Also in the disappointing engineering category is the wireless networking. The Infocast I have is within three feet of the access point yet it has lost its network connection half a dozen times in the last month for no good reason and takes far too long to reestablish a connection. And when it does get connected, the Infocast insists on displaying the technical details (this should be invisible unless there's a problem) of its connection rather than just getting on with what it's supposed to do.

The Infocast's display quality is OK but the actual design of the GUI looks like it was done with a knife and fork; no polish, no pizzazz.

There's also apparently a bug that prevents the Infocast from displaying any image in any format from any device on my network. For example, the Infocast can see my Synology Diskstation and I can use the Infocast to navigate the folder hierarchy, but the Infocast displays a broken file icon for every image. What is particularly odd is that in the lower right of each icon there's a green check mark despite the icon indicating that there's something wrong with the file. If you click on the icon the green check changes to a red "x", for no apparent reason. That's just plain silly.

The Infocast Internet Media Display is hard to fathom as a commercial proposition. It's not user friendly, it's not easy to use, it appears to have bugs, and its visual presentation is unimpressive. I'm giving the Insignia 8" Infocast Internet Media Display the first one out of five ever awarded in Gearhead.

Gibbs is rarely this disappointed in Ventura, Calif. Tell gearhead@gibbs.com what's left you cold.