(versione italiana)
Some months ago we had the opportunity to test the
Seagate FreeAgent Theater, a home theater solution that provides an easy way to enjoy our digital media contents directly on TV instead of personal computer. It presented itself as an innovative and valuable product, that got its best feature in the use of external hard disk drives as reading source - you can find all details in
our review (only in italian).
But the product could had been improved. The great number of supported formats though, didn't include codec from last generation, like H.264 (the Blu-Ray codec, in other words). Some manifacturing defects were founded over the time: for example, the eject button for the ejection of
FreeAgent Go, turned out to be a quite fragile mechanism and after some weeks it got stuck, making unusable its apposite bay. These defects didn't passed unnoticed to the producer, who improved its creation, giving life to the new Plus model: the
Seagate FreeAgent Theater+.
On the outside, the player preserved its original concept, also with some significant modifications. The design is still elegant but more homogeneous (control buttons on the top of the player have been removed), it always has a limited size (1.18 in height x 7.20 in width x 6.89 in length), its color is again glossy black. The hateful ejecting mechanism has been removed, allowing now to insert and take off the FreeAgent Go in a free and easy way, without overage complications. As well as the previous version, the bay for FreeAgent Go can be closed if you don't use it (it's a pity that can't be closed with the disk inside!). The remote control underwent a remarkable restyling: the first version was too compact and small, to the point that it was uncomfortable, instead with the Plus version the remote has got a more user friendly shape, similar to other standard remote control.
On the rear side of the player are evident the more significant changes of this Plus version. About the video outputs, composite and component are confirmed, but good-bye to S-Video and finally welcome to HDMI, in order to enjoy Full HD without compromises. The FreeAgent Theater+ has got also an Ethernet port, in order to connect the unit directly to the modem wired, to download the firmware updates through Internet, to access content from storage devices on our network, to access internet content such as pictures, streaming videos (e.g.
YouTube), weather, stocks and more. And if you got a wi-fi modem, Seagate released the
FreeAgent Theater+ Wi-Fi Adapter, a small USB receiver that allows the wireless connection to the web.
