HardwareGeeks.com - Review: HP MediaSmart Connect

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Posted by: Michael on Thu, Jul 24th, 2008

Everyone has some form of digital media—be it music, pictures or video. We all have some form of it and if you don’t then you’re stuck in 1995.

With all our digital media, many of us have had a desire to bring that media to our televisions, so we make it happen by burning DVD’s and CD’s and now we’re stuck with stacks of DVD’s. This can get expensive considering a pack of 20 blank DVD’s will run you about 25 dollars USD at Staples.

Well HP has brought us the HP MediaSmart Connect a device that will help us bring that Media to our Television, easily and with little to no hassle.

The MediaSmart Connect from HP is a small square device, that fits elegantly next to your TV and since its form factor is so small you can even hide it if you feel it disturbs the Feng Shui in your living room.

So what exactly does the HP MediaSmart Connect do? Well it searches your home network for computers and servers, it will then locate where pictures, movies and music are stored (you can tell it not to search specific folders etc) and it will allow you to easily stream it over your network (wired or wireless).

I am sure you’re probably thinking that it sounds hard to set up and connect to your network—well it isn’t. You first connect the HP MediaSmart Connect device to your TV via component or HDMI cables, you then connect the device to your wired network. You can also connect it to your wireless network, even a secured network.

You also need to install software on one of the computers on your network. You need to do this because of DRM issues, etc. This will allow you to authorize the device to play some music and movies (we will get to this later).

Once the HP MediaSmart Connect is on your network it will locate how many computers are on the network, by displaying the number on the bottom right hand side.

You can then browse computers on your network via your television. HOW COOL IS THAT??? Or you can just tell the HP MediaSmart Connect to display all pictures and play a slideshow, or play all music and shuffle it.

You can also access online services such as Live365.com for music, SnapFish.com to print out your photos, and CinemaNow which basically gives you Video On Demand, (you can purchase or rent movies over the internet).

I had a little trouble setting up CinemaNow to work with my HP MediaSmart Connect but after a few tweaks of my network I was able to get it to work. I have a rather extensive and complicated network which is why I ran into issues, but with a normal network, setup is simply ‘plug and play’.

You can also use the HP MediaSmart Connect as a Windows MediaCenter extender, so if you have a Windows based PC with Media Center you can stream television to the device, stream recorded TV shows, even schedule recordings. Once it is connected over the network with a MediaCenter PC your HP MediaSmart Connect will function as one. I tested this out with my Personal Media Center and it worked great, I also tried it with a test notebook HP sent me which has their notebook TV tuner, and it worked flawlessly, I experienced no issues what so ever setting up Media Center.

What is also great about the MediaSmart Connect is, it’s upgradeable for the life of the product. HP will upgrade the software it uses to add more services and those upgrades will be available for free. HP will send a message to the system to let you know there is an update available.