Mediagate Network Multimedia Center with Full HD 1080P Wi-Fi and UPNP

Product Description

HDD 1080P HDMI WIRELESS N - MEDIA PLAYER 3.5IN

As I write this, I have to tell you I am a huge Mediagate fan. I have had the MG-25 for over 3 years and love it. It does exactly what it purports to do with little or no grief, and certainly has it's shortcomings but for the price point of the product is, in my opinion, a great value.

So after a friend's glowing review I was really looking forward to deploying the MG-800HD in my network and solving a persistent problem of getting my UPNP server content to my HDTV without file copies and the like.

I ordered this unit and a WD Caviar Green 500GB hard drive and proceeded to build it, loading the latest firmware from Mediagate in the process. There are a lot of cool features like web browsing built into the latest firmware and although I am skeptical that people are going to buy this thing to hook up a KVM and surf the web, it is nice to see they are adding functionality.

Things that worked well:
-Streaming capability from a UPNP source (painless)
-Wireless setup fast and easy, even for WPA2 network
-Good format support (as expected)
-Remote has good range and is laid out fairly well
-Lots of ways to access your content (network, USB, local HD if installed)

Things that did not work well:
-UI experience is cheap and unpolished
-Wireless transfer of files using device as a repository very flakey
-System stability issues/lockups/freezes

Unfortunately, I had several problems with NAS performance over wireless that doesn't occur with other devices I operate on my network. Random dropouts, the inability to copy even moderately-large files without hangups, and having to hard reset the system to get it to recognize the new files at times.

In the final analysis, I liked some of what was provided with this device, but needless to say, I promptly sent it back. A device this expensive needs to slam dunk all of the features and for me, my $300 was better spent elsewhere.

If you have a slingbox at home, I would highly suggest looking at the Slingcatcher instead of this device. With the latest firmware update it does almost everything this device does (sans the local hard drive) and gets it done in a much more elegant, polished way. Add to that the Sling capability and it was a slam dunk for me. You can have that plus a wireless bridge solution for ~$260.00USD.


former mg-350, and PCH A-100 owner here!!! i gots to say i have read reviews on this unit before i purchased. it is not the most perfect machine out there but it does what i need it to do. i remember ebaying my PCH A-100 and wondering what other box will play my .MKV files... AND THE mg800 DOES!!! it plays my .MKV files, .avi files, x.264!!!! and has a web browser. tho the web browser can use some work its a nice niffty feature becuase you can plug a wireless usb keyboard/mouse and surf the net :) I LOVE THIS MACHINE. one thing i wish they add is a youtube better becuase its difficult to watcch the youtube videos the way its setup. and wish it had component video input/output...but it does have hdmi.

i think the other user did not do a firmware update because i have yet to have issues yet... "knock on wood"



I was really anticipating the purchase of this product. I'd owned the MG350 and found it adequate, but ok for the technology of its time. So I was really excited to hear the next generation of this product had been released especially with the published specifications of the unit.

The product arrived, and that was about as good as it got. The Seagate (1TB) I specifically purchased to install into the unit didn't work, even though it was the preferred Hard Drive on the Amazon page, don't waste your money. Don't get me wrong the Hard Drive is fine (tested in two other PC's), it just doesn't work in this unit, apparently MediaGate forums identified power issues (however I haven't seen a published list yet of certified drives).

I upgraded firmware and whilst it eliminated existing problems it introduced a series of new problems, I removed the new Seagate Hard Drive and replaced with a smaller Seagate Hard Drive (320G) on hand, at least the excruciating click and crunching noises stopped, but the unit was still unresponsive, would work, then stop and freeze.

The unit overheats, basically the heat sink is at the top of the unit, bad idea for a consumer electronics product that sits in a lounge room, would probably be okay for the average computer geek in their dark room, but not in a common area. Its just a really bad consumer product, its still an experimental techie's toy, something you need to be able to diagnose, update firmware on, swap out drives and changes settings constantly. At best its a beta product and certainly a product that shouldn't be sold to an average consumer on Amazon.

My love of technology will allow me to persevere with the unit, I'm replacing the two Seagate Hard Drives with a new Western Digital (low power) drive, with any luck that will work and of course I will dutifully wait for another firmware release and hope the myriad of bugs get ironed out. For the average joe consumer, really only interested in switching on and using what on paper seems to be one of the best home entertainment media players on the market, a word of warning, stay away.


I visited two of my relatives and sang karaoke songs from their MediaGate MG-25 and MG-35 models, and I was so impressed with the products from MediaGate. As a result, I searched for a newer model from MediaGate for my own, and I found MediaGate MG-800HD. I purchased it, and that was a mistake. I was very disappointed with at least two major flaws that I will describe below.

First, while singing a karaoke song from an internal hard drive of the MG-800HD, I pressed the "audio" button on the remote control to switch the audio track from a "with-vocal" track to a "music-only" track, and the video stream paused for about 5 seconds then skipped/jumped, interrupting the singing. Frankly, the older models do have a little jerk during the track switching, but it is very brief (only a fraction of a second). This flaw is INTOLERABLE for karaoke singing. (Actually, I bought the player without an internal hard drive, and I played videos from my external drive. I thought that the external connection caused the slowness. So, I purchased and installed an internal hard drive, but that did not help.)

Second, when I pressed the "next" button on the remote control to skip to the next track/chapter, the player began playing arbitrarily somewhere in the middle of the song. I had no way to jump back to the exact beginning of the song, and I had to use the fast rewind to go back. You know what? Oops! It went too far to the previous chapter. It is realy anoying. This flaw applies to any videos, movies, or karaoke songs.

I downloaded and updated the firmware, and those two problems did not get fixed. By the way, the downloading experience was terrible, too. The company did not posted firmware supports for this model. I googled and found the support blog. Although a support person was nice enough to share his firmware files via his personally-paid download site, and I greatly appreciate, MediaGate's lack of such download service makes the company so unprofessional.

So, if you are looking for a player for singing karaoke music, you should hold it off until the company addresses these issues.



MG-800HD is not an improvement of the previous model (MG-450HD): it's not made by the same group, "different language spec": keep this in mind when reading it.

This unit should stay in beta test and not rush to public use as yet. Still many bugs and poor performance. I have one and regret that I purchased it too early.

It cannot play half of my media collections: hiccup on video streaming, cannot toggle audio track, no DD audio on HDMI, cannot decode dts audio codec, no 5Ghz N-draft wireless...etc.

Visit the site mediagateusa/forum before you buy one.

It's NOT for normal user just yet.

P.L

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About Mediagate Network Multimedia Center with Full HD 1080P Wi-Fi and UPNP detail

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14116 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: MediaGate
• Model: MG-800HD
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x 5.30" w x 11.50" l, 6.00 pounds

Features

• Watch Movies, View Photos, or Play Music on your Television
• Supports SATA/Serial ATA 11/3G Hard Drive up to 1TB
• 802.11N Wireless -N Connection and 10/100 LAN Ethernet Port, Backwards Compatible with 802.11g
• Able to play media files from internal hard drive or PCs in the network via included remote control
• High-End Sigma Design 8635 Chip

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