after a while, i've gotten to the point where i can read between the lines a bit in walt's reviews. he will never get overly technical, but there usually is some interesting info in there somewhere.

walt wrote:

In my tests, I played lots of music, viewed photos and slideshows and played videos. All played smoothly and quickly and without a hiccup. These results were obtained on both the Gateway and Go-Video products, using both wired and wireless network connections.

so, he explicitly states he did not have any problems with stuttering video, so that's good. now, he doesn't mention anything about video quality, but my impression of his writing style is that if it was an issue, he would have mentioned it. i would conclude that his experience was that the picture quality was probably in the "good or better" range. knowing the price point, i doubt it's astonishing.

i'm pretty certain these devices don't grok hdtv at all. as they're pretty fresh on the market, keep your eyes open for reviews to appear elsewhere for more data points.

--dan.