Netgear (http://www.netgear.com/ultra) has announced the ReadyNAS Ultra family of 2-bay, 4-bay and 6-bay network storage systems for “power users” who want to “set their digital entertainment content free.”
The Ultra family is the first-ever storage with media-shifting capabilities, enabling users to centralize media on a ReadyNAS and consume it in any networked location and on any networked device, according to Drew Meyer, director of storage marketing at Netgear. The Ultra family is more than twice as fast as legacy ReadyNAS systems, he adds.
The ReadyNAS integration with TiVo enables users to stream video programming, music and photos to any TiVo box in the house. ReadyNAS Ultra products are the first storage systems with Skifta media-shifting capabilities, so users can access their private media libraries remotely from any DLNA certified device without worrying about the physical location of their content.
Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra products are also the first network storage systems to include transcoding. The Orb integration means that a ReadyNAS Ultra device automatically formats and sizes streaming video content for mobile devices or browsers — on the fly.
What’s more, the Ultra family sports: X-RAID2, self-managing volume expansion technology; ReadyNAS Remote, drag-and-drop remote access technology; and ReadyNAS Vault, an embedded online backup and recovery service. The Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 (which has a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of US$599.99 diskless and $899.99 for 2 x 2 TB) and Ultra 6 ($899.99 P diskless and $1349.99 for 3 x 2 TB) are available for immediate pre-order at amazon.com, with shipping starting in mid-July. The NETGEAR ReadyNAS Ultra 2 will be shipping in October.
