LinkTheater Mini, $100 media player by Buffalo

Buffalo Inc has released a robust new home media player based on software developed by Mediabolic. The new player, dubbed LinkTheater Mini, is a network media player designed to be quite compact, only a bit larger than a VHS tape, and sell for a price under $100. Being a networked device, it is designed to be a frontend for digital media.

"Our customers demanded an easy-to-deploy, reasonably priced
media player solution that has all of the essential features,"
It is an embedded style device and the only upgrades performed (or needed) would be firmware, and has onboard media server software that lets you interface a PC with it. It has onboard 100mbp/s LAN, supports standard composite out and analog out, can play MPEG2, MP3 and WMV, display JPEG, PNG and BMP images, and a few others. It requires a PC to do transcoding for some media support. You can see some images of the new device, which looks pretty sharp, here, or at MediaBolics website.