Freecom MediaPlayer II 500GB review

Freecom’s MediaPlayer II is one of only two streamers here with a hard disk. The hardware doesn’t look too bad but its garish, dated-looking onscreen interface didn’t make a good first impression. We were frustrated by slow, unresponsive menus and a design that’s reminiscent of pages from Ceefax. Browsing shared folders was a hit-and-miss affair over both wired and wireless connections. Other machines on the network appeared and disappeared from the list for no apparent reason, and at times we were unable to browse the network at all. Most of the MediaPlayer’s features are easy to set up, but to connect it to your wireless network you’ll need a USB WiFi adaptor. Freecom’s 802.11b/g adaptor costs £40 but its slow transfer speeds led to jerky video. Once you’ve connected to a network, you’ll have to restart the streamer before you can view your network shares from the main menu. At the back of the MediaPlayer are USB type B and type A ports. The former is for connecting the MediaPlayer to your PC to transfer files and, if you don’t want to use a WiFi adaptor, the latter can be used for storage. The MediaPlayer has all the usual inputs and outputs. Sadly, its video format support is poor. It liked our 720p DivX AVI files but couldn’t play any of our other HD test files. It can’t handle H.264 and supports neither WMV nor WMV-HD formats.

The MediaPlayer II looks good on paper, with a big hard disk and integrated BitTorrent client, but the client is a major challenge to set up. While future firmware updates may improve matters, the device is crippled by an awful interface and poor HD video support. Our advice is to buy Syabas’s Popcorn Hour and fit a hard disk.