Freecom MediaPlayer II 500GB

Despite its name, the Freecom MediaPlayer II is more than just media streamer - it's a Nas box too. So, not only can you use it to play video files in your lounge, but it's easy to get content on to it as well. Just hook it up to your network, and drag and drop what you want to watch. Freecom MediaPlayer II Freecom's …

[alistair millington]

Poor attempt indeed

It can't compete in todays market at that price without on board Wifi and gigabit. You can't network stream or be a NAS without GBit as everyone and their dog who makes motherboards now has on board Wifi and GBit ethernet. So this would be the weakest link a chain very quickly.

And 115 for a 500GB HDD, when you can get them for less than £50 from Freecom if you are still having to use the USB connectivity for file transfers.

[Greg J Preece]

Firmware fix?

That ethernet speed seems so horrible as to be considered broken. Wonder if a future firmware upgrade would fix the problem. Ethernet just isn't that slow.

[MarkOne]

@alistair millington

"You can't network stream or be a NAS without GBit"

Pure nonsense.

[Gordon861]

WLAN450

It sounds like a stripped down version of the old WLAN450 that they used to do. It also had problems with copying files via the ethernet due to only allowing a single FTP connection that is also throttled. The old version also had wi-fi built in.

I'll stick with the older version.

[Marc Spillman]

I'll be sticking with

my WD-TV for now. Best piece of kit you'll buy for £75 this year.

[Jay 2]

@alistair millington

I'm also with MarkOne. I've got a Netgear ReadyNAS that streams over some 100mbps PowerLine adaptors to my PS3. No problems there at all. It also wasn't too bad before the PowerLine setup when the PS3 was on g (upto) 54mbps wifi, though admittedly there was some buffering needed here and there.

[Anonymous Coward]

@millington

"You can't network stream or be a NAS without GBit"

Oh no!! I better tell my media player attached to my TV via HDMI that regularly streams 1080p content from my PC over 10/100, I'm sure it will stop doing it as soon as it finds out you say it can't!!! Oh and it will stop downloading via bittorrent at the same time as streaming too I'd guess!

[tony72]

MediaPlayer 450

I have a Freecom Mediaplayer 450 (I guess the same thing as what Gordon861 is talking about) sitting abandoned on the shelf, and this seems to be basically a repackaged version of that - same pathetic network performance, and same pathetic codec support. I bought the 450 because I wanted a way to output 1080p content on my full HD telly, but I did not realize that it can't actually play the formats that the vast majority of HD content is distributed in. So you have to convert to DivX on a PC, then transfer it over the painfully slow network interface, or physically carry it around to use USB. So much for casually viewing anything. I'm actually kind of shocked that Freecom are trying to flog this without having improved the technology at all from where it was when I bought my 450, it's junk.