iTwin: Secure File Sharing for Two PCs

The iTwin is a unique networking and peer-to-peer file-sharing gadget from the company of the same name. Out of the box, it looks like nothing so much as a USB flash drive with a connector on each end. It's not. Upon closer scrutiny, you'll find that the iTwin ($99, price as of 2/7/2011) separates into two units. The two halves, each one plugged into a different PC, form a network connection that allows you to securely share files using hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption.

There's no actual storage on the iTwin modules, except for the CD-emulating boot partition that's used to install the iTwin client software. Alas, you must install the software to each PC on which you wish to use the iTwin, so it's best used only on your own machines--say, your home PC and your laptop. It would be nice if the software were portable, but perhaps that's in the future.

Setting up the iTwin is a breeze. The first time you plug it into a USB port, both halves must be connected so a unique encryption key that links them can be generated. After that, you simply run the setup software on each PC and use them. You can password-protect your access, but you don't have to. Although you drag files to the iTwin virtual drive in Windows Explorer, you're only creating a pointer to the shared file. And the iTwin lets you access your drive remotely (although the other computer will need to be on to access it).

If you send your e-mail address to iTwin, you'll receive a deactivation code that you can use should you lose one-half of the device. It's a nice touch that spares you having to enter a password every time you use the iTwin.

Even in a world where every Blu-ray player has an Internet connection and several streaming options, the NSZ-GT1 stands out. You can thank Google TV--which is Android for your television--for that. But lackluster image quality, a very high price tag ($400, price as of January 7, 2011) some poor design choices, and an infuriating remote control make this model a questionable choice--especially when matched against less-expensive, higher-image-quality models such as the Samsung BD-C7900 and the LG Electronics BX580.

Virtually all Blu-ray players these days can stream Netflix and at least one pay-per-view service, and most players work with YouTube and Pandora, as well. The NSZ-GT1 comes with all of these capabilities and a few more, including CNBC Real-Time, HBO Go (available only if you get HBO through your cable or satellite provider), the Onion, and Twitter. The not-yet-available Google TV Market promises to let you selectively add many more.

The NSZ-GT1 also comes with the Chrome browser, so you can surf the Web from your couch. This means that you can stream videos that aren't available via the apps--in some cases, anyway. Since there's no Comedy Central app on the player, I visited the Daily Show Website and watched a show segment that looked more than acceptable. But when I visited Hulu, the site recognized Google TV, blocked its videos, and promised a future app that would play Hulu Plus content exclusively.

In the spirit of Google TV, which tries to bring Internet video and traditional television together, Sony designed the NSZ-GT1 to be able to control and stream content from your set-up box or DVR. The idea is that all of your shows--whether they come over the Internet or arrive by more-traditional means--end up in the same cache. But the arrangement isn't seamless. In most cases, you'll need to use the included infrared blaster to make the other device do the player's bidding. And the only video input connection on the NSZ-GT1 is HDMI, a design choice that freezes out basic cable and over-the-air broadcasts.

Managing apps and surfing the Web require a device that has more than a conventional remote--and the NSZ-GT1's remote is the least conventional one I've seen. It's more like a two-handed game controller with a trackball and a built-in keyboard. For text entry, including Netflix and YouTube searches, this is easily the best remote control I've ever used.

Unfortunately, for common Blu-ray tasks such as pausing, popping up a menu, or ejecting a disc, it's easily the worst remote control I've seen. Most of these chores require you to hold down a tiny Fn button with one thumb while pressing another tiny button with the other. There are a lot of these tiny buttons, they're close together, most of them feel exactly like the ones next to them, and they're not backlit.

On the other hand, the remote is programmable, so you can use it to control your HDTV and other devices. I've never seen a remote that is as easy to program as this one. Instead of requiring you to look up codes in the manual and then enter them, you simply select a manufacturer on screen and the remote tries the appropriate codes (though it may require you to use the IR blaster).

Of course, finding codes in the manual would have been difficult, since the NSZ-GT1 doesn't come with one. Instead, Sony provides an interactive Help Guide on the Web.

With its rounded corners, beige sides, and smooth, shiny, black top, the NSZ-GT1 looks almost as strange as its remote. There's no LED display to show you status information. The device has four USB ports--one in front for easy access, and the rest in back. According to Sony, this wealth of connectivity options exists "to anticipate possible usage with future applications [and] provide the capability for possible feature expansion." The player also has a slot rather than tray for inserting a disc.

If you insert a disc into that slot, you'll find that the NSZ-GT1's images are acceptable but unexceptional. In many of our image quality tests, the NSZ-GT1 finished in a dead heat with our reference player, a Sony PlayStation 3. When the two machines' image quality differed, the NSZ-GT1 was usually a little bit worse. The DVD of Phantom of the Opera (chapter 3) was slightly softer than on the PS3, and color saturation on Cars (chapter 1) was significantly duller. Mission: Impossible III (chapter 7) was the worst, with significantly duller colors and softer details. The player handled the scene's swift and sudden movement just fine. I suspect the problems came from reproducing the scene's abundant bright daylight.

On the other hand, the NSZ-GT1 beat the PS3 in two clips from a 1956 film, The Searchers (chapters 4 and 20). Here, it displayed detail better than the PS3 did and offered significantly superior skin tones. The Searchers was shot in a large, fine-grain format called VistaVision, providing a dense and saturated negative. The NSZ-GT1 seemed able to handle this better than it can more-modern forms of photography.

The NSZ-GT1's menus are relatively easy to use--once you get accustomed to the remote. A first-time wizard helps you set up the player and then gives you a quick tour of its features. But the player lacks on-screen explanations. If you can't guess what the Screen format options--"Original" and "Fixed aspect ratio"--mean, you have to go to the online help to find out.

The home screen offers various ways to find what you're looking for. You can click on Bookmarks or Most Visited to find app you frequently open. And everything you do on the NSZ-GT1 involves running an app (just as if it were a computer). For instance, you watch a DVD or Blu-ray through the Disc Player app.

You play your own video, audio, and photo files through the Media Player. This app can play files off of a USB storage device (such as a flash drive) or off of a computer over your home network. The computer must be running DLNA server software, such as Windows Media Player. Format support isn't very extensive, however; the only audio format it supports is .mp3, and its video formats hardly represent a spectacular range. See the formats available here.

I will say this for the NSZ-GT1: It's fast. It started playing the Independence Day Blu-ray disc within 30 seconds of my inserting the disc. Only the Sony BDP-S570, at 26 seconds, was faster. The newer Sony also responded quickly to commands while playing a disc.

The Sony Internet TV NSZ-GT1 holds out the promise of finally merging the computer and the television, so that the only differences are the size of the screen and the type of chair you sit in. But its high price and clumsy execution should give you pause before you rush out and buy one.

Multiformat Disc Burner Etches Labels Onto Media

Labeling optical media has always been a sticky proposition: Printed labels throw discs out of balance and sometimes ruin the media; using a pen looks sloppy; and you can't use LightScribe or LabelFlash to etch a label into the top of a disc unless you use specially coated (and pricier) media. Enter Lite-On's LabelTag-capable IHAS524-T98 ($40, price as of January 4, 2011), an internal multiformat DVD burner that creates labels on the data side of any recordable CD or DVD.

Writing in the data area yields a neat and (under normal conditions) readable label, but you lose capacity, and you must flip the disc in order to read the label. Also, the label can be very difficult to read on discs with lighter dyes. And once tagged, LabelTag discs are unavailable for further writing, so make sure you're done writing to the disc before labeling it.

In addition to LabelTag support, this DVD burner delivers fast, reliable write speeds for every format it supports, which is everything on the market except Blu-ray (but including DVD-RAM).

So far, the only software to support LabelTag is Nero; the company's Nero Essentials comes bundled with the drive. I had no trouble using LabelTag, once I got used to seeing the LabelTag dialog box pop up after I clicked Nero's Burn button, which would normally cause the actual write procedure to begin.

The LabelTag dialog box itself is well thought out. Designed by Lite-On, it shows you exactly what the disc will look like and how much capacity you'll lose--and it even previews the color of the dye on the disc. Since the dialog box appears only after you're ready to burn a job, the label can't exceed the free space on the disc. The minimum free disc space required to create a label is roughly 10 percent.

The label that LabelTag creates consists of a single line of text that encircles the disc just to the outside of the area used by whatever data is present. LabelTag worked quite well, though readability varied quite a bit.The problem was the lack of contrast in the light dyes present in some of the media I used. If your discs use light dyes, you'll have to step up from the minimum size in order to read the label easily. With darker dyes, you can stick with the smaller font sizes.

My only disappointment with LabelTag is that I wish it could accommodate at least two lines of text, so that I could list music CD tracks. Otherwise, the technology is a boon for people (like me) who have miserable handwriting. True, you have to read the back of discs to see what's there, so it's probably better suited to one-offs than to large collections; but it's better than using a marking pen.

The IHAS524-T98 is a good performer, and in my hands-on examination, it wrote its entire range of supported media without incident. It's worth a few extra bucks if you like the idea of being able to neatly label your discs.