This set-top box streams movies, music, and Web video, but its real focus is what made Kodak famous in the first place: pictures. The interface for Kodak's Theatre HD Media Streamer revolves around the photo experience. Consider this: Its Discovery Collage displays multiple images on-screen, simulating the way you spread photos out on a table. Wave the Theatre HD's gyroscopic remote and you can group your snapshots by event or even browse pictures taken at the same time every year — perfect for re-living Christmases past. The Theatre HD also serves as a convenient upload point, accepting your digital camera's memory card and copying photos to your PC as well as to online sharing sites like Flickr and Kodak's gallery.
Video doesn't go unsupported, though. The Theatre HD can stream an incredibly wide variety of video (and music) files from your PC via its N-capable wireless connection — pretty much any file not hobbled by DRM. The Theatre HD's wireless capabilities also feed a customizable one-page display of weather, sports, and headlines Kodak calls the Café. And with its optical and coaxial digital audio plus component/HDMI video outputs, the HD is almost disconcertingly simple to hook up to your HDTV.
Kodak even cut the price by $100 recently. Our only gripe: Couldn't they toss in Netflix and Amazon Unbox so we could save hundreds on our next TV or Blu-ray player?