Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player Solution (Media Player Dock, PC Dock and FreeAgent Go 250 GB Portable Hard Drive) ST902503CEA1E1-RK

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Product Details

• Item Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001U3YIOU
• Item model number: ST902503CEA1E1-RK
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 26, 2009

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

250 GB and 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Theater Media Player Solution

The easiest way to move your photos, movies and music from your PC to your TV.

Seagate FreeAgent Theater Media Player Solution View Larger

The Seagate FreeAgent Theater media player solution lets you share and enjoy your digital media library with friends and family without having to crowd around a PC or struggle with confusing network configuration and cable issues. Its unique dual-docking system helps you automatically find and copy media files from your PC and play them on your home entertainment system.

Share your media library in three steps

1. Place the included 250 GB or 500 GB FreeAgent Go drive in the PC docking station. It will automatically find and copy your digital media files from your PC.

2. Remove the FreeAgent Go drive and insert it into the media player docking station connected to your TV.

3. Grab the included remote control and start enjoying your digital media from the comfort of your couch.

Experience your digital life in high definition

FreeAgent Theater media player supports 1080i high-definition playback and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio surround sound, so your movies and music will look and sound great. The 250 GB or 500 GB storage capacity can store hundreds of hours of high-definition and standard-definition videos, plus thousands of digital photos and songs. And thanks to a front-mounted USB port, you can access content from external hard drives, flash drives and digital cameras that support USB connectivity.

What's in the box?

FreeAgent Theater media player, FreeAgent Go PC Dock with USB cable, 250 GB or 500 GB FreeAgent Go portable hard drive, remote control, A/V cable (composite video/stereo audio), EnergyStar-compliant power supply, FreeAgent Theater software and User Guide (PDF), and Set-up Guide.

How much can you store?

		250GB	500GB
Hours of Standard Definition Video	1 GB/hour	250	500
Hours of High Definition Video	5 GB/hour	50	100
Number of Digital Music Songs	0.250GB/song	62,500	125,000
Number of Digital Photos	0.320GB/picture	80,000	160,000

Product Description

The easiest way to move your photos, movies and music from your PC to your TV. Share and enjoy your memories in a comfortable, social environment such as your living room. The Seagate FreeAgent Theater media player solution consists of three components: a media player dock, a PC dock and a FreeAgent Go portable hard drive. With two easy steps, you will be viewing and sharing your favorite photos, movies and music in no time! With its unique dual-docking system, setup the device once and never hassle with cables again. Simply place the FreeAgent Go portable hard drive into the PC docking station and it automatically copies your photos, movies and music from the PC to the drive. Then docking the FreeAgent Go portable hard drive into the FreeAgent Theater media player, connected to the TV, puts your entire media library at your fingertips with 1080i High-Definition playback and crystal clear Dolby Digital 5.1 audio surround sound support. With the front-mounted USB port, you can also plug your digital camera, USB flash drive or external USB hard drive directly into the FreeAgent Theater and enjoy the same high-quality viewing experience. Navigating through your media library is intuitive with the FreeAgent Theater¿s user interface and compact remote control. Share your memories like a pro with easy to customize slideshows, transitions, background music and zoom feature for both pictures and movies. Share and experience your memories in comfort with FreeAgent Theater.

250 GB and 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Theater Media Player Solution

The easiest way to move your photos, movies and music from your PC to your TV.

Seagate FreeAgent Theater Media Player Solution View Larger

The Seagate FreeAgent Theater media player solution lets you share and enjoy your digital media library with friends and family without having to crowd around a PC or struggle with confusing network configuration and cable issues. Its unique dual-docking system helps you automatically find and copy media files from your PC and play them on your home entertainment system.

Share your media library in three steps

1. Place the included 250 GB or 500 GB FreeAgent Go drive in the PC docking station. It will automatically find and copy your digital media files from your PC.

2. Remove the FreeAgent Go drive and insert it into the media player docking station connected to your TV.

3. Grab the included remote control and start enjoying your digital media from the comfort of your couch.

Experience your digital life in high definition

FreeAgent Theater media player supports 1080i high-definition playback and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio surround sound, so your movies and music will look and sound great. The 250 GB or 500 GB storage capacity can store hundreds of hours of high-definition and standard-definition videos, plus thousands of digital photos and songs. And thanks to a front-mounted USB port, you can access content from external hard drives, flash drives and digital cameras that support USB connectivity.

What's in the box?

FreeAgent Theater media player, FreeAgent Go PC Dock with USB cable, 250 GB or 500 GB FreeAgent Go portable hard drive, remote control, A/V cable (composite video/stereo audio), EnergyStar-compliant power supply, FreeAgent Theater software and User Guide (PDF), and Set-up Guide.

How much can you store?

		250GB	500GB
Hours of Standard Definition Video	1 GB/hour	250	500
Hours of High Definition Video	5 GB/hour	50	100
Number of Digital Music Songs	0.250GB/song	62,500	125,000
Number of Digital Photos	0.320GB/picture	80,000	160,000

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice Media Player!!, March 26, 2009

By	H. Dinh "shooter" (OKUSA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This media player is extremely easy to set up. I practically got it to work in 5 minutes just hooked everything up right out of the box and played.

The kit came with 2 docks: a PC dock and a TV dock, or the media player. However, it only came with regular video cable. No component or SVGA cable. Also, there is no HDMI port - this is part of the reason I want to give it four stars. You just got to have HDMI connection now aday! But it does everything it said, so it deserves 5 stars.

Setup is straight forward. I used the supplied remote control to navigate the set up system. The credit card size remote control has to be pointed directly to the media player, I thought it didn't work a couple of times.

There is also a very hight quality 250GB Seagate external drive. It is the same pocket hardrive sold everywhere.

The PC docking station uses 2 USB ports, but I suspect that I can connect the harddrive to my laptop via another cable that uses only one. I copied a HD movie and a few Jpegs to the supplied external hard drive, plugged it in the TV docks and played. It is that simple.

Video and audio quality are excellence, just like you play a good dvd with high-end upconversion dvd player. I set the output to 1080i, same as my HD sattelire receiver. You can also set it to 720p.

I have not tried the software that came with it. I think the software provides some advanced capabilities that allows syncing your multi media libraries to the harddrive. I will install the software when I have time and update this review.

I wish this player supports HDMI and higher HD resolution, but 1080i or 720p is most people will ever need. HDMI cable is cheaper and easy to hook up. I now have a bunch of wire hanging off my TV!

It's awesome playing HD movies that came off my HD video camera. I highly recommend this player if you have a lot of those. Not that I recommend it, but if your buddy also has this player, you can swap drives with him and watch his movies!

6/20/09 Update:

I love this so much I bought one for my brother as a gift. I also tried the WD media player and thought that this Seagate is far better. When you have to drag a USB drive with power cord around, you'll appreciate the clean design of this player. It also has none of the jerkiness found in other player. It can only play up to 1080i, but most of us wont see the differences. But you have to option to plug in a USB drive with this player if you want to.

Still love and highly recommend it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Free Agent Theater, August 1, 2009

By	Media User (United States) - See all my reviews

Over all this player is a good unit for play back of basic media files. I purchased this unit primarily to play my extensive MP3 collection through my sound system. As other users have mentioned an HDMI output with support for 1080p is notably absent. The player is limited in what file types it supports although it plays my mp3's quite well. The digital audio output is nice and it allows you to choose between LPCM or raw format for external decoding. It would have been nice to have an optical output since some brands of receivers are limited in the number of coax connections available. One huge limitation of this player that perhaps a future firmware update will correct is that it will not use the track number contained in the ID3 data to play the tracks in album order. The unit simply uses alphabetic order so to properly order the tracks for playback every track must be renamed with the track number in front of it. I've also loaded a couple of my favorite standard definition DVD's onto the unit. The display quality was as good as could be expected considering the source material. Audio playback using the raw format to a receiver was good. One irritant though is that it sometimes pauses while switching between video files throughout the film. I was able to overcome this by using my PC to combine the video files into one large file. The downside to this method is that you lose chapter selection and since it doesn't resume playback to where it was stopped this can be a big headache to fast forward all the way to the point you want to resume from. The remote is basic and as most credit card types do it lacks power and must be carefully aimed at the unit. I plan to use a Logitech Harmony One to over come this.One surprise encountered when opening this unit is that it requires two simultaneous USB conections. Not a huge issue but it prevented me from using the single port I have wired on my desk top forcing me to climb behind the PC tower to connect it. Over all I'm pleased with the unit but it definitely has room for some improvement which is why only four stars.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost There..., June 15, 2009

By	Barb Nicolson (Santa Ana, California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I received my FreeAgent Theater, I had dreams of leisurely viewing my movies and my photos and listening to my favorite music...all digitally and from one space-saving device. Upon opening the packaging, I was less than impressed with the glossy, black plastic of the FreeAgent. Encouraging however, was how simple the set-up and operation of the device was purported to be in the manual.

A little over two hours later, more than a little confused and agitated, I realized that the FreeAgent device had mistaken my existing external Seagate hard drive with the new one I'd received in the mail along with the device. Fortunately, my data on that drive was not lost, only modified. I finally went to the Seagate website and downloaded a firmware update. I was able to install that easily with a spare flash drive. Still, the device was confused with my original Seagate drive which I use only as a backup device.

Frustrated, I moved forward and was able to load test photos, music and movies onto my existing external drive and put the FreeAgent Theater through its paces. The music played well through my entertainment center. Most impressive was the quality of the photos. They loaded quickly - even those taken at full quality on my 10 Mega-pixel camera. The slide show feature proved to be a nice touch. The quality of the photos was gorgeous on the large TV screen in high definition. Perhaps it could have been even better if the device had had an HDMI interface, but the component video connection served well.

Lastly, I tested a few movies in DIVX and MPEG formats on the FreeAgent Theater. I attached the device to a multimedia projector via the S-video and RCA audio inputs. Both video formats seemed "mushy" - my low-tech term for poor-quality. The same movies connected to the projector directly from my computer were much crisper.

I was depressed initially that Seagate didn't include support for the Apple computer aficionados. This is an XP and Vista only product. However, I found a nice workaround that allowed me to download my media from my MacBook Pro onto a flash drive. The same flash drive could then be inserted into the convenient USB port in the front of the Seagate Theater. My movies, photos and music - all portable again! I was able to plug other external drives into the USB port as well. These all worked flawlessly. I began to warm up to the Seagate Theater just a little more,

Nonetheless, first impressions are everything. I still found myself longing for a device that would bond with my trusty Mac. HDMI support and a carrying case would be nice pluses, too.

Given that this is the first version of a multimedia product, it has great potential. I do anticipate seeing several other rival companies responding with their own knock-offs in the very near future. Portability is its strong suit. Paired with a multimedia projector, it's a sure-fire bet for a fun-filled backyard movie night.