Hewlett Packard DMR-EW5000 Digital Media Receiver for Windows PCs

by HP

Product Details

Product Manual [3.23mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008VGRS
• Item model number: DB226A#ABA
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #286,558 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 13, 2003

Product Description

HP Wireless Digital Media Receiver Ew5000 DB226A. Product may differ from image shown.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great product concept killed by poor Engineering, July 28, 2003

By 

S. Singh "sujsingh" (Algonquin, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hewlett Packard DMR-EW5000 Digital Media Receiver for Windows PCs (Personal Computers)

EW5000 is great concept considering the functionality it promises to provide. I was really excited about the product but unfortunately it turned out to be one of the worst engineered products I have ever seen. (ironically from the company claiming to be the "Inventors".
Yes, the product works and does provide all the features it claims to offer but let us look at them one by one.

User Interface:
In this age of sleek UIs with wonderful layouts and smooth text and buttons, EW5000 User interface seems to be a relic of 80s. Text is fuzzy on TV, there are two many scrrens for simple tasks. Even the BIOS setup UIs are better than this one!!!

Playing Audio:
Audio Quality is fine but the player seems to stop playing whenever it wants. There seems to be no logic to that. UI is not responsive at times and there is no error displayed. The track information UI stops updating after playing a track or two. Wait a bit longer and even the tracks wil stop playing till you hit the play button again and sometimes you have to pick another album.

Wireless connectivity:
Best feature but the worst implementation. The reciever often looses conection and takes forever to re-connect. Again in the year 2003, it shouldn't be that difficult to buffer 5-10 minutes of Audio so that such connection losses don't lead to moments of annoying silence for the listener. You will get many annoying pauses destroying the pleasure of Brahms symppony no. 1 or whatever you are listening to. And please do not blame the connectivity issues on my wireless access point and expect me to put EW5000 a foot away from my WAP.

Server Software on PC:
Doesn't auto sychronize the new addition to the library, takes too much CPU time and takes minutes to synchronize additions or deletions of just 1 or 2 albums.

The box itself:
The worst quality materials have been used to make this otherwise good looking box. Input connectors and the wires supplied seem to be worst grade that the money could buy. Don't even get me started with the remote control.

Bottomeline!! Well you get the picture.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Glitchy and full of bugs, July 15, 2003

By 

Kevin Jackson (Noblesville, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hewlett Packard DMR-EW5000 Digital Media Receiver for Windows PCs (Personal Computers)

I'm not at all happy with this device. While it does have excellent sound quality playing MP3 and WMA files, it is very buggy. It locks up frequently, is very moody, and doesn't play MPG or AVI files.

I'm hoping for a firmware upgrade from HP to make it more stable.

I would wait for the next model that is more robust and full featured.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Worked - Sometimes, January 1, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Hewlett Packard DMR-EW5000 Digital Media Receiver for Windows PCs (Personal Computers)

I have read a few bad reviews of this product, but I had to verify it for myself. I added the media receiver to my existing wireless network. The unit was placed about 15-20ft (through 1 wall and around 1 corner)from the access point. Upon initial setup of the software it was unable to connect to the router. After repositioning the media receiver (2-3 feet closer to the router and standing the unit on its side)it was able to locate my router. It played for about 2 minutes then lost connection again. I then updated the firmware, which was supposed to improve wirless performance of the device, unfortunately after the update it seemed worse! It took about a dozen tries before finding my server, and after it was up and running, it would drop signal after only a few minutes. I know my wireless network is not at fault because I use a laptop that is double the distance of the media receiver and it gets a good signal. This device may be ok if you are going to use it wired, but for wireless systems, I would wait a while until these type of products become further developed. It seems HP released these way too soon, and possably with inferior hardware!