Blognoscenti – Official Blog of WebAntics.co.za

Posts Tagged ‘TV’

It’s not just high-end, feature-rich projectors that Epson release into the market. They are also hoping to pull gamers apart from their control pads with the attractively priced EH-TW480 Home Theatre Projector.

The projectors are boasting Epson’s  latest 3LCD technology with HD Ready at resolutions of 720p for super sharp images at wall-filling sizes and that are far more affordable than their flatscreen counterparts.

Quick response times mean that Gaming fanatics can stay competitive using the projector, with contrast ratios of 3,000:1 and brightness levels of 2,800 lumens offering vibrant images even in sunny ambient conditions. Read the rest of this entry »

Last month we saw the release of the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex external hard drive range. Their clever design lets you connect a range of adaptors for different interfaces, such as USB, FireWire and eSATA. In addition, without any adaptor, the drives can be plugged directly via their SATA connectors in to a variety of peripherals – including the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex HD media player.

The GoFlex TV has a smart-looking and compact casing. A door at the front flicks down to reveal that most of its interior is a bay for the GoFlex external hard drives. Even if you don’t have such a drive, the whole device is so small we can’t see anyone complaining about the unwanted bay.

You can connect other storage devices to the two USB ports – one on the right-hand side and the other on the rear – but there’s no built-in memory card reader for reading photos directly from SD cards. As well as accessing files from USB devices, you can stream them across a network from UPnP media servers or Windows shared folders.

Other ports include HDMI, an optical S/PDIF and two minijacks. Supplied breakout leads convert the latter into AV and component outputs. There’s a 10/100 Ethernet port, and 802.11n wireless can be added via a USB adaptor as an option, but it is not yet available.

The compact remote control is comfortable to hold, and has decently sized buttons, which are logically laid out and clearly labelled. The main menu is divided into Movies, Pictures, Music, Internet and Browse. The first three options quickly searched our attached storage and displayed all the relevant files – it had trouble recognising a couple, but nothing that couldn’t be solved by renaming a few unusual file extensions.

We were worried when our music came up in a gigantic A-Z list, but from the menu you can sort it by albums, artists, genres, years and playlists – or switch to a thumbnail display. Photos and videos have smaller ranges of appropriate options. It remembers which filters you have set, so you don’t have to tell it again every time you switch it on.

It recognised both ripped Blu-ray and DVD ISOs, with full support for menus and subtitling – though chapter skip only worked on DVDs. You can switch between audio tracks easily, so no getting stuck with an audio commentary. It remembers where you left each movie, so you can resume playback the next time you select that file.

The Internet option lets you access content from popular sites, primarily YouTube, Picasa and Flickr; but also vTuner for internet radio, and a mish-mash of bizarre IPTV offerings. Everything works fine, but we were disappointed not get the option of HD playback from YouTube. Of course, the device itself supports all HD resolutions up to 1080p.

The GoFlex TV is a good option if you are looking for a decent media player, and if you also want a fast external hard drive, then you will be more than happy to take this and a matching GoFlex drive. Its support of menus from Blu-ray ISOs is also a big advantage over other favourites.

You can get the Seagate GoFlex TV HD Media Player - now for R1209.33 incl vat at the WebAntics Online shopping store