Freecom Media Player 450 WLAN - Features Continued
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However you decide to connect up the 450, you’ll appreciate the way it can function with all the computers on your network, or indeed with none of them. The fact that the 450 can function without needing to be connected to a PC opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Fancy a Wire weekend at your friend’s place? Simple. Dump series one to five on to the 450, plug it into your mate’s 42” plasma TV and break out the nachos. You can’t do that with a USB stick!
And of course, the 450’s possible uses go far beyond the trivial. Media professionals will no doubt be pricking up their ears, aware of the collaborative possibilities offered by a fully-networked, media capable, portable one-terabyte hard drive.
The full range of connectivity options also does Freecom credit. It would have been easy for the company to trim production costs and target the 450 squarely at the High Definition market, but the fact is that they’ve gone the other way: just about anybody with a TV or stereo can use this gadget.
”The Media Player 450 offers a full range of connectivity options”
The decision to include S-video, Composite video and analogue audio outputs is especially welcome as, despite the digital revolution, these remain far and away the most commonly available interconnections on home entertainment equipment. Including them means the 450 will appeal to the widest possible market, as does the wide range of media formats supported by the 450.
On the video side, it will handle MPEG (versions 1, 2 and 4), WMV9, DivX and Xvid, which should keep almost everybody happy. It caters equally well to sound, with support for MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and WAV. It’s good to see all of the most common formats supported, not just the more corporate ones. Freecom promises firmware upgrades will be available, so it’s even possible that these lists will be further extended, but at present this is hardly necessary.
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