The Vulkano “God box” has started arriving at homes of those who pre-ordered. As a refresher, Vulkano aims to replace your DVR, Roku, and Slingbox as THE all-in-one video gadget. My review loaner appears to be lagging Monsoon’s real customers, so I’ll be reserving judgement. But, in the interim, check out my pal Dan’s unboxing. He should have some additional pics, of the 10′ television UI, and thoughts posted tomorrow. Although his computer-based placeshifting coverage is going to have to wait – as OS X software has yet to be been released.
Update: Dan has posted his initial thoughts here. And, so far, it’s been a mixed bag… with potential.
Click to enlarge:
Picture quality sux.
Tap tap tap.
Travis, do you have one? Which part of the quality? Placeshifting to PC, YouTube on TV, something else? Give us more info! :)
Where is it getting the guide data from? Is there a cable card tuner in it? Can one watch HBO-HD on this thing?
It can be used in a few ways… they provide their own guide/data (as shown above) and if you’re connected to a set-top box of some sort you can of course placeshift that guide. You wouldn’t watch HBO-HD directly on the Vulkano – you would either stream/relay the signal remotely or have the Vulkano record the channel, via component outputs, for local playback or placeshifting.
I asked before about OTA inputs, and it looks like this does not have one. But I wonder if it could be made to talk to a HDHomeRun?
That would open up a big window for recording OTA and even clear QAM.
If it can record from component inputs, it surely has more than enough horsepower to handle the already encoded streams from digital OTA/QAM.
What convinced me to cancel my order was the lack of digital audio and the interview with founder Prabhat Jain
http://www.bootcamp.com/interview.jsp?interviewId=508
didn’t inspire me.
Dave–the verbose Travis just *might* have been commenting on the quality of your pictures above, as opposed to offering his opinion of the Vulkano. Can’t really tell…