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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.
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. RadioTime), via this system, think twice. However, I found it to be largely worthless; for video, or large images, you will have to get a physical cable connected. As for the more advanced functions (windows media extender, video, web), it is an expensive disappointment. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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). 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.
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.
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
It accepts files from a flash drive without any problems. 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. This product is great. I just purchased the HP 500 gig Pocket Media Drive to expand the MediaSmart's versatility. 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. 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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