 "HP Media Center Extender" | 2009-06-21 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2HHAA8MLPQKD3 |
| HP X280N MediaSmart Connect Fairly easy to setup. I occasionally have trouble with losing connection between the computer and the TV when watching recorded shows. Don't know whether it's the computer or the router. Love the "guide" feature. |
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 "Largely a waste of money" | 2009-05-17 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1LJMQLK6Q86S0 |
I bought this since I had hoped we are finally seeing a small, quiet, simple box that centralizes all the digital content in your home in a user-friendly way. It also seemed like a nice idea to reduce energy costs by using my loaded home server (located in my office) instead of having multiple systems in the house.
The basic functions of the extender, showing images, playing some music, work reasonably fine although at the price, it is a very expensive solution to collecting yoru files and getting them to a TV. As for the more advanced functions (windows media extender, video, web), it is an expensive disappointment.
For these, the HP Media Extender is nothing more than a trojan horse for HP to get a way to channel perpetual service contracts from a small set of services into your home. And these do not include some of the major ones: e.g. if you believe you will get Netflix, Hulu or any other web services, or internet radio (e.g. RadioTime), via this system, think twice. There are plug ins, but come from third parties or free sites, are hard to find, and take major hacking to get to work even once, and then often fail after a few days.
The WIFI capability makes this system appear attractive since it promises a living room with fewer cables. However, I found it to be largely worthless; for video, or large images, you will have to get a physical cable connected. Otherwise, you will get slow response, and dropped connections (yes, I have 11 g, b,n nets and signal boosters, have a PhD in EE, and have set up networks for years). Try using a remote with a random 1/2 s delay, and you will learn the value of frustration.
Would return this except the box sat unopened for a few weeks before I had time to work with it...
Save your money. Get a secondhand laptop on ebay and set that up instead: the cost may be slightly more but there is no point to paying this much for a product with such limited functionality. |
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 "Good, not perfect" | 2009-05-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1MF8Y59CJRGEI |
| It's not bad. Plays all my video files so far (had it for about a month). Menus are slow. Other than that I am glad I got it. |
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| "HP poor customer service knowledge" | 2009-04-13 |
| - Reviewed By User: A139OF8FATUZZT |
After about 6 hours on the phone over the space of several days with HP they were still unable to get this item to run on my system. I had to return the item to the seller and pay a restocking fee. I had to give the product a star to submit the review but given the choice I would not have given it any.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001AHLODY/ref=cm_cr_rev_prod_title |
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| "MediaSmart Connect" | 2009-04-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: A15O202RE90W9F |
| This product is great. With the wireless N connection, it takes all of the media files available on my computer and plays them on my Sony widescreen tv downstairs. The HP and Windows Media Center interfaces both work fine. I like to start music playing and then go to a picture folder to start a slideshow. It accepts files from a flash drive without any problems. I just purchased the HP 500 gig Pocket Media Drive to expand the MediaSmart's versatility. The only negative that I have run into is that the remote control functions are a little slow. This sometimes makes it difficult to know if your command has been recognized. |
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| "I like it - It's not everything but it's a lot." | 2009-03-31 |
| - Reviewed By User: A39P4XSSQQVL85 |
I have had the MediaSmart Connect box for about a month now. It is good for connecting to Windows shares and playing most of the media types on my distributed hard drives. The hardware is very straight forward and the picture and sound quality are nearly perfect. The software however is quite cumbersome. The unit basically uses Windows Media Center. I would have perferred the much more flexible Media Player or even better Winamp. Maybe software upgrades/add-ons will be available. (maybe are - I haven't really looked)
Also the codec thing is biting me. This unit will not play many of my videos that work just fine on my workstation but, in it's defense, it will play a file that I thought was corrupt because my main workstation would not play it correctly. This is probably more a reflection of the digital A/V world than this boxes' fault. Codecs seem to be much less transparent than they should be. This should be fixable with some research and downloading.
In short this unit is a fairly easy and inexpensive way to interface your digital media collection to the TV and digital sound system but is not perfect but, even with its problems, I think it is worth the money.
Note on Amazon and HP: This unit was a refurbished unit and unexpectedly came without a power supply. Amazon would accept the unit back for credit but could not provide a power supply - I wanted the unit not an exersize in packing and shipping so I tried to buy the power supply from HP. They could/would not sell me one! Seems like an odd way to run business'.
Luckily this unit is much like a laptop so I modified the power inputs by bypassing the proprietary connector with two wires and some solder and just attached an old laptop power supply from my "junqe" collection. This works just fine. Why can't we have power connecter standards? |
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