Table of Content
This Seagate has some nice things going for it, including an attractive design and generally good performance . However, the Western Digital is more versatile in terms of file formats supported. As part of our tests for these products, we throw a few hard-to-read file formats at these players, and of the four files we loaded, the Seagate wasn't able to recognize any of them. Most notably, there's no support for H.264 and AVC, which have become increasingly popular. Nor does it support AAC audio, which is what you'll get from any iTunes purchase.
• You can set it up to automatically archive your Facebook photos and videos; any time you upload a photo or video directly to Facebook, it will get archived. Adrienne Maxwell is the former Managing Editor ofHomeTheaterReview.com, Home Theater Magazine, and HDTVEtc.com. Adrienne has also written for Wirecutter, Home Entertainment Magazine, AVRev.com, ModernHomeTheater.com, and other top specialty audio/video publications. She is an ISF Level II-certified video calibrator who specializes in reviews of flat-panel HDTVs, front video projectors, video screens, video servers, and video source devices, both disc- and streaming-based. Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable reviewer of mobile accessories and portable audio products, including headphones and speakers.
Documentation
As with the Western Digital player, you can connect other storage devices, whether they be hard-drive-based or flash-memory-based via a separate USB port. Seagate also makes it a point to note that you can connect your digital camera to that same USB port and view photos--and videos--straight off the camera . But if you take home entertainment seriously, you may want to consider other options. Seagate jumps into the media server or NAS drive fray along with players such as Apple, Roku, Google and so many more.
Accelerate geophysical data delivery with storage that’s built for the edge. Overcome the cost and complexity of storing, moving and activating data at scale. • The Seagate Media app's interface gets the job done, but its design is pretty vanilla. Some of the icons within both the iOS and Android app are a bit too small and cryptic. • The device's form factor and quiet operation are very home theater-friendly. Shop your favorite products and we’ll find the best deal with a single click.
Zoom Selects Seagate's Lyve Cloud for S3 Storage as a Service
Of course, if you already have a FreeAgent Go drive and are fine with the supported file formats in the list above, the bare-bones version of the FreeAgent Theater HD is definitely worth considering. • The Seagate Central is enabled by default to work with iTunes, allowing you to view the server's content through the iTunes interface on your computer. Just make sure that you have enabled "Shared Libraries" on the general iTunes preferences page. • In addition to the Public shared folder, you can create individual private folders that requite a name and password to access ... For all those, ahem, personal videos that you may not want everyone to be able to see. This requires a couple of extra steps during setup to create a user name and password, and you must enable the function within the iOS/Android app before you can use it.
On top of that, there are also options for an S-Video hookup or you can go with the included composite AV cables that are also used to pass analog stereo audio. For digital audio, there's a coaxial connection onboard that allows you to run Dolby Digital surround sound (if it's available as part of your video file) from the black box to an AV receiver or home theater in a box. A small remote control is included that gives you DVD-like playback options for your videos with increments of 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, and 32x for forward/reverse and a slow-motion option.
TheaterSync.app.zip
Samsung has also added the app directly to its smart TV platform, so you can access the server via your Samsung smart TV or Blu-ray player. As noted, we loaded a variety of files--video, JPEG still images, and MP3 music--onto the 250GB FreeAgent drive that came with our review sample and a separate 4GB thumbdrive that we provided. Except for one video file that remained hidden, the system had no problem revealing what we had on the external drive and the thumbdrive.
The FreeAgent Theater also plays back DivX files and had no trouble with any of the AVI files we threw at it. We played a number of video file formats on both a small 17-inch TV and a larger 50-inch TV. If you're dealing with a small TV, the picture looks pretty good whether you're connected via the standard composite cable or component, though component will always look better. When you start to step up to bigger TVs and try to blow the picture up, you're limited by the quality of your file. While the Seagate FreeAgent Theater has a decent interface and good photo display options, it doesn't read as many video file formats as its competitors.
Naturally, you can set up the Seagate Central to perform automatic backups of the computers on your network. For Mac users like me, the device works directly through Time Capsule; all I had to do was go into my Time Capsule preferences and change the backup disc from my usual Time Machine to the Seagate Central. The focus of this review, though, is on Seagate's media management tools, and the first step to managing your media is to get your media files onto the drive. The Seagate Central is a DLNA-compatible server; the drive has default folders in place for Videos, Music, and Photos, with sample content in each. Seagate recommends you hardwire your computer to the router via Ethernet to transfer media files for the speediest and most reliable results. I dropped about 20GB's worth of movies and a lot of home videos into the Videos folder, as well as a ton of personal photos and my entire iTunes content folder .
See what being one of the top hard drive makers in the world brings to your home theater in this Adrienne Maxwell review. The player itself is compact and well-designed, with playback control buttons on top, a USB port on the front , and a dock where you can insert a FreeAgent Go drive. On the back are component and composite outputs, and S-Video-out, but no HDMI-out. Though the FreeAgent Theater supports high-definition video , and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, its lack of HDMI will disappoint some users. • When using Remote Access through both WiFi and my cellular network, I could not stream videos; I had to download them to the device to play them back.
I generally use Samsung's AllShare app on my Galaxy tablet, and I had no trouble connecting to the Seagate Central and accessing files for seamless playback. The Seagate Central has the ability to stream most major file types, including MP4, M4V, MKV, AVI, WMV, OGG, MP3, M4A, WMA, AIFF, WAV, and FLAC. However, playback support is ultimately dictated by the playback device. For instance, my Android tablet could not play back any of the MOV files or iTunes-purchased TV shows in my collection, whereas my iPhone 4 could.
The interface is straightforward and simple enough to navigate, although there's nothing especially eye-catching or noteworthy about its appearance. Content is divided into Videos, Music, Photos, Documents, and Recent; you can choose to organize files by title, size, date, and type. You can also do a general Folder view, where you can browse the content folders exactly as you transferred them to the Seagate Central. Part of the reason Seagate chose to go with the solution it did is because the company sees itself marketing the media player to average consumers who have a lot of pictures on their hard drives. If you fall into this camp--and intend on using the FreeAgent Theater as a way to display lots of photos on your TV--then you'll be pleased to hear that the player indeed does a good job with images. It accesses even large files quickly and it has a nice selection of slideshow transitions .
Once I enabled it, I had no trouble accessing my library through both my phone and tablet when I was away from the house. • Read more media center and NAS drive reviews from the HomeTheaterReview.com archive. The big question we had for Seagate is why it chose to go with a component video connection rather than the HDMI connection found on Western Digital and Iomega systems. Seagate went with a chipset that allows for faster and better support for image viewing. Register, access, and manage Lyve Mobile services, subscriptions and projects.
On a positive note, we liked how the Seagate displays a preview of the file on the right side of the screen when you highlight that file in the menu. All in all, we felt the Seagate's GUI was slightly snazzier than the Western Digital's. View registered products, register new products, and find product specific support.
Provides Suppliers with self-service tools targeted to the needs of their business. Check your drive's warranty status and browse our warranty related documentation.
No comments:
Post a Comment