Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV HD Media Player Review

[Apoptosis]

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV HD Media Player Review

The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Media Player makes navigating and accessing your digital media files easy and lets you stream media directly from the Internet, your computer and your USB devices. This means you can easily watch, share and play your movies, music, and photos on your TV in seconds. The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Media Player can also stream data from Netflix, Youtube, Paramount, and Flickr straight to your TV.

We really didn’t know what to expect from this 3rd-Generation media player from Seagate, but the FreeAgent GoFlex TV performed above our expectations. Even though this player is based on a chipset that is a year old (as are most HD Media Players on the market), the GoFlex TV was actually faster and “snappier” than its older brother, the FreeAgent Theater+. We have to give it up to the Seagate programmers for making a firmware that unleashes more speed. Browsing through long files is not a big of a hassle as it once used to be. When you compare this incarnation of the Realtek chipset to that of the popular Sigma, the Realtek with Seagate firmware comes out on top...

Article Title: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV HD Media Player Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1407/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $109.99 at Newegg

[Major_A]

For Christmas I'm looking at getting my sister and brother in law one of these little boxes. Right now they have a hard drive hooked up via USB to their DVD player. It works with avi files but if the scene gets intense it lags and stutters like crazy. How does this compare to the Patriot Box Office and WD TV HD? Opinions on which one I should look at?

[Digital Puppy]

For Christmas I'm looking at getting my sister and brother in law one of these little boxes. Right now they have a hard drive hooked up via USB to their DVD player. It works with avi files but if the scene gets intense it lags and stutters like crazy. How does this compare to the Patriot Box Office and WD TV HD? Opinions on which one I should look at?

The Patriot has the same chip as the Seagate, which is different from the Sigma-based WDTV. None of my tests of the GoFlex resulted in any stuttering at all. This was a pleasant surprise, to be honest.

At this point, I would look at the Seagate, Patriot, WDTV, and the Apple players. Each of them have unique GUI's (with the Patriot's being the most 'immature'). If you need on-board storage then look at the Patriot or Seagate...if you want want a player that plays every kind of media file you find, try and look for a player that based on the Realtek chipset.

We will see in a few weeks how well the Apple player does though. No on-board storage, but still the GUI looks quite sexy. If you can wait a couple of weeks, we should have the new $99 Apple in hand to see how it performs.

[Major_A]

Onboard storage is a must. I don't feel like getting the wireless dongle and their router is roughly 75 feet away. So unless my brother in law wants to buy and run a long ethernet cable it probably won't be hooked up to the internet. I'd just like them to see a full HD movie on their TV since every other piece of A/V is all SD. With the Seagate unit can you add your own drive or does it have the their form factor?

[Digital Puppy]

Onboard storage is a must. I don't feel like getting the wireless dongle and their router is roughly 75 feet away. So unless my brother in law wants to buy and run a long ethernet cable it probably won't be hooked up to the internet. I'd just like them to see a full HD movie on their TV since every other piece of A/V is all SD. With the Seagate unit can you add your own drive or does it have the their form factor?

You can add any USB-hard drive to the machine. So in theory, you can use a thumb drive or an existing usb-drive to play your content.

You don't have to use the GoFlex HDD drive to use the media player.

[bilalbj]

Hi, i have been looking all over the internet and no one has answered this question. can you tell me that is 5.1surround sound supported with Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV HD Media Player or not? because the WD media player only supports 2.0 surround. Audio is very important to me and to all the customers who are buying anysort of media player.
Thanks
Bilal

[Digital Puppy]

Hi, i have been looking all over the internet and no one has answered this question. can you tell me that is 5.1surround sound supported with Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV HD Media Player or not? because the WD media player only supports 2.0 surround. Audio is very important to me and to all the customers who are buying anysort of media player.
Thanks
Bilal

Hey Bilal, welcome to the forums!

Both the WD and Seagate players will DECODE audio to 2.0...But they are able to PASS through 5.1 (and higher) to your receiver or decoder via HDMI and Toslink.

When we hook our Media players directly to our Denon receiver, the media players can pus the audio to allow the receiver to do the work of audio decoding. You might need to play with the Audio settings to stream LPCM, or whatever works for your receiver.

[Kaos Kid]

Nice writeup!

Methinks that between this new player and the forthcoming Apple my HTPC will be replaced by one of these streamlined units. The main thing that keeps me in HTPC is being able to use pixel shading to really fine tune the picture, it seems with a hardware media player you are limited to the file itself as encoded. It is a PITA though to have to fire up my HTPC and then wait a couple minutes for windows to load, surf to my media folder and then click on a file and wait for MPC-HC to load up as well. Once these media players evolve to have all the goodies I can get with my HTPC I will probably switch.
I'm wondering how this would work with an older USB2.0 external drive, I would like onboard storage but not at those prices for the proprietary drives. Also I wonder if you hooked up an external USB2 DVD drive would it see the DVD in the drive and play it just as it would a file on a harddrive. That would allow you to eliminate a full-size DVD player and only have the footprint of a small external drive. Just wondering.

[INeedAFnSuffix]

Nice writeup!

Methinks that between this new player and the forthcoming Apple my HTPC will be replaced by one of these streamlined units. The main thing that keeps me in HTPC is being able to use pixel shading to really fine tune the picture, it seems with a hardware media player you are limited to the file itself as encoded. It is a PITA though to have to fire up my HTPC and then wait a couple minutes for windows to load, surf to my media folder and then click on a file and wait for MPC-HC to load up as well. Once these media players evolve to have all the goodies I can get with my HTPC I will probably switch.
I'm wondering how this would work with an older USB2.0 external drive, I would like onboard storage but not at those prices for the proprietary drives. Also I wonder if you hooked up an external USB2 DVD drive would it see the DVD in the drive and play it just as it would a file on a harddrive. That would allow you to eliminate a full-size DVD player and only have the footprint of a small external drive. Just wondering.

I would prefer sticking to my good ol' HTPC by then ,
Because 1st things first ,
You get overclocking headroom ( perhaps you don't even get one on a PMP ) .
I can wait , nowadays , Windows 7 is truly a fast OS , if you cut out all the eyecandy , it even boots under a flat 10 seconds to login screen in my ol' HP tx2028au ( i didn't tweak it yet ) .
What you can have is , ( i saw over at 3DGuru , 300W Fanless PSU ) .
a completely silent HD5450 / HD 4550 ( unless you're that kind of cheapo ...)
Epic 7.1 ( if you DID install a X-Fi and link it up to a Denon for epic sound quality )
i love THX , that's it .....
And Dolby TrueHD .
And you can put a Phenom II x4 over a Athlon II x4 if you like ;)
I don't know and i forgot which processor can be fanless , and if i wanted , that would be ( i would wait ) for those Bobcat APU's ( i refer to it as auxilliary power units found in some airplanes )
AM3+ ( i heard it won't be backward compatible , but i'm blur already )

[Digital Puppy]

Nice writeup!

Methinks that between this new player and the forthcoming Apple my HTPC will be replaced by one of these streamlined units. The main thing that keeps me in HTPC is being able to use pixel shading to really fine tune the picture, it seems with a hardware media player you are limited to the file itself as encoded. It is a PITA though to have to fire up my HTPC and then wait a couple minutes for windows to load, surf to my media folder and then click on a file and wait for MPC-HC to load up as well. Once these media players evolve to have all the goodies I can get with my HTPC I will probably switch.
I'm wondering how this would work with an older USB2.0 external drive, I would like onboard storage but not at those prices for the proprietary drives. Also I wonder if you hooked up an external USB2 DVD drive would it see the DVD in the drive and play it just as it would a file on a harddrive. That would allow you to eliminate a full-size DVD player and only have the footprint of a small external drive. Just wondering.

I would prefer sticking to my good ol' HTPC by then ,
Because 1st things first ,
You get overclocking headroom ( perhaps you don't even get one on a PMP ) .
I can wait , nowadays , Windows 7 is truly a fast OS , if you cut out all the eyecandy , it even boots under a flat 10 seconds to login screen in my ol' HP tx2028au ( i didn't tweak it yet ) .
What you can have is , ( i saw over at 3DGuru , 300W Fanless PSU ) .
a completely silent HD5450 / HD 4550 ( unless you're that kind of cheapo ...)
Epic 7.1 ( if you DID install a X-Fi and link it up to a Denon for epic sound quality )
i love THX , that's it .....
And Dolby TrueHD .
And you can put a Phenom II x4 over a Athlon II x4 if you like ;)
I don't know and i forgot which processor can be fanless , and if i wanted , that would be ( i would wait ) for those Bobcat APU's ( i refer to it as auxilliary power units found in some airplanes )
AM3+ ( i heard it won't be backward compatible , but i'm blur already )

Good points...but can you do it for under $100?

This is the strength of the set-top box/media player: small cost, easy setup, format agnostic.

Nice writeup!
I'm wondering how this would work with an older USB2.0 external drive, I would like onboard storage but not at those prices for the proprietary drives. Also I wonder if you hooked up an external USB2 DVD drive would it see the DVD in the drive and play it just as it would a file on a harddrive. That would allow you to eliminate a full-size DVD player and only have the footprint of a small external drive. Just wondering.

Every set-top box/media player can work with USB external drives. We have even used thumb drives to play our media files. Seagate is making it easy for those with the new GoFlex HDD to integrate that form factor into a multimedia player. You can run the GoFlex TV with no attached drive if you wish and just plug a Ethernet cable or WiFi dongle to connect to your shared folders or media server.

[Kaos Kid]

My question was more along the lines of how well it would work with older drives. I have a few IDE drives that have been sitting unused that I could put into this NAS box that I was given (empty of drives) but never figured out how to use

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 507,00.asp

I was thinking it would make a good media dump to hook up a media player to since I have some older IDE drives (160-200GB 7200s) but I was wondering if their slower older tech would cause stuttering in media playback or not.

[Digital Puppy]

My question was more along the lines of how well it would work with older drives. I have a few IDE drives that have been sitting unused that I could put into this NAS box that I was given (empty of drives) but never figured out how to use

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 507,00.asp

I was thinking it would make a good media dump to hook up a media player to since I have some older IDE drives (160-200GB 7200s) but I was wondering if their slower older tech would cause stuttering in media playback or not.

Even if you have 'old' and 'slow' hard drives, it really only matters what your enclosure is doing. I've used NAS's with 5400 speed hard drives in a RAID-5 configuration that worked just fine. If the box can connect to your network at 100mbps speed, you should have plenty of data throughput to stream 1080-files.