Customer Reviews

MediaGate MG-800HD 3.5" HDD 1080p wireless N Media Player

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

When I first opened the box to this product, I knew this was a quality item. Then I opened the owners manual and I knew that I was on my own for any setup and technical issues, and this was confirmed when I sneeaked a look at the MediaGate site and saw that their idea of technical support was to post in a forum. I'm a computer nerd, so I wasn't scared, but if you are not a computer nerd, don't expect to be able to easily set this up or solve any problems that come up.

After setting it up, I played every type of media file I could find on my computer as a test of it's ability. It performed very well. I was even able to wirelessly stream video from an external USB hard drive without any glitches! One of only three issues I found while doing this was with large WAV files, which would play halfway through and then stop. I'm not sure why that is, but I also do not have the latest firmware version installed yet. Then there was the issue with certain VOB files, since MediaGate detected the english subtitles but did not detect the chinese subtitles. Finally there was the issue with the Server window, which if you tried to resize, would snap into a fixed size. This worked fine on my WinXP laptop, but made some application controls inaccessible on my WinVista desktop. I thought about changing my screen resolution from 2560x1600 to something smaller and trying to resize it again so that it would snap to a new size, but I haven't tried that yet. I consider all these issues to be minor problems that can eventually be worked around, so I'm not going to complain too loudly, since I am very happy with everything else.

So while I would recommend this product to any hi-tech gadget freak or computer enthusiast, if you are not already a computer nerd, I would recommend finding one before trying to set this up.

As I write this, I have to tell you I am a huge Mediagate fan. I have had the MG-25 for over 3 years and love it. It does exactly what it purports to do with little or no grief, and certainly has it's shortcomings but for the price point of the product is, in my opinion, a great value.

So after a friend's glowing review I was really looking forward to deploying the MG-800HD in my network and solving a persistent problem of getting my UPNP server content to my HDTV without file copies and the like.

I ordered this unit and a WD Caviar Green 500GB hard drive and proceeded to build it, loading the latest firmware from Mediagate in the process. There are a lot of cool features like web browsing built into the latest firmware and although I am skeptical that people are going to buy this thing to hook up a KVM and surf the web, it is nice to see they are adding functionality.

Things that worked well:
-Streaming capability from a UPNP source (painless)
-Wireless setup fast and easy, even for WPA2 network
-Good format support (as expected)
-Remote has good range and is laid out fairly well
-Lots of ways to access your content (network, USB, local HD if installed)

Things that did not work well:
-UI experience is cheap and unpolished
-Wireless transfer of files using device as a repository very flakey
-System stability issues/lockups/freezes

Unfortunately, I had several problems with NAS performance over wireless that doesn't occur with other devices I operate on my network. Random dropouts, the inability to copy even moderately-large files without hangups, and having to hard reset the system to get it to recognize the new files at times.

In the final analysis, I liked some of what was provided with this device, but needless to say, I promptly sent it back. A device this expensive needs to slam dunk all of the features and for me, my $300 was better spent elsewhere.

If you have a slingbox at home, I would highly suggest looking at the Slingcatcher instead of this device. With the latest firmware update it does almost everything this device does (sans the local hard drive) and gets it done in a much more elegant, polished way. Add to that the Sling capability and it was a slam dunk for me. You can have that plus a wireless bridge solution for ~$260.00USD.

Really like this product. Very easy to setup and get running. Comes with Wi-Fi but for downloading movies to the hard drive or streaming from your computer the wired networking workes the best.
The unit doesn't come with a Hard drive but one should be ordered. SATA
Have yet to find a website that streaming is compatable with the unit.
Also the web browser is a little clunky.

MG-800HD is not an improvement of the previous model (MG-450HD): it's not made by the same group, "different language spec": keep this in mind when reading it.

This unit should stay in beta test and not rush to public use as yet. Still many bugs and poor performance. I have one and regret that I purchased it too early.

It cannot play half of my media collections: hiccup on video streaming, cannot toggle audio track, no DD audio on HDMI, cannot decode dts audio codec, no 5Ghz N-draft wireless...etc.

Visit the site mediagateusa/forum before you buy one.

It's NOT for normal user just yet.

P.L

its fantastice pruduct got it to israel in 5 days i enjoy it very much , put 1 tera disk wd and work like charm
only 1 problem its getting veryhot and i put couler underneth to cool it down or i can use it as hot plate
for "shbath or boil few eges . its update and problem fix and thanks to amazon that can ship this to israel to

I was really anticipating the purchase of this product. I'd owned the MG350 and found it adequate, but ok for the technology of its time. So I was really excited to hear the next generation of this product had been released especially with the published specifications of the unit.

The product arrived, and that was about as good as it got. The Seagate (1TB) I specifically purchased to install into the unit didn't work, even though it was the preferred Hard Drive on the Amazon page, don't waste your money. Don't get me wrong the Hard Drive is fine (tested in two other PC's), it just doesn't work in this unit, apparently MediaGate forums identified power issues (however I haven't seen a published list yet of certified drives).

I upgraded firmware and whilst it eliminated existing problems it introduced a series of new problems, I removed the new Seagate Hard Drive and replaced with a smaller Seagate Hard Drive (320G) on hand, at least the excruciating click and crunching noises stopped, but the unit was still unresponsive, would work, then stop and freeze.

The unit overheats, basically the heat sink is at the top of the unit, bad idea for a consumer electronics product that sits in a lounge room, would probably be okay for the average computer geek in their dark room, but not in a common area. Its just a really bad consumer product, its still an experimental techie's toy, something you need to be able to diagnose, update firmware on, swap out drives and changes settings constantly. At best its a beta product and certainly a product that shouldn't be sold to an average consumer on Amazon.

My love of technology will allow me to persevere with the unit, I'm replacing the two Seagate Hard Drives with a new Western Digital (low power) drive, with any luck that will work and of course I will dutifully wait for another firmware release and hope the myriad of bugs get ironed out. For the average joe consumer, really only interested in switching on and using what on paper seems to be one of the best home entertainment media players on the market, a word of warning, stay away.

It's the biggest mistake that I bought this device. Customer service is really bad and non-responsive. I had read other reviews about the loud noise that this device made, but I did not believe until now. It's about few months old. It has started to make this very loud noise for about 2 weeks now. When you contact for customer service, no response. Email does not go through. No phone nor online help. This is the worst device and customer service I have ever received.

My first 800 came DOA with a faulty power connector. Replaced within four days by MediaGate. Unless you are a private detective or an FBI agent, forget about finding a live tech support person, though -- its all in a support forum, although I was helped really quickly through it. When I got a working one, the setup was a snap and worked great right out of the box. I have a hard-wired Gigabit network with CAT6 cable, so I expected there to be no streaming problems over the network. This unit really does everything its supposed to. I load all my movies on the installed drive, and stream them all over the house. It plays my music from my iTunes directory although it does not have a "shuffle" type function. I have only come across one video file that it can't play -- some sort of WMV hi-def file [Edit: subsequent firmware update fixed it]

However, this unit runs HOT. I have a Seagate 1 Terabyte drive installed, and I actually put a refrigerated plastic water bottle on it to dissipate the heat or the unit freezes up after a while. You cannot leave it on all the time or you will fry it. After it freezes up, you have to reboot it and try again, which is a pain. There are minor glitches, such as hitting play, and the TV goes dark with a "looking for signals" notice until the MediaGate starts playing, but considering the other benefits, its just worth noting, not complaining about. I am buying another one for another TV to put that one on the network, so I guess that says it all.

EDIT 7/28/2011: I have used the MediaGate now for a couple of years, and this review might now be moot. There are much slicker products out there now for a lot less money. MediaGate provides ZERO technical support and their community "forum" is not monitored at all and is full of spam. The unit I reviewed above has died, probably from being cooked by the hard drive, but the two units I have without hard drives installed still work perfectly, playing hi def content wirelessly with no problems. I managed to track down a number for MediaGate through SEC filings, I think, and finally contacted someone, who told me that they no longer supported and would not fix, the dead unit. I would definitely look at the Western Digital boxes (sold at Best Buy) which seem pretty impressive, as a replacement.

I visited two of my relatives and sang karaoke songs from their MediaGate MG-25 and MG-35 models, and I was so impressed with the products from MediaGate. As a result, I searched for a newer model from MediaGate for my own, and I found MediaGate MG-800HD. I purchased it, and that was a mistake. I was very disappointed with at least two major flaws that I will describe below.

First, while singing a karaoke song from an internal hard drive of the MG-800HD, I pressed the "audio" button on the remote control to switch the audio track from a "with-vocal" track to a "music-only" track, and the video stream paused for about 5 seconds then skipped/jumped, interrupting the singing. Frankly, the older models do have a little jerk during the track switching, but it is very brief (only a fraction of a second). This flaw is INTOLERABLE for karaoke singing. (Actually, I bought the player without an internal hard drive, and I played videos from my external drive. I thought that the external connection caused the slowness. So, I purchased and installed an internal hard drive, but that did not help.)

Second, when I pressed the "next" button on the remote control to skip to the next track/chapter, the player began playing arbitrarily somewhere in the middle of the song. I had no way to jump back to the exact beginning of the song, and I had to use the fast rewind to go back. You know what? Oops! It went too far to the previous chapter. It is realy anoying. This flaw applies to any videos, movies, or karaoke songs.

I downloaded and updated the firmware, and those two problems did not get fixed. By the way, the downloading experience was terrible, too. The company did not posted firmware supports for this model. I googled and found the support blog. Although a support person was nice enough to share his firmware files via his personally-paid download site, and I greatly appreciate, MediaGate's lack of such download service makes the company so unprofessional.

So, if you are looking for a player for singing karaoke music, you should hold it off until the company addresses these issues.

I download a lot of movies and musics on my computer with h.264 format and some HD file, this device play flawless on my LG 1080p 42" screen, the setup was easy, and wireless N stream my file to TV with only few sec buffing time, and it came with 1 HDMI cable which most people don't include, I will buy another one for my friend as X'mas gift.