Sitecom MD-500 Digital Media Set review -
Network TV Media Player
Network TV Media Player
This is the package, everything need is included. The Network TV Media Player, a wireless dongle, power adapter, component cable, HDMI cable, CAT5 cable, small remote + batteries and a manual.
The Wireless Network TV Media Player is extremely simple and small. Which it should be, a non-intrusive device close to the television is all we need right ? The front side has a USB port in which you can connect the wireless dongle
At the backside we can see output connectivity. It's a small device so you'll be limited in a plethora of connectors, still it's more then you'll probably need. Composite video output, stereo RCA, HDMI 1.3 (outputs both video and audio) which is very handy to connect to an AV receiver. An optical TOSLINK SPDIF should you want to direct audio with the speed of light towards your receiver. Then we see one Ethernet jack which supports 10/100 Mbit and then an USB 2.0 connector. In which you can insert USB flash drive and playback content from.
The Sitecom Powerline Ethernet adapters allow you to use your mains electricity circuit to transfer data, this way you can extend your network to wherever you have a free plug socket. The product we test today comes from Sitecom, their 500 Mbps plus Homeplug. The kit provides a connection of up to 500Mbits/sec. Divide that by 8 bits and you'd in theory would be able to see transfer speeds of 62.5 Megabyte per second. In practice, however we tested the maximum net data rate is much MUCH lower, 60~100 Mbits/sec - still that is faster than Wi-Fi and sufficient fenough or streaming high-definition video from say your PC with network shares to, for instance, your HTPC.
Sitecom Media Player 2TB MD-272 review
So the new Sitecom Media Player comes standard with a new improved GUI, but also hardware wise harbor the latest Realtek 1185 chipset, and that changes a thing or two as pretty much any of the performance issues we had noticed in 1080P content playback (with very high bit-rate) on the previous chipset now are a thing of the past. That Realtek 1185 chipset has an increased clock frequency, 500 MHz coming from 400 MHz on the original version. And as little as it sounds, it makes a serious difference. The HDD TV Media Player 2TB allows you to play digital films, music and photos directly on your TV with High Definition quality (1080p).
Sitecom 300N X4 WLR-4000 Wireless router review
Sitecom introduces a series of standard routers but with a twist. They tagged their mainstream range from X1, X2, X3 and a more enthusiast range from X4, X5 and X6. They are all Gigabit models, but obviously the higher the number the better the feature set. all models now come with cloud security, and that's the new feature we'll discuss later on. We test the X4 WLR-4000 model.
Sitecom MD-500 Digital Media Set review
One of the kits Sitecom recently introduced consists out of a Gigabit router for your intra and local area network connectivity, a storage unit which Sitecom calls 'Home Storage center' will function as NAS server for all your multi-media content like photo's, music and movies. And then a small all-in-one HTPC or TV media player as we like to call it these days. To top things off they throw in a Logitech Harmony 650 universal remote control. Aren't you just eager to see how this HTPC network platform will perform ?