Netgear NeoTV 550 HD Network Media Player Review

By Ken Brown

NeoTV 550 Not Perfect, but Very Solid

Netgear NeoTV 550 HD Media Player

When we first saw Netgear NeoTV 550, we really didnt think too much of it. The specs said Netgear designed and built the media player around a 2-year old chip the 667 Mhz Sigma 8642. We were worried that when we got the player in the LR Bunker that it would simply fail to perform like the competition.

Boy, were we wrong!

When using the Netgear player, we had the feeling that we were playing with something special. Even though the retail price of the player is on the high end especially for one that doesnt include any on-board storage the players performance when playing content from your hard drive is hard to beat.

Below you can see how the Netgear NeoTV stacks up against some other popular players we have reviewed. (Click on the chart for the full-sized picture.)

Netgear NeoTV 550 Comparison Chart

The NeoTV 550s glaring weakness is in its internet offerings: If you are married to Netflix, you need to move on; If you cant live without Pandora, youd better try and live with YouTube and Flickr. Netgear has promised their NeoTV users more upgrades in the future that should bolster it’s internet offerings, but for now, we are left with the bare minimum.

Netgear NeoTV 550 HD Media Player

As a movie guy who has been stuck watching AVIs and MKVs for the majority of time, I must admit that Ive missed the days of being able to load up a Blu-ray disk and just surfing around all the extra contents of the disk. With the popularity and accessibility of high speed internet, inexpensive hard drives and Bittorrents gaining in popularity, not only does the movie industry suffer, but viewers miss out on the content that directors and producers package with their disks. With more and more media players being able to read and navigate ISO menus, players like the NeoTV 550 should attract more users who want to preserve the entire disks content so that they can (legally) stream/broadcast around their house.

In the past, most people just ripped the main video and audio tracks from movies as MKVs or AVIs because thats all most popular media players could handle. For those that like to archive their Blue-ray or DVD disks by ripping them to a hard drive as ISOs this is tremendous news. Of course Netgear isnt the only one who has this ability, but the fact of the matter is that Netgears name is quite popular and carries with it a tremendous amount of weight. Even at $199, there arent that many Media Players that can do what the NeoTV 550 can with respect to High Definition video.

Legit Bottom Line:
The Netgear NeoTV 550 Ultimate HD Media Player is a solid but slightly expensive – high-definition media player. Netgears newest firmware release gives it an extra punch when viewing and listening to HD. While it plays most every media file under the sun, what really sets the NeoTV 550 apart from the crowd is its ability to play Blu-ray ISOs with menu navigation support.

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