Cannily exploiting its own range of handy FreeAgent Go external hard drives, Seagate has unveiled a complementary FreeAgent Theater + HD media player, a home theater solution designed to instantly and easily connect digital media libraries to home entertainment systems.
The HD media player leverages a docking system unique to Seagate FreeAgent Go portable drives and accessories, providing a quick and easy way to connect external hard drive to television or home entertainment center. After loading the drive with one’s movies, videos, music and pictures from the home PC, simply slide it into the FreeAgent Theater+ dock to get instant access to your digital media library. …you can just sit back, point, click and enjoy as digitally captured memories and your favorite movies come to life in 1080p HD video, DTS™ 2.0 + Digital Out, or Dolby Digital technology.
The Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player includes two additional USB ports for connecting other USB attached storage devices. Also incorporated into FreeAgent Theater+ is an Ethernet port for network connectivity, which allows access to digital media through your home network. “The FreeAgent Theater provides the easiest way to view and enjoy video and photos on your HDTV. Simply load up a Seagate FreeAgent Go™ hard drive and drop it into the FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player dock. It’s a behavior we’ve all been familiar with for years with VHS and DVDs, but now with digital HD enjoyment” says Seagate India and SAAEC Country Manager Rajesh Khurana.
The new FreeAgent Theater+™ HD media player solution includes:
• HDMI with 1080p HD video playback for high-definition content viewing
• Dolby® Digital and DTS™ 2.0 + Digital Out audio support surround sound where available.
• Unique docking system eliminates fumbling with cables and connections
• Ethernet connection for accessing shared content on your network or streaming of content from the Internet
• Two additional USB ports and one front-mounted port for digital cameras and additional storage devices
• Simple sync software for PC and Mac® computers
• Support for Windows® XP, Windows Vista®, Windows® 7, and Mac OS® X operating systems, as well as NTFS, FAT, FAT32, HFS+ file support
• Component video and Composite video support
• Optical S/PDIF audio and Stereo RCA sound options
The software included with FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player is a rich media-specific synchronization application that enables the automatic transfer and organization of all photo, music, video and movie files stored on your computer.
Technical Specifications
The Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player now supports even more Audio/Video and sound formats including MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (VOB/ISO), MPEG-4 (DivX® /Xvid formats), DivX HD, Xvid HD, AVI, MOV, MKV, RMVB, AVC HD, H.264, WMV9, VC-1, M2TS, TS/TP/M2T, JPEG files up to 20 megapixels, BMP, GIF, PNG and TIFF. Audio formats supported include 5.1 channel surround sound, where available, and popular digital audio formats including: AAC, MP3, Dolby Digital, DTS, ASF, FLAC, WMA, LPCM, ADPCM, WAV and OGG. The FreeAgent Theater+ player also offers support for SAMI (smi), SRT and SUB subtitles. To download and transfer content to a Seagate FreeAgent Go portable drive using a Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 operated PC, a 256MB RAM and an available USB port is required. Mac computer users must be running Mac OS X 10.4.11 or 10.5.6 or later and have an available USB port. FreeAgent Theater connects to any TV with composite, component video or HDMI connection and stereo, optical S/PDIF or HDMI audio connection
The FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player is available in India as a standalone unit only so you can have the option of using it with a FreeAgent Go portable hard drive as a complete solution or only with USB devices you already own. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price is Rs. 9,500 plus VAT.
(Based on Seagate press release / Bangalore Dec 22 2009)