Review Sleek aluminium housings are all the rage with hard disk manufacturers, and Freecom’s Network Media Centre is no exception. Available in capacities from 1TB to 2TB, this single-disk Nas box promises to be your ultimate home media server thanks to the inclusion of UPNP/DLNA streaming support, an FTP server, a BitTorrent client and customisable multi-user work areas.
Freecom’s Network Media Centre: aesthetically unexciting
Aesthetically, the Network Media Centre isn’t overly exciting. Instead, it’s pleasantly simple with a smooth brushed-aluminium finish and glossy black faceplate framing a single status LED. Designed to sit horizontally, it’s inherently stable, with a reasonable footprint of 155 x 148mm and a height of only 43mm. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The Home Media Network Hard Drive sounds like an all-singing, all-dancing multimedia extravaganza, along the same lines as Iomega’s recently-released ScreenPlay Pro HD. However, it’s actually a much more modest proposition than that.
The HMNHD is really just a relatively basic NAS box. It doesn’t have the assortment of HDMI and video interfaces provided by the more versatile ScreenPlay, just a Gigabit Ethernet port for hooking it up to your router and a USB port for connecting additional storage devices, or for sharing a printer on your network.
Our review unit was the 500GB model with a 7200rpm drive, priced at £135, and there’s also a 1TB model available for £180. The drive is quite neatly designed, with a “burnished gun metal” – aka ‘dark grey plastic’ – casing that measures a compact 200 x 125 x 37.5mm. The internal fan makes a quiet but steady hum – about the same level as the fan in the Toshiba laptop that we tested it with, so it’s noticeable but not annoying. Stick it on a shelf or in a corner next to your router and you won’t notice it at all. Read the rest of this entry »
