Xtreamer Media player – how it looks?
This little friend is truly little, probably one of the smallest media servers you may have seen. Only a couple of centimeters bigger than a computer's hard-disk, the glossy black Xtreamer looks almost like a DSL modem with all those ports on its rear. However, with just a single dimly glowing light on the corner of its front panel, there is not a visual sign of life this server radiates, which is so unlike all those blinking lights a modem buzzes with.Video playing capability of Xtreamer media player
When it comes to entertainment, there's nothing the Xtreamer can't do that a computer can, well besides playing videogames. With video, the Xtreamer can play everything from iSO files for Blu-rays and VOBs from DVDs to standard DivX, MPEG and MOV (H.264) flies. This actually makes it a lot better than a computer as Blu-ray drives are still pretty expensive. Audio playing capability of Xtreamer media player
As for audio, all of the surround formats that accompany Blu-rays and DVDs along with the MP3s, FLACs and WAV files playability. Connectivity of Xtreamer media player
However, all of these things any media-server out there can read and send via its HDMi port in the back. The part where the Xtreamer starts getting interesting is when you head towards the world of the internet. With an external wi-fi adapter that hooks up to one of the two USB ports supplied on the back panel, the Xtreamer can hook up to YouTube, Plcasa or Yahoo videos to name a few video streaming websites and get the videos streamed to your television. At the same time, there's a huge list of internet radio stations you can hook up to and listen to non-stop music. With the help of UPnP, the Xtreamer can convert into a server and can be used to access files from other computers over a LAN or the internet. And once you get a hang of it, you can even create shared folders that computers can access on the Xtreamer hard-disk and vice-versa.
User intergface of Xtreamer media player
For all of these functions to work efficiently, you need a well designed menu system, which the Xtreamer has got. it isn't the fastest responding menu system, but the hierarchy of menus is very easy to understand and is divided into comprehensible sections such as: videos, audio, images etc. if you go into Audio, it will list all the music on your hard-disk as folders or you can enable it to list the items by artiste, album, etc. With its on-board 128 DDR SDRAM and a 256MB flash memory, the time the Xtreamer takes to load up is eXtreamely fast, when compared to most Blu-ray disc players and other media servers.
User review of Xtreamer media player
One thing we have to give to the Xtreamer, it is fast as hell when it comes to playing back even the largest of files. The Blu-ray disc images and an iSO file starts immediately as soon as you could see it in the menu. A little preview screen pops up on the bottom right hand corner of the screen showing you the entire film (if you let it) at a very low volume. As soon as you press enter, the video is immediately made full screen and playback starts, smooth as a crisp Blu-ray disc spinning in PS3. The sound of this film isn't the best there is, and the Xtreamer did all it could with it. Jittery video is usually the case with media servers, especially where 1080p files are concerned. But the Xtreamer would have none of that, playing back every moment of the film seamlessly. The audio also has no interference or Jitter happening over the HDMI line. Audio output from the audio files are also excellent.
The Xtreamer is priced a little under Rs 10000 with no hard disc along with it and that's a great price range to be at for a media server that comes with the wireless adapter. That leaves you with enough money to get yourself even a 1TB SATA hard-disk, which at the moment is around Rs 3000 and is probably all the space you're ever going to need for entertainment. The server performs smoothly with no apparent glitches besides that delayed response to the remote control. If you're ready to take that step into the world of media-servers, and want to get rid of the disc spinners – just go ahead with Xtreamer media player.
