How small? The Co-Star measures a little over four inches square with a height of about an inch-and-a-half. Because the Co-Star can do nothing but stream content, either off the Net or your local network, it has no need for a disc drive and/or superfluous parts and is therefore very small. It's not as if Vizio is new to the streaming game - it isn't - but the Co-Star is the company's first-ever device aimed solely at that market. The Co-Star is Vizio's first discrete streaming player. Explore more reviews in our HDTV Review section.Read more media server reviews from Home Theater Review's writers.I'm not saying the future is here yet, but if my time spent with the $99 Vizio Co-Star is any indication, the countdown is already well underway. It's going to be affordable, simple and, more importantly, adaptable. No, the source component of the future isn't going to be a universal XYZ, it's going to look and act more like the Co-Star from Vizio. Do they represent the best our current AV ecosystem has to offer? Sure, but they also peaked close to ten years ago, whereas streaming, well, it's just getting warmed up.

Furthermore, we're not even getting the whole story in terms of performance when it comes to discs anyway, so they're a bit of a false idol, really. At this stage in the game, worrying about another physical disc format is akin to buying a bucket after you've swum to shore following your boat sinking. Indeed, any discussion that starts with 'disc' and doesn't end with 'stupid' is a discussion not worth having, in my humble opinion. The source component of the not too distant future is not going to spin a disc, but rather stream data from either a WiFi or wired Internet connection.

Universal media server vizio