Description: The XM2500 is a device that can stream media from Networked PCs and Hard Drives, connected USB Hard Drives or flash drives or an internal 2.5” SATA Hard Drive (not included) to a home theatre via either RCA or HDMI cables.
Manufacturer Specs: http://www.i-play.com.au/xtreamer.php or http://www.xtreamer.net/xtreamer/overview.aspx.
Warranty: 12 months
Community Support & forums: http://forum.xtreamer.net/
Likes:
- No media server application required on networked PCs. It can browse network shares.
- A 2.5” SATA Hard Drive can be fitted inside to use as storage. (Click here for list of compatible drives).
- You can change the skin. Click here for the skin wiki to check them out.
- It can play live internet content.
- It can be connected via Cat5 cable to your home network or alternatively wirelessly with the XM11N Wireless USB module (not included). I used the XM11N module and it performed flawlessly connected to a Draytek 2710Vn. No problems streaming big movies at all.
- When using the fast forward button the sound keeps playing without distortion or changing pitch. This was a huge amount of fun for my pre-teen kids playing music videos at faster speeds until they hyperventilated and collapsed on the floor.
Dislikes:
- No music navigation such as the ability to search by song title, artist or genre on networked drives. Hopefully the Music Jukebox feature to be added in a future firmware release will improve this situation. In the meantime you may need to break music down into smaller folders, perhaps by artist or genre, to make browsing easier. However, if you want to play a particular song, another option is to play it live from Youtube which does have a search feature.
- I’m not stoked with the remote control performance. It works ok but it seems to be very directional. I found I needed to point the remote control directly at the unit for it to work reliably.
- The onscreen keyboard used for Internet searches and entering wireless security settings is in QWERTY format rather than ABCDEF etc. It’s a personal preference I guess but I’d much rather see it in alphabetical order when scrolling and clicking letters onscreen using the remote control’s left, right, up and down buttons.
- Once or twice while I was clicking madly through screens it froze up and/or rebooted. The freezes required pulling the power out of the back or switching it off and back on at the wall because there’s no physical on/off button on the unit.
- There’s no Aussie weather or news available in the Live Internet Content. What is there is extremely cool though and it kept me amused and amazed for many hours.
Bottom Line: It’s cheap as chips and does the job well. Much better in fact than many more expensive media players I’ve tested.
Price: RRP $165
Where to buy:
XM2500 Media Player – http://shop.ozcableguy.com/detail.asp?product=XM2500.
XM11N Wireless USB Module – http://shop.ozcableguy.com/detail.asp?product=XM11N
Combo – http://shop.ozcableguy.com/detail.asp?product=XM2500C