Freecom Netw. MediaPlayer-450 WLAN 250GB Review

Good Points
Compact
Versatile
Low cost
Great connectivity
HD video output

Bad Points
Limited HD video format support
Slow start-up
Very limited playlist options
Clunky wireless operation

General Comments
I've owned my Freecom WLAN 450 for five months now and am really glad I bought it. It's enabled me to listen to my MP3 collection at high quality through my AV sytem and watch high definition video on my TV.



My initial reaction to it was fairly guarded because it took me a few days to load it with content and get used to the user interface. But now I've invested the time in reading the manual and playing with media player, it's loved by all the family.



Connecting to TV, PC and Hi-Fi is easy because the WLAN 450 has got lots of high quality connections including USB, SP-DIF optical audio, HDMI and good-old component video, for those of us with older HD TVs.



Transfering music, photos and video via USB from a laptop is a doddle because XP or Vista recognise it as a big drive that you can just copy and paste onto. Wireless transfer is also possible but I found it slow and fiddly. You have to be connected to the media player in order to organise content as you can't do it through the on-screen user interface.



Basic playback is easy thanks to the on-screen display (through your TV), logical menus and a simple remote control. It would be nice to have more playback options, such as random play or the ability to just play one track at a time, and not everything in the folder.



One other niggle I have with the WLAN 450 is that it doesn't support the HD video format that my camera records, but that's more Panasonic's fault than Freecom's.



I would definitely recommend the Freecom WLAN 450 to anyone who wants a sensibly priced way of using their digital media content with a decent sized screen and hi-fi audio.