- #Seagate freeagent desk for mac review 720p#
- #Seagate freeagent desk for mac review hd media#
- #Seagate freeagent desk for mac review portable#
We first tried installing it on our primary benchmarking machine, but it quickly informed us that it’s not compatible with 64-bit versions of Windows (and if your Windows machine has more than 2GB of memory, you’re most likely running a 64-bit version of the OS). That’s great if your digital library will fit on a 250GB drive (if it doesn’t, Seagate offers another model bundled with a 500GB FreeAgent Go drive, or you can use multiple drives), but we have two major gripes about the software.
#Seagate freeagent desk for mac review portable#
The model we reviewed is street priced at $195 and includes a 250GB FreeAgent hard drive, a USB docking station, and software that’s capable of synchronizing the digital audio, video, and photographs stored on your PC’s hard drive with the portable drive. The device can also host any other USB storage device or digital camera with a USB port the menu buttons will work with those devices, too. Seagate cleverly takes advantage of the extra size by including buttons for navigating the device’s menus and for media transport control (play, pause, and stop). The primary reason for these dimensions is to accommodate Seagate’s line of FreeAgent Go portable USB hard drives, which can dock inside the FreeAgent Theater. In that case, you’ll be stuck with analog stereo.Īnd where Western Digital’s device is sufficiently compact (3.94 inches wide by 4.94 inches deep) that it can be stashed in a handbag if you want to take it with you, Seagate’s box is nearly twice as wide and deep (7.2 inches by 7.08 inches, respectively). Coax cables are far superior to optical cables in terms of making solid connections between source and destination, so the absence of an optical S/PDIF is less of an issue unless, of course, all the coax inputs on your A/V receiver are already occupied. The FreeAgent Theater does provide a means of piping digital audio to an A/V receiver or outboard digital-to-analog converter, but only by way of coaxial S/PDIF-it has no optical S/PDIF port. HDMI is rapidly becoming ubiquitous, so its omission on a digital product like this is puzzling at best and annoying at worst-why does Seagate insist on making the video digital-to-analog conversion in its own box? Including an HDMI port would not only give you the choice of using your own outboard gear for this, it would also eliminate at least four cable connections. If you’re the type of consumer who’s interested in streaming media from a portable hard drive, you most likely have a TV and probably an A/V receiver with at least two HDMI inputs.
#Seagate freeagent desk for mac review 720p#
It does support high-res video-at 720p and 1080i, but not 1080p resolution, mind you-but it does so using component video cables (it has composite and S-Video connections, too). The FreeAgent Theater’s biggest shortcoming is that it doesn’t have an HDMI port. In a strange twist though, Seagate’s FreeAgent Theater unexpectedly takes several steps in the wrong direction, much to our dismay and disappointment. Second-to-market products are often better than the ones that create a new niche, so expectations were suitably high around the office.
#Seagate freeagent desk for mac review hd media#
When Western Digital introduced its smart WD TV HD Media Player earlier this year, which is designed to mate portable hard drives with big-screen TVs, we knew it was only a matter of time before rival disk manufacturer Seagate would come up with something similar.
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