In many ways the Kodak Theatre HD Player is a trendsetting product. It handles photos in more ways than any comparable product. The YouTube feature is simply the best YouTube on TV. The Internet radio, the music, the Podcast and video playback all combine to make a powerful machine. But it’s easy — fun really — because of a new user interface predicated on a pointer remote that is uniquely precise and steady.
There is a lot packed into the black box, and part of the goal of this site is to highlight and explain the many features.
- Photos from your PC, viewed in many ways. Maybe organized by Kodak Easyshare software.
- Music from your PC, again accessed many ways. Often organized by iTunes.
- Enjoy YouTube with the best TV version of YouTube available anywhere. Use your own account, or search on screen.
- Internet Radio powered by RadioTime, giving you access to thousands of stations from around the world.
- A flexible playlist feature letting you make slide shows and music playlists. Play your photos with your music without leaving the big screen TV.
- Access Kodak Gallery or Flickr accounts to see your favorite collections or friends’ photos.
- Watch your family videos or downloaded files, streaming from your PC.
- Enjoy the world of video Podcasts, perhaps organized by your iTunes.
There is lot to enjoy with the Theatre player, making it a great addition to the family’s HDTV and offering lots of group activities to enjoy together. We’ll cover these and more in the posts. So check back and send comments and requests.
The best YouTube on TV
The Kodak Theatre HD Player has the best YouTube on TV. Period.
The primary reason is because Kodak’s YouTube app was redesigned completely for the TV screen, the pointer remote interface and the 10 foot living room experience. This is a fun YouTube to share with a group of people, the videos look surprisingly good considering the source, and the pointer remote makes searching and discovering easier and more useful.
YouTube Top Screen
There are a lot of implementations of YouTube for your TV. They are in other set-top boxes, game consoles and even some upcoming big screen TVs. But none of the them work as well and look as good as Kodak’s. The Theatre version of YouTube is unique because they did the extra work to the get the details right and they have an unfair advantage – the pointer remote. A basic example is the primary playback screen. Here you have over 20 different user options, which would be hard to navigate, or even understand, with a normal up-down, left-right remote control. But here it is like an average display on your PC, only it’s designed for your TV so you can comfortably use it from the couch.
YouTube Brak
Another example is search. YouTube is so monstrously large that search is a vital and frequent function. But typing search terms with traditional remotes is a pain. It’s tediously slow and diverts you so far from enjoying YouTube that you tire of the whole thing too soon. It’s really different with a pointer. Because the Kodak pointer is so precise and steady, it’s easy to type search terms and they included a smart look ahead feature to bring up likely search terms as you enter letters. It helps make the YouTube application a fun activity for a group of people in front of the TV passing around the pointer and sharing YouTube favorites.
YouTube Keyboard
The picture quality of YouTube has been frequently cited as very good considering the home brew sort of content on YouTube. Digital Trends wrote, “Kodak’s Theatre HD Leads in YouTube Quality: Of all the set-top boxes we’ve seen stream YouTube to the TV, Kodak’s seems to do the best job masking the shoddy source quality.” Wired added, “The player even managed to transform YouTube video into something slightly less horrible — no small feat if you’ve ever watched YouTube on a PS3 or Apple TV.”