Sitecom Media Player 2TB MD-272 review -
The Media Player GUI
Once you hook up the WiFi dongle you can configure it here for wireless access as well. This is an optional dongle though, it was not included in this kit. However for 1080P content we strongly recommend you to use wired LAN anyway as it eats away heaps of bandwidth, up-to say 40 Mbit sec.
So we use the good old-fashioned Ethernet jack. You can assign an IP, but like 99% of you have it, it will pick up the DHCP lease from your router and the unit as such configures itself once you power it up.
Everything in the TV Media Player 2TB MD-272 has been thought through well, to make the end-user experience as easy and pleasant as can be.
Of course all important data can be read out easily, upgrading from an old to the new firmware is as easy as copying the Firmware IMG file in the root of a USB stick, starting up the HDD TV Media Player 2TB MD-272, going to the upgrade function and following the instructions. Both our units upgraded to the new GUI firmware without any issues.
Movie or content playback quality is downright good, we threw MP4, x.264, h.264, MOV and WMV files at the HDD TV Media Player 2TB MD-272. It takes all formats without any issues whatsoever.
The new firmware has been calibrated to really nice dark levels and just the right contrast, gamma and color levels. You can tweak a little on your HDTV to fine-tune things, but the default setup is very impressive.
You can place your content on the local HDD, stream over the net by accessing a PC or NAS (even with username/password) unit or if you have set that up, easily access a UPNP storage cluster. Click, point and play ...
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 ?