Television?  HA!  I haven't watched a "regular" television channel in years, and I'm betting that I'm not the only one.  The Internet age has turned me into an on-demand junkie, craving the latest snippets and shows from all over the world with the push of a button.  I don't have time to search the TV Guide or schedule my life around the local TV station.  In addition, I do a whole lot more than watch "standard" TV - much of what I watch is housed on the Internet: in the form of YouTube videos, on-demand TV from Hulu, movies and TV shows streamed from Netflix, and so much more.

If any of the above describes you, well, then the Digital Entertainer Live will make a perfect home in your entertainment setup.  Basically, the Digital Entertainer Live (also known as the EVA2000) is a small, sharp looking box that connects directly to your pipeline to the web, sucks in the newest online content, and presents it to you in an easy-to-digest-and-watch fashion.  It also serves as a network player for media stored on your home network.

Setting up the Digital Entertainer Live

The EVA 2000, fortunately, is super easy to set up.  You can download the installation guide here.

Getting Started

I'm going to go through the functions of the Digital Entertainer Live based on the order in which they appear in the menu, for simplicity's sake.  You will use the remote to navigate through the screens, using the arrow keys and center (or Play) button.  The remote is light and small, and while functional, sometimes takes a few button presses to get your choice to register if you're not pointing it right at the IR receiver on the unit.  Make sure the front of your EVA 2000 is not obstructed to accomplish this.

Are you ready to rock and roll?  Let's check out what this baby can do...

Your Network Media Collection

The Digital Entertainer functions quite well as a network media streamer.  It automatically detects shared media libraries on your network, such as from a NAS device.  In my situation, it automatically detected the network share and was browsable by folder, no additional setup needed.

You can also attach a USB drive directly to one of the ports on the back of the Digital Entertainer Live.  This is handy if you have your media stored on such a drive and don't want to stream over the network or share the drive.  It's also useful if you have guests over and they want to share photos on a thumb drive, for example.

In numerous tests, the Digital Entertainer Live produced a picture with great quality and was jitter free on my network, with a hard wired connection.  Numerous formats are supported, including MPEG1, 2, and 4 along with H.264 - which covers some HD content (MPEG 2 supports up to a 1280 X 720 resolution.)  Most of my videos were encoded in 640x480 in MPEG4 and streamed beautifully.

Overall, in comparison to the EVA 9150 (technically speaking, a more powerful unit) the media streaming was less smooth but just as vibrant, and the fast forward/rewind functions worked well.

Note: the EVA2000 will not stream DVD rips comprised of a VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS file, nor will it stream DVD ISO's.  You will need the EVA 9150, or Digital Entertainer Elite, for this functionality.

Video Search

I instantly fell in love with this feature, it really has to be experienced for one to realize how truly cool it is.  Simply select the search function from the menu as shown above, and type in what you'd like to see.

Powered by vTap, this nifty function allows you to access content containing your search word from tons of different providers, from YouTube to CNN to Joost to well, you name it.  What surprised me most is that it's quite fast - search results update automatically as you type, allowing you virtually instant access to the linked content.

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