Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good , but not perfect, product, July 4, 2004
I already have a linksys wet11 hooked to a router in my living room for XBOX and my PS2. Therefore, I cannot comment on the wireless card problems that people are having. With my setup the unit was plug and play with no problems. 1. Audio Navigation - I have an assortment of MP3, Ogg, and FLAC files on my computer with a total of about 18,000 music files in total. The native interface has some problems that have already been mentioned. My main problem was the lack of FLAC support. I decided to download a product called "slimserver" from the internet that works as a server for Ogg, FLAC, MP3, etc... files. It has a much better interface and works with the Prismiq's web interface (see Prismiq's forum for installation instructions). The only problem would be the fact that the built in web server on the Prismiq is slow. However, once it is up and running, songs can be added to your playlist on the fly and the sorting (genre, artist, album, etc.. is great). It even adds the ability to add Moodlogic (which I have tested)and Itunes (which I haven't tested) playlists.
2. Rhapsody support - This is great for addicts of the service. I wasn't interested until Prismiq offered a 30 day trial. With a selection of over 600,000 songs, it has allowed me to dig deep into many artist's portfolios before wasting money on a CD. As of now, Rhapsody will not play through the Prismiq digital outputs.
3. Pictures - The ability to get your digital photos on your TV is a great feature. It allows you to create a a slide show with a specific folder and also allows you to play a specified song whenever the slideshow is being seen. It will also allow the slideshow (without an audio file attached) to run while you listen to the internet radio or your music files. The pictures are not the quality of Roku's HD device, but they are good enough on my 57 inch HDTV through the S-video output.
4. Movies - I have a Tivo, so this doesn't get a lot of use on my Prismiq. I do have a few home movies that look great on the device. I am also able to take advantage of the widescreen format of my movies.
5. Web interface - If you have DSL or a cable modem, you will not want to use this device for web surfing. It is very slow. However, I have bookmarks setup for slimserver, internet radio, and my email. Without the web interface, I would not be able to use slimserver and the product would not get nearly as much use. Therefore, I am happy that they have included the ability.
6. Other features - News stories, local weather, screensaver (you can customize with your own picture), chat (I have never used). Overall, I am happy with this device. It does have some flaws and if you have a lot of files, you will not be happy unless you have the slimserver setup. It is not the last device that I will buy because I will upgrade with a HD device that plays FLAC files natively sometime in the future. However, for now, it has provided me with a lot of fun!
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Check the prismiq.org forums before spending money on this, April 6, 2004
This product has great potential but the people at Prismiq constantly ignore its users.
Check out www.prismiq.org
These forums are hosted by Prismiq but they simply ignore most of the postings. The main issue you'll encounter is the dreadful way you navigate your MP3 collection. This is the #1 complaint in the boards and has been for quite sometime. They've recently released an update but it added Rhapsody support and didn't even touch on the MP3 navigation problems. I bought this in December when it was $250 and now it is $200. I knew there were problems but Prismiq support was very active and assured everyone they would be fixed. Now that the XMas rush is over, support has disappeared and they ignore the numorous request for enhancement. They also fail to address this as a major problem with their device.
My advice to anyone considering this product is to look for something better. If you decide you want this despite my warnings, checkout out prismiq.org and read the user comments and notice the lack of Prismiq responses to those comments.
Oh, one thing they did do with all the complaints, they created a Complaints section and moved them in there.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great product, but beware if you have wireless-B, December 28, 2003
OK, starting with the bad - if you intend to use the wireless aspects, you pretty much must have a wireless-G network. This is not only so that you can stream video (as pointed out on the PRISMIQ website) but also because the set of wireless-B cards that PRISMIQ now supports/recommends is a hodgepodge of discontinued or difficult to find cards. Found out the hard way that my Linksys WPC11 card (probably the most widely available B card out there) is not supported (even though the documentation enclosed said it was :X) So, I was essentially forced to upgrade to a wireless-G network (at least PRISMIQ supports the most commonly available Linksys G card).Once I got past that hurdle....all smiles. What a great product. Beats the pants off of any similar device in terms of breadth of functionality (audio, video, images, web, IM) but also in terms of connectivity (S-video & coax digital audio outs). Quibbles:
1. Browser stinks (same as in most hotel on-TV browsers - weird resolution, no cookies, no javascript, no activeX - so basically almost unusable, but that's OK, not why I bought it)
2. UI for audio tracks a bit cumbersome in that the listing is not artist-album but simply a flat album listing, meaning if you have 400+ CD's like me it can take a loooong time to scroll to find your desired album. Hopefully this will get worked out in a future software update. Otherwise, a really great product. Sound quality is excellent & video quality is very good. Setup is a snap (provided you have the right card ;)), though it helps to set it up using a TV next to your PC to save you round trips.
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