The Mole With Excellent Vision, and a Valuable Cinema Companion
Despite the name, the Mole sees pretty well. And the CinemaTube is almost as bright as we hoped, and the price is right. We continue our countdown to Christmas here, preparing for our upcoming gift guide, with two companies that might not be on your radar, and two products that should be.
We’ve seen quite a few IP cameras before, and like the ease of use and flexibility over other types of video cameras, especially for home surveillance. D-Link’s offering included the nifty power-over-ethernet option, while the TrendNet model we checked out is fairly similar to the Mole, at least on the surface. The Astak Mole offers 802.11b or g wireless networking along with a built-in ethernet port. Everything you need is in the box, though the power cable is a bit short and depending on your setup, you might need a longer ethernet cord as well. A single mic captures mono audio, and we liked the addition of some expandable built-in storage via an SD card- you can then capture images or video to the card. Setup was, if not simple, about the same as usual- you’ll need to connect via ethernet before you can setup the wireless unfortunately. And though there is no monthly fee, they do try to upsell you into a paid web client version- it’s inexpensive but you likely won’t need it, since it mostly removes limits if you have multiple cameras and the like.
The good: the high-quality H.264 video compression, the use of QuickTime codecs to view the video and freedom to use any modern browser, the decent night vision/white balance and light-weight, sleek black body of the unit. We loved the email alerts (it can also update via Twitter, taking pictures when an intruder sets off the motion detection… or the rising sun, as happens with most of these systems). The 20-degree tilt, 125-degree pan were pretty good, though oddly slow for us compared to some others we’ve tried, and it’s always fun to use the web interface to spin the unit around. Speaking of the web interface though, we had some issues using the Yoics (online) version, though no real trouble using the local service- and we appreciated the option since some cameras don’t offer it! The interface is deep, and very configurable, even to the point of allowing you some control over bitrate, frame rate, and the like. Rapid motion isn’t captured by this camera better than the others, and the resolution (640×480 with a lower frame rate or 320×240 at a higher one) is similar. Mobile browsing was OK, and audio was mediocre to poor, sadly. You can take a look at a live demo to get an idea, but the price feels a bit steep- $300 is a lot for an IP camera, despite the advantages. Available directly from Astak or from Amazon.
If you’d rather watch video from the comfort of your television, and would prefer not to film your own, then you’re looking for an HD media player or ‘streamer’ as the kids are calling them these days. These devices have become fairly common, to the point where it’s hard to differentiate one from the other- most offer support for a long list of file formats and can handle 1080p high definition video, and the good ones offer HDMI and optical outputs along with composite and component. The Brite-View CinemaTube does all of the above, with a small form factor that isn’t the AppleTV but is extremely tiny when viewed next to our current king-of-the-hill media extender, the massive Popcorn Hour C-200.
This is more along the lines of the Seagate line of media boxes, or the Neuros OSD- there is no built-in storage though you can expand it via the two USB ports. There is no wireless by default (a separate dongle is available), but a single ethernet jack allows you get it connected to your network. The remote is fairly large and complete, though it feels a bit cheap (no backlighting, slightly awkward buttons). The CinemaTube does offer UPnP though, meaning that it connects pretty simply to most networks. The kicker for us though was the pretty decent BitTorrent client, allowing us to download our, er, perfectly legal media quickly and quietly, though with an annoying limit of three at a time. The GUI and onscreen interface aren’t worth writing home about but they get the job done. And the price is certainly right- at around $100, you’ll still have some money left over to either get some extra USB storage or to spend on your (soon to be obsolete) physical media collection. Available online.
