In my dreams, after a long day of completing triathlons, coming in first at poker tournaments and winning Pulitzer prizes, I would sit down in my massaging, comfy chair at my home in New Jersey and sip iced tea while watching streaming internet-hosted web content on my large screen television or perhaps listen to a nice long run of Radio Paradise.

But until the next time I clutch my pillow tight, I will have to make do with the next best thing – the VuNow from Verismo Systems.  In the war for control of your television, this tiny package could very well be the “suitcase nuke” of media extenders.

Weighing less than half a pound and slightly larger than a deck of cards, the VuNow is a multimedia powerhouse!  In addition to the usual features like direct audio and video playback from streaming web-based sources (like YouTube, CinemaNow (coming soon) and other websites)), and from your own personal media (from network or USB-based sources (e.g. – flash drives or external hard drives)), the folks at Verismo are hard at work making the VuNow “be all that it can be”.

The VuNow now also includes “…(g)reater content access with:

• * Additional 50+ live TV channels
• * Additional 35 popular websites
• * Support for Internet radio to let users seamlessly enjoy a wealth of Shoutcast audio stations, along with video content in their living room

- Enhanced features including:

• * Support for 802.11n  that significantly increases wireless performance and range compared with 802.11g
• * Increased wireless security features including  support for security with WPA, WPA2, and WPS
• * NTFS support — enabling USB ports on the PoD to now read NTFS (in addition to FAT-32) formatted external drives
• * Support for Dolby® Digital AC-3 format to let users play multimedia files and movies with audio streams encoded in AC-3
• * Support for PAL in addition to NTSC
• * Multi-language support”

All for a retail price of $129.00 ($149.00 for the 720p Hi-Def unit)!

If you’re thinking of trying to make your “dumb” television into something smarter (or are getting tired of sitting in your less-than-comfortable desk chair staring at your smaller-than-dreamy computer monitor all day for checking out the latest viral happenings on YouTube), then the VuNow could very well be the way to go.

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