DivX and Xvid encoded videos are mainstream. DivX compatible DVD players are ten a penny, letting you watch ‘downloaded’ videos in the comfort of your living room (the way nature intended) and not hunched up in front of a PC. But if you’ve got a library of videos sitting neatly on your PC, the chore of burning these to CD or DVD may not seem too appealing. The recent crop of media streamers let you browse media on a PC wirelessly in the comfort of your armchair, but what if you don’t want your PC switched on 24/7 just in case you fancy watching a copy of Lock Stock? What if your budget doesn’t stretch to a fully fledged Home Theatre PC or Media Center? Help is at hand with Freecom’s Media Player.

The Freecom Media Player comes in two separate flavours; one with a wireless network connection and HDMI port (the Freecom Media Player 350 WLAN), the other with a wired network connection (the Freecom Media Player 35) which we look at in detail in this mini-review. You can also buy the Media Player in a stripped down version without a harddrive and both can be used as an external harddrive.

http://www.videoforums.co.uk/reviews..._articleid/264

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It's an interesting proposal....

I have the hard wired Freecom 3.5 and it works well (well now it does!) this is my 3rd one! The first 2 died very quickly from an unknown illness. It appeared that the hard drive would not engage although it could be accessed through the usb connection but would not play on the TV.

Although I watch stuff directly through the medial player direct to the TV, I also watch stuff from my pc through the LAN. The quality of the movies (ave 750mb film) on the tv are very good with no obvious pixelation. The films do not freeze or jump and the sound quality is also good.

The user interface is straight forward and idiot proof (hence why I use it). In between the breakdowns I did try an alternative make and model (I cannot remember which make and model) and found it to be of inferior picture and sound quality for the same movie I watched on the freecom. I also found the user interface cumbersome and slow. The reuslt is that I persisted with the freecom media player and have no regrets about.

hope this helps

pitbull