Allowing users to play their digital videos, photos, or music directly on their HDTVs, NETGEAR has introduced the NeoTV 350 HD and NeoTV 550 Ultimate HD Media Players as the flagship products in the NETGEAR AV Series.

The new products provide the consumers with an ability to project a laptop screen to an HDTV, connect up to four home theater devices to the Internet, and create a wireless network for video and gaming, apart from other features.

The users can now play their digital videos, photos, or music directly on their HDTVs with the help of NeoTV 350 HD and NeoTV 550 Ultimate HD Media Players. They also provide the most complete access to media collections, whether stored on USB storage devices, hard drives, memory cards, home media servers, home networks or on the Internet, the company says.

“Home theater devices like Blu-ray players, HDTVs, and game consoles now have the ability to connect to the Internet with the intention of giving consumers a richer entertainment experience," said Vivek Pathela, vice president and general manager for Home/Consumer Products at NETGEAR. “Most people don't know how to connect them and those who do often experience frustrating set-up and connection issues, video jitters, frame drops, screen freezes and audio/video sync issues.”

Both models support HD 1080p, Dolby Digital and DTS (News - Alert) surround sound. Also, offering an advanced metadata tagging that lets users browse cover art, NeoTV 550 offers an additional E-SATA port for faster transfer speeds, Blu-ray disc support via external drives. Other features provided include a built-in memory card slot for instant photo slideshows on the TV, DLNA/UPnP compatibility for access to media servers, network share connectivity and an optional wireless connection.

In July 2009, the company included a consumption meter on at least one new model router, with plans to add the feature to other models as well, eventually making it a standard feature on all its routers. The WNDR3700 router will ship with a "Traffic Meter" that measures downloads and uploads on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, and allows for customized alerts.