HD Media Player Review: Seagate Freeagent Theater + HD

Seagate’s full HD multimedia player completes your home theatre setup, enabling you to access your digital library from the comfort of your sofa.

In this day and age, your home theatre system will not really be complete if a portable high-definition (HD) media player, such as Seagate’s FreeAgent Theater+ HD, is not part of the setup.

With such a device, your whole media library — movies, TV series, personal photos and videos, as well as downloadable content — are now just a few clicks of a button away.

Plus, since the media player comes bundled with a remote control, you don’t have to leave the comfort of the sofa when changing to a different movie or TV series.

The device is also nicely designed, with a glossy black housing, which would not look out of place when placed anywhere on your home theatre rack.

Out-of-the box ready

The FreeAgent Theater+ HD boasts full HD (1080p) playback with Dolby Digital and DTS 2.0 + Digital Out surround sound.

It supports almost all conceivable media formats, including MPEG4, DivX HD, Xvid HD, AVI and MOV videos; AAC, MP3, WMA, WAV and OGG audio files; and as for images, the media player supports JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG and TIFF types, among others.

Users can connect it to their HDTV via the composite, component video or HDMI port. However, only composite and component cables are bundled in the package.

Seagate has also included its proprietary Media Sync software to enable users to automatically synchronise their media files stored in the computer with the external USB storage device.

The media player is out-of-the-box ready — meaning, you simply take it out of the box, plug in the power adaptor, connect the AV cable to the HDTV and fire away.

However the FreeAgent Theater+ HD doesn’t come with any built-in storage.

It has two USB2.0 ports which users can use to connect their portable hard disks or thumbdrives. The ports also supports compatible digital cameras and the optional WiFi adaptor to stream data wirelessly.

LOT OF OPTIONS: The device offers myriad of connectivity
options to enable users experience Full HD viewing to the fullest.

Also available is a special dock in front to connect the company’s FreeAgent Go portable hard disk. You just need to remove the dock cover, slide the Go portable hard disk in and the player will immediately recognise it.

As the device also has an Ethernet port, you can use that to connect to your home network, providing access to more media files stored on your PC or notebook.

That’s not all, the media player is also pre-installed with four widgets to access Picasa, Flickr, Weather and Finance Channels.

In operation

A word of warning: don’t lose the remote control as it is the only way to control the FreeAgent Theater+ HD.

Fire it up and users will be presented with a simple user interface that is divided into five sections namely, Movies, Pictures, Music, Internet and Devices.

The UI layout is nothing to shout about but suffice to say navigating through it was pretty smooth.

We noticed that the device was fast to load videos and pictures, and had no problem whatsoever in playing all the supported media files, including 1080p movies, that we threw at it.

There was a suggestion to test the device with a 40GB uncompressed Blu-ray file but we didn’t have one on hand.

In our opinion, however, it would probably be better if you simply watch the movie directly from the genuine Blu-ray disc that you own instead of archiving such a huge file on a portable hard disk.

We also didn’t encounter much problems when trying to connect the player to our home network.

As a matter of fact, all it took was to enable the sharing media file option on the laptop and the device immediately was able to access and stream those shared files even if your computer is connected to the network over WiFi.

With the Internet connection also available, we were able to download the latest firmware update.

Once installed, we got to see an enhanced user interface as well as new widgets to access YouTube videos and video feeds from ESPN, CNN and others.

Now you can also subscribe to RSS news feeds from your favourite websites on the device.

SLOT IN: The device ships with a special dock to
connect the FreeAgent Go portable hard disk.

Solid package

There are many similar offerings in the market but the FreeAgent Theater+ HD certainly edges over the competition thanks to its trendy design, silent operation and the ability to play almost all of today’s popular multimedia file formats.

We also like the fact that it connects to the home network and Internet without a fuss.

Heck, even its total ease-of-use and the ability to plug in up to three portable hard disks alone are worth the price of admission.

In short, there’s scarcely anything not to like about this device.

Pros: Nice design; ease to use; fuss-free connectivity; supports up to three storage devices.

Cons: Nothing major.

Full HD media player

Manufacturer: Seagate

SUPPORTED FILE FORMATS: MPEG1, MPEG2 (VOB/ISO), MPEG4 (DivX and XviD), DivX HD, Xvid HD, AVI, MOV, MKV, RMVB, AVC HD, H264, WMV9, VC-1, M2TS, TS/TP/M2T, AAC, MP3, Dolby Digital, DTS, ASF, FLAC, WMA, LPCM, ADPCM, WAV, OGG, JPEG (up to 20MB file), BMP, GIF, PNG and TIFF

VIDEO RESOLUTIONS: NTSC 480i/480p, PAL 576i/576p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p

INTERFACE: Composite, component, HDMI, Optical S/PDIF, Ethernet, two USB2.0 ports

DIMENSIONS (W X H X L): 183 x 30 x 175mm

WEIGHT: 503g