Eclectic Electronics

Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player gets 1080p capability, HDMI port, network connectivity and DTS 2.0 decoding

Posted: 15 Sep 2009 10:30 AM PDT

Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player

Seagate, well-known hard drive manufacturer all over the globe, has updated its FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player in the form of the FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player. Subtle change in product name but definitely some worthwhile addition in feature set.

Seagate’s FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player plays pretty much all files you can illegally download over the internet think of, including popular formats such as DivX, DivX HD, XviD, XviD HD and MKV.

Also a step up from the Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player are 1080p capability, network connectivity and DTS 2.0 decoding.

It has composite, component and HDMI ports for video along with stereo L/R, optical and HDMI audio output. The device also has 2 USB ports — one on the front, one on the back — to connect more hard drives in addition to functioning as a FreeAgent Go dock (think VHS or Betamax tapes but inserting a FreeAgent Go instead).

The Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player is readily available via various shopping channels and retails for $149.99 barebones (media player only) or $289.99 with a 500GB FreeAgent Go. A WiFi adapter is set to ship on October for $69.99.

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

Though visually minimalistic looking, the Popcorn Hour is a much better investment, considering you can use a standard 3.5-inch hard drive (which definitely costs a lot less than a similar-sized FreeAgent Go) in addition to having Blu-ray expansion capability.

[via Seagate]