Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ Network Media Player Unboxing Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
969 words · ~4 min read
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so today we'll be having a look at yet another Network media player we have the
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Seagate free agent theater plus this is an HD Media Player it is fully 1080p
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ready basically it allows you to access content from your home network much like
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a lot of these other network media accessories so first of all you've got
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your list of what's in the box which we'll be showing you soon enough so there's no need to read that you've got
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minimum system requirements which are very very conservative 256 Megs RAM is
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pretty much it and a USB port okay so that's not too bad it's got these
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supported formats which does include rmvb as well as MKV so some of the
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pretty important ones are there subtitle support and resolutions up to 1080p uh
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let me see you can do jpeg photos if you wanted to do that and it supports both
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pal and ntsc so let's get this thing
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open and yeah here we go so first of all we take off the plastic yeah oh yeah one
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of the cool features while I'm unboxing this thing if I could just get the
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plastic started maybe something sharp would be helpful is actually the ability
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to dock a Seagate external hard drive
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into the front of it so where a lot of these media players have support for a
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USB hard drive uh on the outside or for
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an internal hard drive like the popcorn hour this one actually supports the use
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of an external hard drive internally if
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you catch my drift so let's take this open and I'll show you exactly what I
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mean first of all you're going to find a quick start guide which based on how
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stiff it is also includes a CD so we'll see what it says the CD is for in just a
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moment so here's your quick start guide they want you
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to check and make sure you have everything connect an HDMI connection or
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something else connect to Ethernet and plug in the power at this point you can
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also insert a free agent go hard drive so that's a 2 and 1/2 in external hard
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drive and take advantage of that or you can use an external USB port to any
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Drive enclosure here's some instructions for how to use the media sync software
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and the remote control okay so here's your free agent theater
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Plus HD Media Player solution this is what you need to install on the server
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computer then you've got your warranty information okay and then you have
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updated oh they're telling you you want to update your firmware as frequently as
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possible but make sure that you get the latest from seates website okay here we
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go so it's a little bit bigger than you know what let's do the accessories first
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actually I changed my mind okay first you got your power brick pretty standard
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thing it comes with a plug on one end and a different front plug on the other
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end okay that's good then you've got a
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composite cable okay it looks like about a 6t cable 3ot probably and then you
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have a component video cable okay that was great and oh it comes with oh no it
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doesn't come with an HDMI cable so that is a bit of a small knock against it but
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it does come with kind of a fancy looking Ethernet cable with metal on the
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sides okay so there's an Ethernet cable and two AAA batteries for the remote
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actually the remote can make or break these devices so this is not nearly as
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advanced a remote as something like the popcorn hours but it's a little bit
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better than what comes with the wdtv live so you just have kind of your basic
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functionality uh it's a little on the big side I guess considering the buttons
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looks like there's a lot of empty space but that's going to give you pretty much
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what you need to do to navigate the menus play stop forward rewind mute Etc
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okay so now let's have a look at the unit itself oh something that uh we
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should probably mention is you can see that this packaging is green it is well
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not green it's brown but it's recycled recycled material so uh they are saving
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the environment one package at a time so let's take the plastic off the top it
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doesn't come off in one piece cuz you can see here on the right that's the
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hatch for installing aha a 2 and 1/2 in drive so
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you can see it's just a USB connection at the back so that both Powers the
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drive and provides your data transfer and you can remove or put on this cover
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as needed it's quite a leak looking unit is quite a bit bigger than the wdtv live
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but I really like the front of it it's very clean looking you basically got one
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USB port and one is that a power switch
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I think it's a power switch I can't tell it doesn't seem to have much of a switchy feel to it but that'll be in the
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instructions one way or another okay so there's your AV out there is your
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component out optical audio HDMI LAN USB
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and power there's a hard reset switch on the back so that pretty much covers our
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unboxing of the Tate free agent feeder
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Plus