Digital Home Thoughts: Psst...Your TV is Kind of Dumb: Make it Smart

"It doesn't take a genius to appreciate the benefits of the new LG Smart TV Upgrader. With one little black box you can turn your current TV into a Web browsing, movie streaming, media sharing machine. Enjoy surfing the Internet from the comfort of your couch, check your FacebookTM and TwitterTM feeds on your flat-screen display and watch videos stored on your computer's hard drive without leaving the living room. The LG Smart TV Upgrader is all you need to make your TV a Smart TV, with all the online features of the latest models. If that's not brilliant, we don't know what is."

I heard about the LG SmartTV Upgrader ST600 during CES, and it looks like it's here - Best Buy in Canada is selling it for $149.99 CAD. From the looks of the specs and what it can do, it's much more sophisticated than your typical media streaming device - it's sort of like a Boxee Box in some ways (and about $50 cheaper to boot). It supports a wide variety of video file formats (MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, DivXHD, MKV, TS TP, M4V, WMV) though I don't see ISO files on that list, which pretty much kills it for me. However, with a Web browser and a growing selection of applications, this could be just the ticket for making that TV of yours just a bit smarter.