Media players are hardly what wed call special these days and you can get some really cheap, if albeit basic models these days that will play pretty much any file format you throw at them. Seagate has been trying to get in to the media player for quite some time and so far the company has come up with some fairly uninspiring solutions, but its new GoFlex Cinema is a rather intriguing piece of hardware.
The GoFlex Cinema is one of the smallest media players in the market, well; it is as long as you dont take into account the size of the GoFlex hard drive which its attached to. The entire setup measures 223x120x44mm and that gives you a sizeable external hard drive available in 1TB, 2TB and 3TB sizes. Unlike Seagates previous attempts at media players the GoFlex Cinema relies on 3.5-inch hard drives rather than 2.5-inch drives. Beyond its media player features it can also be used for copying files directly from a digital camera without the need of a PC. A small remote control that doesnt look overly impressive is also supplied.
The actual media player is a small attachment that goes on what would normally have been the bottom end of a GoFlex hard drive and it sports a mini USB port for file transfers to/from a PC, a standard USB port to which cameras or other USB storage devices can be connected, an HDMI port, an optical S/PDIF out, a pair of RCA audio jacks and a composite video connector as well as a power connector. Theres both an upside and a downside to this. The upside is that the drive that comes with the GoFlex Cinema works with other GoFlex adapters from Seagate, so you can get a USB 3.0 dock to boost the speed when youre copying files from your PC. The downside is that the GoFlex Cinema isnt sold without a hard drive, so if you already own a GoFlex drive, youll have to get another one to get the GoFlex Cinema.
In terms of file support the GoFlex Cinema appears to have just about every format in all standard resolutions supported. Itll play back AVI (Xvid, MPEG 1/2/4, AVC, H.264), MPG/MPEG, VOB, ISO (DVD and Blu-ray), M2TS, MP4, MOV (AVC , H.264), MKV (MPEG 2/4, AVC, H.264), FLV and ASF (VC-1, WMV9) video files as well as MP3, WAV, AAC, MKA, FLAC, WMA, APE and OGG audio files, alternatively audio combined with the video. Theres also support for LPCM, WMA Pro, Dolby Digital and DTS audio, although only pass through for the multi-channel formats. Finally itll display JPEG (up to 20Megapixles), GIF, TIFF, BMP and PNG images and SRT, SSA, ASS and SAMI subtitles.
We cant say much about the UI as Seagate has only posted a single screenshot on its website and even that isnt very clear. Theres multi-language support, but as to which languages are supported seems to vary between the regions the unit is sold in and currently it seems to only be available in EMEA and the details on Seagates website is as such limited to that region. The 1TB model retails for €99 (S$175), with the 2TB model only being slightly more expensive at €129 (S$229) and finally the 3TB model at €179 (S$315). No word on when or if Seagate is planning on launching the GoFlex Cinema outside of Europe, but wed expect it to be available globally.
Source: Seagate
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