HP X280N MediaSmart Connect

Unlock the endless entertainment potential of your home network. The HP MediaSmart Connect wirelessly streams your collection of digital music, photos, and videos to your HDTV. It also brings online media to your living room, giving you access to Internet radio, online photos, and the ability to rent or buy downloadable digital movies, and watch them on your HDTV. Because it’s also an Extender for Windows Media Center, you can take full advantage of your Windows Vista-based PC, giving your HDTV the Media Center experience, complete with an electronic program guide, recorded HDTV, and extended online media like Internet TV Beta and Fox Sports lounge.

Features

Tune into your home network. Bridge the gap between your HDTV and your home network with integrated next-generation high-speed wireless 802.11n technology and 720p/1080i resolution.	Try something new. Use your HDTV to rent or buy downloadable digital movies, listen to Internet radio, and view your online photo collection.
Set your media free. Enjoy your personal collection of digital music, photos, and videos stored on every PC in your home network, aggregated into easy-to-find folders so they’re ready to play.	Get more connections. Extender for Windows Media Center takes full advantage of your Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate-based PC, bringing the Media Center experience to your HDTV, including your digital content collection, recorded HDTV, and extended online media like Internet TV Beta and Fox Sports lounge.

Next-generation wireless networking. Built-in 802.11n wireless networking enables robust high-definition video streaming, while 802.11a/b/g provides seamless integration with legacy home networks. High-definition home theater connectivity. The HP MediaSmart Connect hooks up to your HDTV with 720p/1080i output resolutions via High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) or component video, and to your audio equipment with digital or analog audio connections. Popular file formats. Wide format compatibility enables the HP MediaSmart Connect to “play it all”, like MPEG 2, MPEG 4, H.264, WMV, DVR-MS, DivX, MP3, WMA, and AAC (unprotected) files.

Simple setup.
Setting up the HP MediaSmart Connect is a snap. On-screen wizards quickly guide you through the simple process with step-by-step instructions, so you can start right out of the box.

In-home content.
The HP MediaSmart Connect integrates smoothly into your wired or wireless home network, aggregating videos, music, and photos into folders so your digital entertainment is easy to find and enjoy.

Online media.
With a broadband Internet connection, the HP MediaSmart Connect expands your digital entertainment options with access to a wide variety of online media:

• Movies: Rent or buy digital movies and videos from CinemaNow right from your HDTV, and start watching while they download.
• Photos: Keep up with family and friends by viewing their shared digital pictures on Snapfish.
• Music: Listen to new hits and old favorites on Live365 Internet radio.
• Video: Enjoy thousands of online videos directly on your HDTV.

Portable mass media support. A built-in HP Pocket Media Drive bay and two USB 2.0 ports enable direct access to digital content on personal flash drives, portable hard drives, and other mass-media storage devices. Universal remote control. The HP remote features a media button that places your entire library of movies, music, and photos right in your hand, as well as universal capabilities to control up to four other devices.

Dual Operating Modes
A choice of operating environments lets you enjoy your HP MediaSmart Connect your way.

MediaSmart mode

• Works with Windows XP and later operating systems
• Indexes content from all your PCs and organizes it by type in easy-to-find folders
• Provides broad playback compatibility, including AAC audio files and podcasts (.m4a) and high-definition video formats4,11
• Multiplies your entertainment with online media including video downloads, shared photos, Internet radio, and more1,2
• Enables direct access to digital content via the HP Pocket Media Drive bay and dual USB ports

Media Center Extender mode

• Designed for Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate operating systems
• Provides a familiar user interface and experience, the same as your Windows Media Center
• Connects to your digital photos, music, and videos over your wired or wireless home network
• Lets you watch live HDTV, explore programming, and set shows to record using the Interactive Program Guide
• Offers a wide variety of online media including Vongo, Fox Sts, Showtime, and more

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars MEDIA AT YOUR FINGER TIPS
This item is easy to use straight out of box. I have mine set up via a wireless connection with a dir-655. It connects perfectly to pc and WHS.

With add-ins such a cinema now you can purchase or rent movies or tv series. With play on media add in you can access[..] where there are 1000’s of tv shows and movies to watch for free. I gave this product 4 stars. Would have been five but it DOES NOT PLAY VOB FILES. I have a 500gb pmd that fits into it with tons of home movies plus another 500gb drive with tons of movies. If you have spent time loading all of your movies into external drives and or WHS plan on converting them to mpg files and they will work great in this extender. Just a added note that WHS has a add in called MY MOVIES and it will get all info for your movies off line. In WMC you can view your collection from dvd jacket and click watch. But remember to convert those vob files to mpg.

3 Stars Media Center will not work w/ wireless or wired
Ive been unable to get the windows media center to work, the Windows media player works fine but Ive had trouble with the Media Center, Ive contacted HP and have yet received a solution. The prime reason I brought the unit was for use with the Media Center, I am very unhappy with the unit.

4 Stars HDTV DVR plus - really enjoying this product
I initially had the Media Connect setup via wireless g and although I could get most features to work this way, it was intermittent. After running a cable through the ceiling and going through the wired setup, things improved 100%. As per the manual, there are many features that are not supported under wireless g, so product does function as advertised. Now, with this device, my living room HDTV has fully functioning DVR, plus I can stream recorded movies from my office PC as well as my Media Vault. When we have friends or family over we now show them pictures of our adventures on the 55 inch HDTV rather than us all gathering around a laptop or huddling in my office. We also were able to get rid of the stereo system in the living room and now steam music from one of the 4 family members PCs. This device single handedly brought all the PCs in the house together for a fun, useful family entertainment experience. This is the PC/Internet appliance that I have been waiting for. I also recently purchased an HP Pocket Media Drive, which the Media Connect has a bay for in the front. I think this will be a great way to continue the experience when we travel.

I did only give 4 stars mostly because I think there are still some improvements to be made in terms of speed of the device when searching through pictures on a remote PC. Pulling up a directory with a lot of pictures does require some wait time. I have also had to reset the device a couple of times when it stopped responding. This is easily done via a button on the back of the unit, but still a slight inconvenience. It would also be nice if the device worked with Netflix Watch Instantly.

4 Stars Small, quiet, full of features, but a bit slow
I was using an XBOX 360 as an extender device, but wanted something that was smaller and quieter for the bedroom. After researching all of the Media Center Extender devices, this one seems like the best choice.

While it is the most expensive choice, it offers the ability to connect to Window Media shares directly which is something that the other extender devices on the market don’t allow for. This is a feature that the XBOX has and something that I wanted to continue using as it allows me to stream HULU through the PLAYON software.

My only gripe is the speed of the interface is really slow. It boots slow, it responds slowly to menu changes, and it downloads slowly from the internet. This is somewhat baffling to me as it can play HD videos with no problem. If the CPU and GPU can handle HD Videos, why can’t it play silly menu transition animations?! This seems to be a problem with all of the Media Center Extender devices. I can get an interface performance boost by running in 720p, and I can’t tell any noticeable visual difference from 1080i, it just runs faster.

All in all, it does what it says, it even plays DIVX videos in Media Center Extender while the XBOX won’t. There is no good reason why the menu should be so slow, this is just poor software design on HP’s part. I can only hope that HP takes it upon them selves to fix the software on a future update.

4 Stars Great Extender
this is a great vista media center extender! It is exactly what i have been looking for. Other reviews say it is a bit sluggish, but i found the hp media software portion is the sluggish bit. using it as a media center extender works very well! During installation, i did run into a couple of issues. If you use wireless, ONLY use wireless N. Using wireless g, is not fast enough and causes skipping and non-continuous play. The other problem i found was connecting to the media center extender. I am using an HP laptop and i could connect using the HP software but when i opened the media center extender, it refused to connect. I found that the conflict was because i had a fingerprint reader in my laptop. As soon as i uninstalled that fingerprint reader software, it connected perfectly. Just a warning for anyone with a fingerprint reader.

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