CES: Netgear Puts Wi-Fi on Steroids

If Netgear's latest home-networking products are as revolutionary as the company says they are, you could have a high-def video faucet in your sink by the end of the year. At it?ll be wireless.

Netgear founder and CEO Patrick Lo kicked off a Sunday press conference at CES in Las Vegas with a description of Netgear's overall vision since the company's inception: an "all-access home" in which the user would have easy access to high-speed networking, "just like using power or heat."

Netgear's major announcements for the year look to push this vision forward, with the emphasis being on problem-free streaming of high-def video and games to multiple sources simultaneously, a wider reach and one-touch setup for its wireless-N products, and a simplified networked home server to help families access their data from wherever they are.

New Router

Netgear focused on three product announcements during Sunday's conference: first, the RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Router, which looked a bit like a glowing, oversized iPhone when Vice President of Product Marketing Vivek Pathela held it up for the room. The 802.11n router will support both 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands, which means more channels for devices to use when connecting to a network and less in-home wireless interference from other devices, such as microwaves, baby monitors, and cell phones.

Pathela detailed the main innovations of the router: no software configurations are needed for machines on the network. Instead, the router detects and establishes a secure connection with any device it finds in range -- which is purportedly an excellent range -- as soon as the user presses and holds a glowing blue button on the unit. This is part of Netgear's new "Push 'N' Connect" technology, an innovation it is touting in its 2008 product line to enhance super-easy setup for its users.

The RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Router also has no external antenna, adding to its Apple-like sleek looks. Lo and Pathela said this is due to the company's other flagship innovation for the 2008 product line, which it calls the metamaterial antenna. Netgear claims its new embedded, high-performance antennas offer a nice boost in both signal strength and wireless range.

Wireless Gaming

Another product announcement highlighted by Netgear was the HD/Gaming 5 GHz Wireless-N Networking Kit, a unit that allows users to stream bandwidth-intensive high-definition videos and games at high speeds, without choppiness, to wireless-N-enabled HDTVs, computers, and set-top boxes. Because it operates on the 5 GHz wireless band and has access to more wireless channels than the 2.4 GHz band, the unit can stream several high-density HD files to different places concurrently, without any interference or visual jitter. The demo was impressive; think of this device as your own personal HD broadcasting tower for any device on your home network.

Home Server

Of course, in order to broadcast, you'll need an archive of shows. Netgear also aims to simplify and centralize users' multimedia libraries with the ReadyNAS Duo, a networked X-RAID home server that allows the user to upgrade its capacity by adding additional storage to its drive bays. The drives are hot-swappable, a fact showcased by Pathela in the product demo when he pulled out one of the drives while the ReadyNAS was serving up streaming HD video; the video kept playing without interruption, which was impressive. The ReadyNAS also lets users to access the files stored on it over the Web, a handy little feature for road warriors.

And More!

Netgear only demoed those three products during the conference, but another announcement caught my eye: the Powerline HD Plus Ethernet Adapter Kit. In the product data sheet, Netgear claims the plug-in adapters can convert any outlet into a conduit for streaming high-def video. Overall, Netgear said it has 15 new products that will be released this year.