Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV

Free Your Media

With a wealth of media available online, haven't you had times when you wish you were able to enjoy them some place else besides your computer? The problem is that several common tasks like watching the video clip you just edited, sharing pictures you took on your latest holiday and more, are traditionally confined to the PC. That’s where media players come into play to bridge our media to the television set.

Seagate’s latest offering, the FreeAgent GoFlex TV, aims to offer users a solution in an easy to use and compact package. The small, black player may seem unassuming, but boasts the ability to play quite a handful of media formats. As their third entry into the media player market, will the third time be a charm for Seagate? Read on to find out.

Free-hand design

The GoFlex TV is shaped like a little black box; it doesn’t exactly possess a slim profile, but more of a stocky look. This is due to the fact that it allows a Seagate GoFlex hard disk to be slotted into a dock at the front of the player, hence the pudgy look. But the player is small enough to not look too conspicuous among your A/V setup so fret not for those of you worrying it will stick out like a sore thumb. The choice of color for the player also helps it to blend it among the many black AV equipment on the market or in your living room. There’s a Seagate logo recessed into the matte top of the box, and air vents occupying the glossy sides and bottom. It makes you feel as though this black box will be emitting some serious heat, and the glossy sides do retain more fingerprints that we would have liked.

The jacks and ports are mostly found at the back of the player. Why do we say mostly? Because Seagate included a lone USB port at the side of the player as well. Due to the limited space available on the back of the player, the composite and component jacks are 'special'. The included composite and component cables end in a 3.5mm jack that interface with the player instead of the usual three-way connectors. Woe befalls the person who loses or spoils these unique cables! Apart from the 'break-out' connections for composite and component outputs, there is also a HDMI jack, a S/PDIF jack, a USB port and an Ethernet port sandwiched at the rear. While not exactly overwhelming, the jacks and ports do cover the minimum expected of a top of the line media players nowadays.

The remote follows the concept of the GoFlex TV; it is small and includes the barest minimum to navigate the menus. No fancy buttons here to confuse or confound.

Go-to Features

First thing people notice about media players besides the physical looks, is the user interface (UI) of the player. Even though this isn't Seagate's first stab at the media player market, their UI remains surprisingly basic and simple. This makes the Seagate GoFlex TV user interface feel very 'last gen' when compared to . The UI was also a bit on the sluggish side, though it's obvious to the point that we would doze off while waiting for it to load the menus. The five icons: Movies, Pictures, Music, Internet and Browse are pretty self explanatory.  The other icons right below the top row are all shortcuts to the various internet services. However, the shortcuts are a bit redundant as accessing the Internet icon will provide you with the same options.The bottom most row consists of shortcuts for devices that are connected to the player; such as USB thumb drives. The player will automatically scan any external drive that you plug in; though be warned that the player indexes files every time you switch it on.

The internet aspect of the player does seem to be a tad underwhelming; you don’t exactly get a web browser to surf the net. Users are restricted to the provided internet services such as YouTube and Flickr. Even though the remote is just as underwhelming, lucky for us it supports USB keyboards to help facilitate text entries such as searching for videos or pictures in a particular channel.

The GoFlex TV does not come with any internal hard disk, but it does come with a nifty feature to pop in a FreeAgent GoFlex ultra-portable drive into the slot at the front of the player. This would mean the GoFlex drives get to interface with the media player via the SATA interface natively and hence faster indexing , transfers, etc. For those of you who own other external hard disks, you will have to make do with the usual USB ports for connectivity.

Flexing that muscle - Performance Matters

Powering up the player and reaching the home screen took a less than impressive 25 seconds. Once we got the player set up, it was time to test its mettle. Playing videos on YouTube, we noticed no issues though by default the player will display the video in its original resolution. The player only offers the option to watch the video in its native resolution or in full screen mode, which was disappointing to us considering we may want to view the video in a larger scale but not full screen where it just looks like a mass of pixels.

Next up would be the video playback testing, which is the litmus test for media players. Most video formats played back with no problems, and there were no shakes or frame freezes when playing high-definition videos. Obviously the quality of the source video plays a part in how good the video looks as well. There was no option to restart the video we were viewing; when we stopped the video and played it again, it would continue at the previous point where we had stopped. There are not much options offered for playback of video, music and pictures. The submenus are very basic; for videos you only get options to display the subtitles or turn them off, and an option to choose which audio stream you want to be playing in the video. One point to note was that every time we accessed the menu while watching video, the player will automatically pause the video playback. Music playback options are also not rocket science; you get to repeat the song, play through the entire list, or shuffle and loop the tracks. One odd issue we noticed was that we needed to point the remote directly at the infrared port of the unit; if you go pointing somewhere else or even slightly away from the port, the player does not respond. Not a deal-breaker, but a minor annoyance.

The Hammer Comes Down

The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV is a weird creature. It supports almost all media formats, including RMVB and FLV, therefore making it seem like a state of the art player. But its boring design, uninspiring and slightly sluggish user interface seem to state otherwise. There is no internal hard drive included, so its price is relatively low at S$159.

For the price and the fact that as a media player it does its job rather well, if you can live with the aesthetics of its simple user interface and physical design, the GoFlex TV can be a competent player that is limited by its functionality due to its UI design.If you are looking at more functionality and do not mind shelling out extra money, there are other media players in the market that offer attractive user interface and more functionality, such as the WD TV Live Hub. The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV however, fulfills its basic role reasonably well and offers good value for non demanding users.

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