Freecom Media Player 450 WLAN - How it works
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Based on the specifications alone, the device would stake a serious claim for a place in any home entertainment setup. However, producing a great gadget takes more than an impressive feature list, so how does it function in practice?
Sadly, at this early stage of its development the 450 in use doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the hardware. The 450 is designed to be controlled from an armchair with the fully-featured remote control, which places huge emphasis on the quality of the on-screen display. Unfortunately this is something of a let down.
To begin with, as anyone who’s used a Wii will appreciate, a remote control is not the ideal tool with which to configure networking. Entering usernames, passwords and hex numbers quickly becomes something of an ordeal, which is not improved at all by the display’s horrible blocky text. It looks like a teletext display. Most people will want to set the thing up as quickly as possible and leave it alone.
Of course, depending on the physical arrangement of your hardware, you could skip the 450’s networking capabilities altogether by plugging it into your PC with a USB cable and controlling it from your computer’s monitor. This would undoubtedly be less frustrating, but also would mean sacrificing a large part of the device’s functionality. And you would still have to navigate the on-screen menus to play back media content after you’ve uploaded it to the drive, although this is a considerably less demanding procedure.
Other than that, there isn’t too much to say. The 450 pretty much does what it says on the box, with little fuss. One function it lacks is the ability to record from the TV. The more you think about it, the more this seems like a major oversight, especially when you consider that you have an enormous hard drive right next to your receiver, waiting to be filled with fresh content.
If Freecom had seen fit to include this capability they would have come up with an absolute winner. As it is, while not entirely scaling the heights, the Media Player 450 is a robust and functional solution for any video junkie who needs networked media playback facilities along with extensive storage capacity.
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