The Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player offers up the opportunity to playback a multitude of video and music formats. There are so many ways to get content to this awesome device too. Seagate GoFlex TV HD Media Player - Quick Start Guide, Installation, Troubleshooting Tips & Downloads. Updates the firmware on the GoFlex TV. Region Support: EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) DOWNLOAD. GoFlex TV Firmware Update For US. YouTube; Twitter ©2019 Seagate Technology LLC.
The Indian market has seen a lot of HD media players being launched recently with manufacturers fitting the best possible features in the most compact sizes. We recently reviewed the TViX SlimS1 HD, iXtreamer, which were some of the higher end models with some pretty nifty features. Seagate, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hard drives have launched two home entertainment solutions in the form of the GoFlex TV and the FreeAgent Theatre. The GoFlex TV is a more compact solution and offers users the option to attach an internal drive in the player. Today, we’re looking at the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV.Design and Build QualityThe Seagate GoFlex TV is small and compact in design. It’s smaller than the FreeAgent theater player and roughly the same size as some of the WD media players. Finished in a glossy, as well as textured black finish, this is a decent looking device that you can place in your living room next to your television set.
Vents for cooling the playerTo the right of the media player is a USB 2.0 port and a reset button. At the back of the device are the ports for the power cable, composite, component, optical, HDMI, LAN and a USB 2.0 port. On the bottom and the sides of the media player there are many vents which help in cooling. The bundled remote is smaller than most of the standard TV remotes.
The controls are minimal and easy to use. Wireless connectivity is possible using an optional USB dongle.FeaturesIn terms of connectivity features, the GoFlex TV has two USB ports to connect drives. There are various connectivity options available of this HD media player with there being ports for USB, HDMI, a bay for housing a portable hard drive and a LAN cable.The home screen of the GoFlex TV features five widgets for Movies, Pictures, Music, Internet and an option to Browse the contents of a portable hard drive that may be attached to it. Below them are links on the home screen which are for websites such as YouTube, MediaFly, vTuner, Picasa, Flickr and other Internet services. Quite a few connectivity optionsThe user interface of the GoFlex TV player is similar to previous Seagate players. The main interface has segmentation for the different types of media. There’s also a Browse option which lets you browse through the media like a file explorer.The player also supports online media streaming services including YouTube, Flickr and a couple of other media services.
There’s also weather reports and an RSS reader feature. Updating of the firmware can be done over the internet connection itself.PerformanceThe performance of the player while playing all sorts of media is great. We used our usual 1920x1080 resolution, 60 fps video on the player and it performed flawlessly. We noticed almost no synchronization issues while playing back audio and video. Fast forwarding of the movies is also quick. Almost all of the formats we tried worked flawlessly.
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We had some problems with some subtitles not showing up on some movies. A simple, minimalistic remote controlThe player keeps indexing all attached storage devices and that tends to slow down the device further, from time to time. One of the biggest annoying flaws of the player is that it is painfully slow through the menus. The remote itself doesn’t work very well, unless you’re accurately pointing it at the player. We faced some hanging and locking up issues as well where we had to reset the product entirely.VerdictThe Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV is an extremely slow device. There are some stability issues as well, which should hopefully be fixed with some firmware updates.
Priced at an MRP of Rs. 8,750, it’s not a very expensive player. If it was faster and a little more stable, we would have recommended it. We recommend you consider the older Seagate FreeAgent Theater, which was a more stable product that had a similar set of features as the GoFlex TV.The Great Diwali Discount!Unlock 75% more savings this festive season.
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DesignSitting underneath your TV and playing back AV files from either network or USB connected sources, media-streaming boxes have littered the consumer landscape in 2010. Seagate's FreeAgent GoFlex TV, in most respects, is just another one of those boxes.
From a visual standpoint, that's all it is — a rather hollow-feeling box with network, HDMI, optical audio and a 3.5mm custom connector for other video outputs at the back. The remote control is of a style we can comfortably call 'typical' for this type of device. It's small, but not credit-card sized.
The buttons are squishy comfortable rubber, and like most remotes of this type you may have to intermittently jab at the controls to get them to do what you want. FeaturesThe key selling point for the GoFlex TV is that it's compatible with Seagate's GoFlex 320GB and 500GB hard drives. Big deal, you might think, since it has a USB port on the side that could accommodate any given drive. But Seagate's thinking goes just a touch deeper than that.
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The GoFlex TV is internally hollow with a socket that matches the shape of the GoFlex drives exactly. In theory, you can drop the drive, sans interface cable, directly into the GoFlex TV. Codec support from the GoFlex TV is nice and wide.
At the time of writing, the GoFlex officially supported MKV, AVI, DivX, RMVB, WMV9, VC-1, MPEG-4 (XviD), FLV, MPEG-2 (VOB/ISO), XviD HD, MPEG-1, AVC HD, TS/TP/M2T, M2TS, H.264 and MOV files from a connected USB drive or over a network. If you connect up a network via the Ethernet port (there's no in-built Wi-Fi), you'll also get access to YouTube and many other online sites. But unlike the US GoFlex TV, the Australian version lags doesn't offer Netflix streaming support. PerformanceFar too many small streaming boxes feature plain ugly menus.Despite its limited availability, this is probably why we really appreciate the Apple TV. The GoFlex TV's menus aren't the worst we've seen, but for a device that can output at 1080p, they're quite grainy and lack pizzazz.Video playback from USB connected sources was good up to 1080P. But with some noticeable skipping on high-resolution trailers we tested, the same wasn't always true from network sources.
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The online features worked, but only acceptably well rather than wowing us with some feature we'd never seen before. Being children of the VHS age, we excitedly thought that plugging in a GoFlex drive would be like popping a tape into the old VHS drive. Sadly, the nostalgia was short-lived. With a GoFlex drive (1TB GoFlex) that was too large for the GoFlex TV's aperture, our experience was more akin to trying to jam a VHS tape into a Beta deck. Those extra platters add extra fat to the 1TB and 750GB drives, making them incompatible with the internal cavity. ConclusionUnlike other cheap streaming boxes, the GoFlex TV doesn't do too much wrong.
But beyond the interesting internal hard-drive idea, it doesn't do that much to make itself stand out from the pack. The feature sets of these small boxes have been somewhat gobbled up by both consoles and some Blu-ray players and that leaves these boxes distinctly at the cheap end of town. It's worth considering against its competition, but only if the price is right.