany yet, we keep a close eye on what's interesting for us and we start off by Harmony from Logitech who introduces 2 "affordable" universal remotes. We are familiar with the Harmony remotes and consider them amongst the best available for a reasonable price. The monochrome Harmony 600 (€60) and the color version Harmony 650 (€80) are the new kids on the block shown at CeBit. Both use the PC software that makes configuring these devices easy and based on community input for loads of devices...

Synology showcases mainly their DiskStation Manager software 2.3 which is amongst the nicest interfaces you will find on NAS servers although the trend to go AJAX with the interface is already followed by Thecus and QNAP as well... Good... Along with the new version if the managing software, Synology introduces it's new models for 2010 among whom we find the DS410 (single processor ARM, 512MB Memory) and DS410+ (Atom dual-core with 1GB Memory). Synology did reveal they are currently developing a WiFi dongle for all their products. No product links are available at Synology... but there is a press release on the DSM 2.3...

Qnap then, who equally will use CeBit as a launching platform for their new 3.3 management software on the QNAP NAS series has lined up a mix of their newest models and a device we are long familiar with. Among the new x59 NAS series we find the NMP-1000, QNAP's way of mixing NAS and Media player (very well but late to market sadly). Hold on a minute... I just noticed the name is "NMP-1000p" so could it be QNAP secretly developed another NMP? At least their press release speaks of a "new generation network multimedia player" so we'll be sure getting the details on that one as soon as we are in the "lederhosen" part of the world. Press release promises "Featured with HDMI 1.3a output, crystal clear sound quality driven by Wolfson WM8524, SATA HDD interface, Gigabit-ready network interface, and excellent network sharing features, the NMP-1000P supports high-definition (1920 x 1280, 1080P) contents and almost all popular file formats including the high-quality H.264 MKV, M2TS, FLAC and BDMV (Blu-ray), ISO and most popular codecs". Can I get a "wow"... or not yet? Let's first verify this is actually a new device and BDMV plays as BluRay and not just M2TS...Exciting...

More news to come soon...

[grinzecat]

Originally Posted by Hi-Jack We are familiar with the Harmony remotes and consider them amongst the best available for a reasonable price. The monochrome Harmony 600 (€60) and the color version Harmony 650 (€80) are the new kids on the block shown at CeBit. Both use the PC software that makes configuring these devices easy and based on community input for loads of devices...

Nice new remotes, they both fit into the current design line introduced with the Harmony One, which has always been critizised due to the lack of the very popular four colored buttons (red, green, yellow, blue). Starting with the 900, Logitech seems to have learned to listen at least a little bit to what the customers want and fortunately the buttons are back again.
However, the One is still not updated yet.