Brite-View CinemaTube Media Player

Multi-format media players seem to be gaining in popularity and it's no
big surprise. With the cost of cable and satellite TV on the rise again,
more and more people are making use of services like Hulu and TVersity
to watch their favorite broadcast shows free of charge. There are even
those that choose to download their movies and other digital content via
torrents and having a way to move this from the computer to the TV has
been a challenge. The latest media player from Brite-View, the
CinemaTube, not only covers just about every conceivable format, it does
it in the beauty of full HD.
The Brite-View CinemaTube is designed to save you all the trouble of
burning CDs and DVDs and is meant to bring your digital entertainment
from your PC to your living room. By plugging in an external hard drive
you can watch your favorite movies and TV shows or view photo slide
shows all on your high-definition (and much larger) TV. With the
CinemaTube you can also stream media content from your computer to the
TV. According to Brite-View a wired connection is recommended to fully
enjoy true HD content. To this end, they have supplied the built-in
wired connection and Ethernet cable.
The CinemaTube has wireless networking capability with an additional USB
Wi-Fi dongle, which just so happens to be sold separately upon request
only. Due to the inherent speed limitations of most wireless networks,
this option is recommended for non-HD streaming only. Another cool
feature of the CinemaTube is that it can download up to three torrents
simultaneously. Just save your favorite torrents to a USB storage device
(ONLY NTFS and EXT-3 formats are supported in this feature) and let your
CinemaTube take care of the downloading while freeing up your PC for
more important things.
On the green side of things, the CinemaTube uses only 10 watts of
electricity when downloading. According to Brite-View, your computer
uses 100 watts when you turn it on. This means they are touting a 90%
energy savings. Now that certainly sounds a bit too good to be true and
it's my bet that you would have to do a helluva lot of downloading to
see any tangible savings with this thing. It makes for good marketing
spiel, though.
You can pre-order your own CinemaTube 2-in-1 Multimedia
Player/Streamer/Torrent Downloader for $99.99 ($30 off of the list
price) at www.brite-view.com. They are claiming to have only 100 units
available and they are expected to ship September 21, 2009.